Willard's Not So Excellent Adventure

So last night there was a three state primary, essentially a three state killing spree of the second inevitable nomination of Willard Romney, a man who more resembles a Stepford born-and-bred game show host than an actual president. Santorum's foamy surge across three completely different states was, or should be, a wakeup call to the Romney campaign: The more you talk, the more you're hated.

And while the Santorum/Savonarola ticket was busy strapping Mitt Romney to the roof of Ricky Retardo's tour bus, several things were made apparent. I give you Charles Pierce, the Jonathan Swift of Esquire:

Willard didn't win a single county in Missouri. He finished 30-odd points behind where he finished in Colorado in 2008. He finished third in Minnesota.

Now, would Santorum have gone three for three last night if there was even one delegate on the line? Hard to say but when one looks at those bruising facts, you have to wonder. Plus, Romney's horse race with Obama in the most recent polls is looking a lot less like a photo finish and more like a Secretariat race with Obama as Secretariat. Up until a week ago, Romney was virtually neck and neck with the President: Now in some polls (ABC/Reuters, IPSOS/WaPo and, surprisingly, Rasmussen), Romney is down by 7 or more points.

The eventual Republican nominee, as many of us know, needs 1144 delegates to win his party's nomination. As of right now, with many of the primaries and caucuses behind us, Mitt Romney still has just 107 or less than 10% of what he needs. Gingrich has 32 and Santorum's quietly squirreled away 45. (Ron Paul, who actually finished second ahead of Romney in Minnesota last night, has 9.)

In just his second and thus far last primary victory four days ago, Romney won by grabbing just over 50% of the vote and the self-congratulatory press was crowing about how they were right all along and how badly Gingrich got crushed like an overused Dixie cup. Conveniently glossed over was that his 50% win still totaled just 16,486 votes cast for him in all of Nevada, which is a little over half of the people that voted for Christine O'Donnell in tiny Delaware's GOP Senate primary in 2010.

It's hard to imagine, while we munch popcorn and jeeringly wave giant red, white and blue foam fingers at the fiery wreckage of a second Willard presidential run, why Romney is still in the race. Time and again in all but two contests and despite buying political endorsements from local Republicans, the states are telling Romney, "We don't like you!" Like Gingrich, about the only thing Willard has going for him are a couple of billionaire scumbags bankrolling his campaign.

Say what you want about Republicans and the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Goobers who vote for them: The earthy Sarah Palin has charm and charisma and connected with blue collar conservatives and evangelicals. George W. Bush had connected with the same people for the same reasons. Facts and erudition be damned but charm and charisma, some semblance of humanity, is still needed no matter how rich a man is or how many billionaires shovel post-Citizen's United money at their feet.

Willard Romney, who likely smells like a bank vault right after a delivery from the mint, is like something out of a political Issac Asimov novel, a poor robot trying to muscle in on territory best suited for humans but, no matter how remarkably life-like he is, never quite wins over the meat bags who still crave something human.