Once seen as the establishment’s best hope to defeat Donald Trump, Ted Cruz’s campaign is in meltdown mode and his poll numbers are collapsing. Picking Carly Fiorina as his running mate is a last, desperate attempt to salvage his candidacy.

It’s hard to imagine a more physically revolting – and weirdly appropriate – political duo than Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina. Cruz is a virginal dweeb who can’t sit next to an attractive woman without dissolving into a puddle of sweat; Fiorina is a bitter spinster who hasn’t gotten laid since the dotcom bubble. It’s fitting that they’d join forces to become the GOP’s first lesbian power couple.

But who the hell is this ticket supposed to appeal to? Ever since Fiorina began sitting on Cruz’s caucus, she’s become his surrogate mommy, wiping his bib, tucking him into bed at night, and defending him against meanie reporters who pick on him. He clearly didn’t pick Creepy Carly for her popularity with the voters: she finished near the bottom in both Iowa and New Hampshire and dropped out after the latter. If Cruz was trying to curry favor with the Republican establishment, he went about it in the most autistic way possible.

And unfortunately for him, the electorate has already bought one-way tickets on the Trump Train. Once viewed as the best candidate to dethrone the Donald, Lyin’ Ted has been crushed in the past half-dozen primaries, finishing dead last in all but one state (Pennsylvania) and garnering so few delegates that you can count them on one hand and have fingers to spare. It’s now mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination on the first ballot, so he’s switched gears, trying to deny Trump a majority of delegates and force a brokered convention.

On paper, Indiana was supposed to be an easy Cruz victory: the state’s primarily White, agrarian, and evangelical population is tailor-made for his slimy preacher act. The problem is that Lyin’ Ted is like a cockroach: when you shine a light on him, people get grossed out. His poll numbers have been in freefall for the past month thanks to the delegate shenanigans he pulled in Colorado and other states, and his Hillary-like attempts to humanize himself have only illustrated what a loathsome insect he is.

I attended Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina’s rally at the Century Center in South Bend earlier this week, and it’s clear that the monkey is dead and the show is over. Lyin’ Ted’s flailing attempts to shore up his campaign, from botching a collusion pact with John Kasich to naming Fiorina as his Vice Presidential pick, have borne no fruit whatsoever. Donald Trump will almost assuredly win the Indiana primary on Tuesday, and with it, the nomination.

I showed up at the rally about five minutes before it began, and in an ill omen, only 500 some-odd people were there. While no other candidate can draw the rock star-level crowds that Trump can, Cruz’s audience only filled up half of the room. In contrast to his earlier appearances, Cruz drew a decent number of young people, though most of them looked like they were there for the novelty of a presidential candidate coming to town.

The show got started when an Indiana State Representative whose name I don’t recall showed us a propaganda film about Cruz’s victories in the presidential race. Watching it, you’d have no clue that he’s lost the majority of primaries and is in a distant second in the delegate count, but Lyin’ Ted will never go broke overestimating the self-delusion of his cult. Cruz’s flunky also had us both pray and make the Pledge of Allegiance, something Donald Trump has his supporters do at his rallies.

Fiorina entered stage right afterwards to applause from the townies. Given Creepy Carly’s lecherous personality and propensity for giving impromptu backrubs to men half her age, I was hoping Cruz’s goons would have locked her in the Orgasmatron for a few hours beforehand to calm her down. That dream was dashed as soon as she opened her mouth:

If you’ve ever wondered why noblewomen in the waning years of the Roman Empire had no compunction about getting rammed by slaves and lowborn on the down low, look no further than Carly Fiorina. She prowled the stage like a housecat in heat, sizing up the audience with a look of lust and contempt on her face. I was half-expecting Fiorina to tear off her blouse and scream, “Take me! Take me as I am!”, hoping the men would run a train on her. Add in her new habit of imitating Cruz’s laggard, special ed teacher enunciation… of… every… word… he… says and I was entertaining thoughts of joining the priesthood.

I also got the distinct impression that she’s annoyed with Cruz. Given his hard-on for the Constitution, Lyin’ Ted may have been taking Benjamin Franklin’s advice on why old women make better mistresses than young ones when he courted Creepy Carly. But Ted, while there’s no shame in schlonging a girl who’s old enough to be your mother, that doesn’t mean she wants you to treat her like your mother. All cats may be grey in the dark, but they also all hate feckless momma’s boys.

But alas, trying to beat Lyin’ Ted at the revulsion game is like trying to out-stink a skunk. Cruz came on after Fiorina, to more limp applause from the crowd:

Beyond his increasingly spergy affect, Cruz’s stump speech reveals just how much he’s cribbed from Trump in terms of policy proposals and speaking style. For instance, not only did he pledge to keep companies from outsourcing manufacturing jobs, he actually named Carrier – a company Trump has lambasted for months in his speeches – as an example. Cruz also tried to bait the media and sling Trump-style insults, cracking a bad joke that involved the Donald dressing up as Hillary Clinton and trying to use the “little girls’ room.”

Ted Cruz’s Achilles heel is his complete inability to act like a normal human being. He’s been able to brave the presidential race this long by culling support from the bitter clinger wing of the GOP, the wacko birds who want to canonize Eric Rudolph and think ISIS has the right idea in defenestrating gays. However, in appealing to these evangelical Aspies – and using them to stuff delegate slates – Cruz has scared off normal voters. His plummeting poll numbers can be blamed in part on the antics of the Cruz Cult.

And if political forecasts continue to hold, Lyin’ Ted’s fanboys will soon be hitting the Kool-Aid. Trump has Indiana locked up, aided by momentum from his Mid-Atlantic victories and the Hoosier State’s Southern-flavored demographics. I don’t expect Cruz to drop out after he loses; he’s too stubborn. Look for him to flail about until the California primary in June, as his cultists spiral into Jack and Coke-fueled rage.

It was a good run, Mr. Cruz, but now it’s time for you to go back to what you do best: abusing pomade and waving your fleshy bits at co-eds.