Rich: perfectly said about good ol’ SpongeBob Squarepants, who, together with his lovely running mate, Callista, is off to a great start in the Re-Elect the Emperor Hussein ’12 campaign. With friends like Mr. Newt, who needs John McCain anymore?

I mean, practically at one stroke, he’s destroyed his own candidacy, damaged Paul Ryan for no discernible reason, and hurt his party’s chances next year. If he had strapped on a suicide-bomber’s vest and pulled the detonator as he was waddling onto the Meet the Press set on Sunday, he couldn’t have taken himself out of the race more effectively. Plus, David Gregory got to call him a racist, thus laying down a media marker for the future treatment of every Republican candidate who looks crossways at food stamps, Detroit and, let’s be honest, Democrats. Even the vox populi is making fun of him.

But lemme tell you something: Over here on the Left, we love SpongeBob. In fact, he reminds us very much of a certain someone we adore — a say-anything kind of guy who’ll throw a principle under the bus in a heartbeat if he thinks it will curry favor or benefit him politically. A guy whose motto is: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself,” and goes right on singing his song of himself before the cameras without the slightest embarrassment.

He is large, he contains multitudes, Mr. Newt does, and you wingnuts ought to cut him some slack. After all, look how well it all turned out for Barack Hussein Obama.