Spring is here! Spring is here! Life is skittles and life is beer! I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring! I do! Don’t you? ‘Course you do.

Newt Gingrich also noticed spring is here this past weekend, when, instead of campaigning in Illinois, where he would ultimately come in fourth behind Ron Paul, he decided to spend the day with his third wife/second mistress wandering the Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. and admiring the cherry blossoms.

He still refuses to drop out despite Santorum’s repeated calls to do so in order to clear the way for a “two-man race,” even though Newt’s already done that by ignoring the need to actually, you know, campaign. Santorum’s point would carry a little more weight if Newt’s presence were actually making a difference. As it stands, even if Newt had dropped out pre-Illinois and in the unlikely event Santorum had picked up 100% of the Newt voters, then Mitt would have won the state by four points instead of twelve.

But, as this Gallup poll shows, Santorum wouldn’t pick up 100% of the Newt voters. He would split them evenly with Mitt, which also undermines the whole rationale for why Rick and Newt are staying in the race – they recognize they can’t win the thing outright, so they hope to play dog in a manger in order to keep Mitt from winning it, and then they’ll convince enough Mitt delegates that their guy stinks, and so they should abandon him on the second convention ballot and rally behind Newt/Rick/Sarah Palin/Tim Tebow. They don’t seem to believe it’s possible that if Mitt arrives in Tampa with, say, 1,000 delegates instead of the magic 1,144, he’ll probably have an easier time finding 144 disaffected Newties or Santorumites than they will picking off 500 – or in Newt’s case, 750 – Romneybots. Both of them churlishly insist that Mitt is running with the unfair advantage of a superior organization, adequate funding, and genuine momentum, so the preferences of actual voters at the polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Newt, particularly, released a whiny little diatribe after the Illinois results came in that harped on the fact that Mitt was able to outspend Santorum 7-1, as if that somehow meant the results should be read with a Maris-like asterisk.

Newsflash, Newt – you know why Mitt spent seven times the money Santorum did? Because he could, and you can’t. Why is that? Because donors believe in Mitt, and they don’t believe in you. That may have something to do with why your campaign is why your campaign is now millions of dollars in debt.

Of course, Mitt isn’t helping matters with his spokesman’s little Etch-a-Sketch hooey, which is only remarkable in that Mitt is now relying on his underlings to make his gaffes for him. This awkward moment has produced at least one fun campaign artifact – a picture of Rick Santorum demonstrating to petulant toddlers everywhere what it looks like to take your toys and go home.

My Etch-a-Sketch! Mine! Mine!

All these two clowns are doing by staying in the race is postponing the general election season, which means we may have to wait until the summer to read the mounds of stockpiled stories about how Mormons baptize corpses/still practice slavery/believe the Lost Tribes of Israel have spent the last two millennia partying in a hollowed-out cavern directly underneath Greenland.

I’m sick to death of the primary election, to be honest. Despite it dominating this blog, it’s not the only thing I think about. In my free moments, I find the time to ask why a blogger in his forties can still get acne, or ponder why Chevy Chase was ever considered talented enough to merit a movie career. I muse on the injustice of the existence of cats, and I query the powers that be with philosophical conundrums like: if a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody around to hear it, would my dog still crap on it?

Happy second day of Spring!