"It's all bullshit," said Speaker Gingrich...

...in a candid moment backstage at a Gingrich Youth event in an abandoned VFW post in Flint, Michigan. "I'm only in it for the money at this point. I hate everybody, including myself. I just want to go to the moon, okay? I want to go the moon, now!"

Undeterred by our recent humiliating defeats...

...Speaker Gingrich showed us the new mock-ups for the moon colony.

We were all so wasted...

...after that all-night strategy session. But, no rest for the weary, we had a Tea Party brunch to go to at an abandoned Denny's out on Highway 70. We stopped into a roadhouse for some liquid fortification.

We were all sitting around the motel room...

....playing Call of Duty VIII: Iranian Apocalypse when the door opened and a gust of frigid air and snow blew in followed by none other than Newt himself! He was red-faced, and staggering a little bit, I guess he was tired, and he bawled us out because we were sitting around playing games instead of mapping out strategies. But he had two sixpacks of Miller Light and a bottle of peppermint schnapps, so that was cool, and then he brought out a little aspirin bottle and opened it and shook out a handful of pills.

"I want every one of you yardbirds to take one of these pills, then we're gonna do some shots while we wait till the pills kick in. Then we're gonna hammer out a strategy, goddammit!"

We took the pills.

It was going to be a long night.

We few...

We few of the Minnesota advanced guard arrived at our motel, the Just Drop Inn, just as the cold hard dusk descended. Snow was falling. We were hungry, and so we walked to the nearest restaurant, a McDonald's at a truck stop half a mile down the highway. Because of the new budgetary restrictions, we were forced to share Happy Meals, with only one small Coke per person.

In the parking lot outside some gay truckdrivers pulled our pants down and made fun of us because of our Newt buttons. Then they drove off in their enormous and powerful semis, laughing, and playing Lady Gaga songs very loudly.

We walked back to the motel in the snow to await our orders.

Our morale remains high.

The word came down from Newt...

Stragglers would be shot.

Nevertheless, morale remains high.

Bloodied but unbowed...

...we followed our leader to the next primary.

Forty-six states to go.

Victory will be ours.

But why is it so cold?

Why must it be so terribly cold?