I have not been paying a whole lot of attention to the GOP debates any more than I’ve been paying attention to the NFL playoffs. They’re all over the TV, but there’s always something else to watch, like the TCM tribute to Jose Ferrer on the 100th anniversary of his birth or the “Wrecks to Riches” marathon on Velocity. Gotta love cable TV.

But a few things have popped up out of the weeds, such as Newt Gingrich calling out Mitt Romney for his “pious baloney” (which Charlie Pierce has already claimed for his band name) and, speaking of pious, Rick Santorum telling people that it’s not okay to have any kind of sex unless you’re making a baby. Rick Perry — remember him? — knows very little about socialism and nothing about history — “I don’t think that our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country” — which is odd because the Constitution is riddled with socialist ideas such as “We the People” and “to provide for the General Welfare” and other Marxist propaganda.

And then there’s Mitt Romney telling us that there really isn’t any point in running for office if you’re not stinking rich:

Romney said his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, had told him, “Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage.”

[…]

A few seconds later, he bragged about his run against Teddy Kennedy.

“I was happy he had to take a mortgage out on his house to ultimately defeat me,” he said.

Even if it is a misquote by Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: the rich are different from you and me. Not only do they have more money, but a lot of them are tone-deaf assholes.

Is it any wonder that I love having a TiVo full of re-runs of Franklin & Bash?