Some competitors thrive on being the underdog. Some find humor and vigor in humiliating setbacks. And some are just glass-jawed failure artists, their piled losses more befitting than any theoretical small victory. Rick Santorum is the latter, having reached mediocrity’s apogee while eating lunch alone on Monday.

Almost alone, at least. May as well have been:

Just one Iowan showed up at 2 p.m. campaign stop Monday at a restaurant in the unincorporated community of Hamlin, population 300, according to a report from The Des Moines Register — Peggy Toft, an insurance agent who chairs the county’s Republican Party. “We didn’t have a lot of notice that he was going to be there,” Toft said in a telephone interview with POLITICO, explaining the low turnout. But even she would not endorse Santorum outright.

So Santorum, when it became obvious he wasn’t going to have much of an audience for his meticulous napkin-vs.-paper towel metaphor to illustrate the ills of gay marriage, told Toft “I haven’t eaten, actually, all day,” and ordered up a fried tenderloin and onion rings, a middle-aged man’s “fuck it” meal if there ever was one.

Of course, you can do both—eat soul-destroying, body-wrecking fried detritus and inveigh against social liberalism—and so Santorum did. Three other erstwhile Iowan kingmakers eventually sauntered over to his table, including a minister who asked about gay marriage. Santorum embraced the question like deep-fried manna.

“This is where the left is saying, ‘Here is what your belief system should be, and anyone who does not toe the line, you’re a hater, you’re a bigot, you’re intolerant and you will not be tolerated,’” Santorum told the minister. “That was pretty good,” the minister said.

Neither seemed especially concerned that the Christian “bedrock principles” candidate’s argument against gay marriage entailed redefining tolerance as radically as he redefined success at a campaign stop of one:

“People don’t understand. One guy in there said, ‘I’ll speak for you at the caucus,’” Santorum said. “That’s maybe eight votes that you wouldn’t otherwise get. Eight votes can make a big difference, as I know.”

Indeed, perhaps the loser can be the winner, thanks to ministers and party chairwomen in roadside cafes in a state that still does caucuses instead of general voting with secret ballots and hence exerts a bizarre outsize influence on the electoral politics of the United States of America, the great power, which currently has more nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in ports undergoing maintenance than Rick Santorum has fans at a presidential campaign stop.

Or perhaps Rick Santorum is just a born fucking loser.

[Photo credit: AP Images]