I know we’re all supposed to be on tenterhooks today, eagerly parsing the results from Dixville Notch and keeping our eyes glued to cable news to see who wins the New Hampshire primary. Can Mitt Romney hold on? Can Rick “Santorum” Santorum build on his Iowa momentum? Will Evil Newt gain a foothold? Will the state’s libertarian right give Ron Paul another boost? Is that Jon Huntsman I see riding in from the distance?  

Feh. And pfui. Doesn’t matter what happens tonight; Mitt Romney, ladies and gentlemen, is your Republican Presidential nominee. It’ll happen sooner or later, depending on exactly how things turn out tonight, but it’ll happen, for sure.

The primary race is about to kick into ridiculously high gear. You’ve got South Carolina and big-money Florida before the end of the month, and then it’s on to Super Tuesday on March 6 (your correspondent’s birthday, shared with Michelangelo and Ed McMahon) with ten states up for grabs. (Including plucky little Vermont.) Which means that Mitt’s big advantages — in money and organization — are about to become decisive.

None of his challengers can come close to equaling Mitt’s machine. They’re each just hoping to slow down the Mittmentum enough to give voters another chance to change their minds. Won’t happen. Object lessons: In 2000, John McCain got a big win in New Hampshire, only to get run over by the Bush train. And in 2004, John Kerry (many eerie similarities to Romney) sidestepped the doubts of the Dem faithful through the unstoppable velocity of the primary calendar.

Still, we’ve got pundits and reporters and bloggers and cable networks spinning out all kinds of scenarios, desperately trying to convince us that it’s not all over, that anything could still happen. That you really need to Tune In Tonight.

Why? Well, a blandly predictable outcome is a whole lot less fun than a dramatic surprise twist. Reporters are people, too — and yes, even pundits are people, somewhere beneath their reptilian facades. They like a good story. They want a good story. And the cable nets — they desperately need a good story. lest America turn its attention away from the chattering class and back to The Bachelor or The Next Iron Chef or Ice Truckers. “Jeezus,” you can imagine the cable panjandrums whispering, “We gotta have a story! Hell, American Idol’s about to come back!”

Pay them no heed. Relax and enjoy the inevitability of Mitt. And why should that prospect make liberals feel as comfy as a teddy bear in a Snuggie, even though Mitt is the only Republican who polls strongly against Obama? Come jump with me…  

Mitt Romney is the very embodiment of the man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. He has never, ever had to worry about anything in his silver-spoon life. Well, we all find things to worry about — but he’s never really had anything to worry about, beyond mis-timing a short-sell order or leaving a few dollars behind when he looted a takeover target. He’s never faced existential dread, the real thing that makes you fear for your life or even wish you were dead.

In other words, he’s a soft target. And now he’s on the political equivalent of third base — not on his own merits, but thanks to the utter incompetence of the rest of the Republican field. If there was another Republican candidate who could tie his own goddamn shoes, he would have eaten Mitt’s (very expensive) lunch by now. As it is, Mitt is shambling unsteadily toward the inevitable when he should be enjoying a triumphal march to the convention.

And clearly, he’s beginning to think he hit a triple. And he’s allowing his innate boarding-school smugness to come shining through. “I like being able to fire people” — it should be a line for the ages, and Mitt blurted it out even before he actually won a single primary.

(As some pundits have been quick to point out, the line is being misinterpreted. But it reflects what we see as Mitt’s real character; you might say it’s truer than the truth. Just like Al Gore’s supposed brags about the Internet and “Love Story” or John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I was against it,” Mitt’s “I like firing people” rings true. It resonates.)

Stretching before him is a ten-month period of intense scrutiny. Plenty of time for complacency to take root, grow, and bear fruit. Guy like this, standing on third base with a self-satisfied smirk on his mug for ten months? Just imagine the stupid shit he’s going to say.

I don’t care what the polls say right now. If Obama can’t beat this presumptuous, overbearing Upper Class Twit, then he doesn’t deserve a second term.