Failure to Launch

Heck, let’s get started early. No projections for another hour, but polls have closed in most of the state, and numbers may be coming soon.

And with 1% in, Mitt is up by 24 points. But it’s early. He may win by 30.

Exit poll: 38% percent of voters are over 65. Just like 75% of the candidates.

(Okay, fine. Mitt will be 65 in March.)

8% in, Mitt up by 27. The 8pm projections will be redundant.

Barbara Eden was cute, no?

@Dodgerblue: Cuter than Larry Hagman.

Oh, crap, is that on? I should turn on the tv before Mrs RML gets home.

@Dodgerblue: Mitt wants to outlae your friend’s mom’s kugel.

@nojo: You see Hagman on tv recently? Dude looks 300, like that cat at the end of 2001.

49 to 29? Newt’s sugar daddy is gonna slam that purse shut.

/ off to cut a little firewood

27% in, Mitt up by 23.

@redmanlaw: Haven’t seen Hagman lately. He doing a mortgage commercial or something?

No-Google trivia question: Whose son is Larry Hagman?

Hagman son of Peter Pan. Can’t recall woman who played PP. Wotta ya expect at 71. BTW, isn’t Peter Pan Newt’s pet name for Callista?

40% in, Mitt up by 20.

He’s also hovering around 50%. Frothy and Dr. Evol haven’t really contested winner-take-all* Florida, so their numbers don’t count.

*Winner-take-all pending GOP rules challenge. It’s complicated. It’s Florida.

@RevZafod: Mary Martin. Judges rule that you’re close enough.

@Nojo: Thanx for the Mary Martin win. I could be a champ on Jeopardy if they had a handicap system on delay, with one second allowed for every year of age. At 71 that’d give me a 41 second lead over someone 30, and I could probably recall many answers in under 41 seconds.

@redmanlaw: Saw him on the SAG awards. Very skinny, but at least he wasn’t shaking like Linda Gray. She’s either got a touch of the Parkinson’s or her Spanx were too tight.

Anyway, Larry’s still got that hella sexy accent. I will DVR the return of Dallas and ffwd through all the 2nd generation nonsense.

50% in, Mitt up by 17. He’s slipping.

@RevZafod: I have a very associative mind, but only when I’m not trying to remember anything specific. So I could tell you the original host of Jeopardy if I wasn’t trying to think of him.

Wait… Wait… Art Fleming. Whew.

@nojo: And Art’s announcer was . . .

@Dodgerblue: Taped from New York!

@nojo: “What do we have for our contestants, Don Pardo?”

@Dodgerblue: There’s a Tomorrow show from the late Seventies where Tom Snyder interviewed all the old-school NBC staff announcers in a bar. I was enraptured.

And here come the anticlimactic projections!

On to Mormon-heavy Nevada, where Newt will come out looking like a buffet coupon from the floor of a busy men’s bathroom.

60% in, Mitt up by 17.

The news coverage will be determined not only by size of the win, but whether Mitt cracks 50%.

So, a month ago Newt was supposed to be Frothy’s stalking horse. Right now that’s looking upside-down, and Frothy’s being pressured to quit.

@nojo: When Santorum is upside down, it’s trouble for everybody.

Wait, but if Frothy takes his ball and goes home, how are the rest of the contestants ever going to remind us of runny fecal matter? No, no… wait. I answered my own question, didn’t I.

@IanJ: As Rachel explained last week, there’s a runny part of the Mittens Roof Dog story that gets lost in the retelling.

So when are Newt and Paul going to speak?

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I used to see Bill Daily, who played Roger on IDOJ, walking his dog in my neighborhood when I lived in downtown Albuquerque in the late 80s-early 90s as a reporter then law student. (The country club neighborhood was a few blocks away.) Very shy, kind of nervous guy. I never approached him. Word was that he was gay.

Switched over to 30 Rock reruns. You guys see how slmimmed down Jack/Alec Baldwin is this season?

Time for Mitt’s Victory Lap…

Gawd, that fucking Mitt Smirk. Pisses the hell out of me.

Mitt’s pitch: Everything was going just fine until Obama was elected.

Bog-standard Mitt. Zzzzzz.

@Dodgerblue: Three speeches still to come. I’m surprised the last two even bother.

Oh, right. Free publicity. Silly me.

Check out the electoral map on the New York Times website. Gingrich won northern FL and the panhandle. That’s going to persuade Gingrich that he can win the South. This race is by no means over, unless someone manages to talk some sense into him and convince him that he can compete against Romney all day and night but he can’t win the whole enchilada. Here’s hoping no one does convince him of that, though.

@Serolf Divad: Thanks. I saw that pattern but didn’t know what it meant.

It looks like Newt’s Space:1999 moon plan failed in Mr. Cub’s home county of Brevard, home of to a bunch of pissed off angry Obama hating unemployed former Shuttle program workers.

Frothy Mix now up. Live! From, um, Las Vegas…

Frothy Mix: Zzzzzz.

@Dodgerblue:

The further north and west you travel in Florida, the greater the chances you’ll run into someone who’s married to his first cousin. The further south you travel the more likely you are to run into a guy in a golf cart sporting plaid pants and a Brooklyn accent.

Heeeeeeere’s Newt!

Signs at Newt rally: “46 STATES TO GO”. Yeah, baby.

Newt: “We are going to contest every place.” Except the places he forgot to register for.

What species of bird is Callista?

Newt: “We’re going to have People Power defeat Money Power.”

Speaking of which, how many shoes in Callista’s closet?

Newt quotes David Broder. A moment ago, he railed against “Elite Media”.

Newt promises to update Contract With America. Just like he updates Contracts with Wives.

@Serolf Divad: I’ve only been to St. Pete and what I most remember is the humidity.

Newt promises to restore America to the Glory Year of 2008.

Newt promises to “open the embassy in Jerusalem and recognize Israel.”

Wait, what? Are we still honoring the Ottomans?

Gawd, Newt is fun. We’re gonna miss him when he’s gone.

And finally, Dr. Evol!

@redmanlaw: Callista is a rare varient of the common American green boxbird, seen often at the corner of 5th Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan, and most often just across the street from Henri Bendel, if you get my drift.

@blogenfreude: Green? Not aqua?

I’ll give Ron Paul this much: He’s the Happy Warrior of our time.

And, that’s it. Nothing left but hours of cable chatter.

@Mistress Cynica: OK – aqua. I’m not color blind, but I might as well be.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!