So... this is what Free Range Republicans on the campaign trail look like.
After calling Mittens a lying, poll-driven traitorous, robotic, thug, AngryNewt went on to claim that the Obama "machine" will kill and eat Mittens, mounting his head on the front of the President's platinum and diamond Cadillac El Dorado, bumping it up and down Pennsylvania Avenue while the 20s in the trunk pump out "Love Roller Coaster."
He does not curse Mittens... merely predicts.
So, Hulk like, AngryNewt is having his Bruce Banner moment: "don't make me mad, you wouldn't like me when I'm mad..." Well, too bad for the GOP, because that ship has sailed; for the love Amaterasu, AngryNewt is unironically using "Eye of the Tiger" for his campaign music...
AngryNewt's prediction for 2012? Pain!
But humorus hyperbole aside (and the way this is going, we're going to have to conserve our hyperbole stocks or we're going to be down to nothing but Thrid Reich and Lovecraft references soon), let's talk about the real winner of last night's coffee social: Rick Santorum.
Yeah, I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I realized that Ol' Frothy is the real ticket puncher out of Iowa. This is the guy, who just a month or so ago, was polling in mid-single digits, had no money, and was widely regarded as the next guy to be voted off the island.
And while I still hold to my prediction that he will get his ass waxed by Mittens and Paul in New Hampshire, it might be good to remember he actually won the South Carolina straw poll a while back -- handily -- with about 40 percent of the vote.
Another interesting thing even though Newt has now hulked-out into AngryNewt, he is still polling ahead in the national race and leads all comers in South Carolina and few other early and key states, in a couple places by double digits.
That may not last long with AngryNewt on the scene though. To continue with our Hulk metaphor, AngryNewt is capable of only eventually destroying that which he loves; he is a walking monument to self-destructive narcissism and solopsistic hubris.
As he crashes around the next few primary states crushing everything he touches, those voters escaping the rubble will turn to Ol' Frothy as their only fallback. Even if Ron Paul is trying to downplay his whole Auric Goldfinger thing, this racist, homophobic, nativist newsletter issue is not going away, not if Mittens has anything to say about it, so no joy there.
Also, it looks like Rick Perry may hit the eject button in the next 24 to 48 hours, even as Michele Bachmann pulls the plug on her slow motion political suicide as she decides to "stand aside" for the good of all that is decent and the party and the...foo and... uh whatever.
I can not tell you how much I will miss Bachmann and Perry. But, truly, The Man from FAIL's best day of the campaign was the day before he formally announced. But as previously noted, he could not refrain from stepping on his own taint in public at nearly every turn, so naturally by this point those voters had to turn somewhere, first to PizzaMan, then Paul (though not really), then Newt, and now to Ol' Frothy.
And my Michele... what can we say about her that will not get us sued into debtor's prison? Her performance art ramblings were only topped by PizzaMan's and she may have to be inducted as an emeritus member of the "St00pidest Things Ever Said" Hall of Fame... (will have to remember to poll the editors later on this.)
Joe Scarborough made a surprisingly cogent point yesterday on MSNBC when he broke down the three legged dog that is Republican Party electoral politics. Those three legs are the economic/establishment gold-plated leg, the backwards pointing leg of the social conservatives, and the eerie and mishappened appendage of the libertarians humping the dead bones of Barry Goldwater and Ayn Rand.
In the past, there has been one candidate who has been able to sew up at least two of those legs for their campaign and at least marginalize the third leg, but Joe points out that this year they are nearly equal in their ability to put troops in the field, get earned media, names on the ballot and money in the coffers, at least in the early going.
So at the end of the day, what does it all mean?
I could make some pithy predictions, Mittens walks away with New Hampshire, Santorum wins SC and splits Florida with Newt... but really, all I know for certain right now is that the High Weirdness is just spinning up.
Stay tuned sports fans, this is going to get good...
mojo sends
UPDATE 1.0: Apparently the Angry Sky Fairy of the Old Testament told The Man from FAIL to stay on the march after conferring with him last night. Looks like we will have Rick Perry to kick around for a little while longer, thank Freya!
