Romney and Gingrich and Threesomes, Oh My

Where does one begin? Rick Perry dropping out of the race? Mitt Romney stashing huge sums of money in offshore Cayman Island accounts? (Huge to us, at any rate: 8 million dollars, which perhaps isn’t all that much to Mr. Romney.) Rick Santorum actually winning the race in Iowa, though for some arcane reason his win is now being called a “draw.” Or Newt Gingrich and the Threesome That Could Have Been?

Threesomes trump everything else in politics, perhaps in other areas of life. We wouldn’t know for certain. Really. As of the time of this writing (noon PST, Thursday Jan. 19), Mr. Gingrich’s ex-wife Marianne will give an interview on ABC tonight regarding the moral excesses of her then-husband, the then-Speaker of the House. Gingrich apparently wanted to have an open marriage with Marianne, enjoying both her and his younger intern Callista simultaneously. Marianne refused. And now, on the eve of the most important election of the GOP hopeful’s life, she will be sharing the intimate details on national TV.

One must wonder how the Republican voters of South Carolina will react. How the word “threesome” will feel on their lips. How it will resonate in their brains. Presumably they won’t be voting for Mr. Gingrich Saturday. Perhaps they will be voting for Mr. Romney?

Another bombshell dropped this morning: Mitt Romney keeps millions of dollars in offshore investment accounts based in the Cayman Islands. At a time when taxes, and how little the wealthy pay in taxes, are among the most pertinent of issues in the election, this revelation can’t help the man who is becoming the poster boy for plutocracy. Though there has been no allegation of wrongdoing by Mr. Romney, the words “Cayman Islands” certainly conjure images of the seamier side of high finance, and could very well drive away the blue-collar voters who are doubtless preparing to abandon Newt Gingrich’s foundering vessel.

Perhaps those voters will look to Rick Perry. Or perhaps not – he’s dropped out of the race, though with polling numbers so low that one could be forgiven for not noticing. (Seriously, how does he keep winning the governor’s office in Texas? Is it a regional thing? Is he somehow not considered, how to put it politely, sub-par in intelligence down there? In the land of the blind, is the one-eyed man king?)