The French novel The Possibility of an Island envisions the existence of a cloned human who knows neither boredom nor sadness nor joy and aspires only to "a pure absence of content." Which reminds me—Mitt Romney is still running for president. At least this morning he is. But after a characteristically underwhelming performance yesterday, Team Romney is officially low on fuel and losing altitude; today, it is having internal "frank discussions" about the future of the campaign.

Mitt's bad Super Tuesday started with him getting jacked by a Mike Huckabee- tag team in the West Virginia caucus, and that theme pretty much carried on as the returns from other states started rolling in. McCain bagged elephant fields of delegates in California and the Northeast, while Huckabee scored far more than was expected with a strong showing in the South. Meanwhile, Romney won, as he noted in his speech last night, all the states he's lived in (and a few others).

Till now, conventional wisdom advised that Huck was sticking around to earn McCain's gratitude (and his VP slot) by euthanizing Romney. With that job possibly almost done—and with last night's stronger-than-expected showing—the suggestion will likely soon arise that ol' Huck could legitimately start playing up the role of being the true alternative to McCain, something which is still in considerable demand among many GOP factions. It's not clear if Huck, who has his own problems with conservatives and has been kissing McCain's ass for weeks, would actually take the bait and start an all-out scrap with Big Mac, but there's no doubt that the Republican race up to this point has been kind of like that elevator scene at the end of The Departed.