This is just mean -- and funny

By Richard K. Barry

Ha, ha, ha... I'm a walking punchline.

And while it's just mean, I didn't say I didn't like it. GQ magazine has Mitt Romney No. 1 on its list of "The Least Influential People of 2012":

Was anyone inspired by Mitt Romney? Did anyone vote enthusiastically for Mitt Romney? Of course not. Voting for Romney is like hooking up with the last single person at the bar at 4 a.m. The only successful thing he did this year was embody every black stand-up comedian's impression of a white person. Thank God the election's over. No more endless photos of Mitt staring winsomely off-camera with that attempted smile on his face. No more glaring campaign mishaps week after week after week. No more labored media efforts to make him look like anything other than Sheldon Adelson's pampered money Dumpster. Good-bye, Mitt. I hope you enjoy the rest of your life quietly ensconced at Lake Winnipesaukee, blissfully ignorant of the plight of anyone who doesn't have $300 million squirreled away in the Bahamas.

Good joke, but to be fair, I'm sure some people voted for Mitt Romney enthusiastically. The truth in the joke, however, is that it would be difficult to think of a presidential election in which most of the enthusiasm for one candidate was based significantly on hatred for the other candidate. That may be a kind of enthusiasm, but it is a miserable kind. 

And don't forget that almost every candidate for the GOP presidential nomination led at one point or another. And when the party got tired of the loser of the month, they went on to another loser, not Mitt, until they had to settle for former governor of Massachusetts. Yes, Romney won the battle of attrition at which point the conservative base more or less grudgingly got behind him.

It may be silly to call him one the least influential people of 2012. It would not be silly to call his candidacy pathetic, based so much on the simple fact that he was not President Obama and so little on any positive attributes he brought to the race.