This is how many people showed up to my event in an Iowa diner.
"This is how many people showed up to my event in an Iowa diner." Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

Rick Santorum is already the Charlie Brown of the 2016 presidential campaign. This week he popped into a cute little diner in Iowa for a campaign stop, where a whopping one person was there to greet him. That person was the chair of the county Republican party, who told a reporter that she actually doesn't support his campaign. Good grief.

I'd like to assume that when he walked through the doors of the diner, Rick looked around, expecting everyone else to jump out and yell "surprise!"

"Where is everyone?" Rick asked (in my imagination). "Guys! You can come out now!" He then leaned over the lunch counter, looking for his friends, but none were to be found. "Guys?" he repeated, his voice echoing through the empty room as a soft prairie wind blew the shutters open and closed against a window, clack-clack, clack-clack, and somewhere far in the distance he heard the lonely bleat of a goat.

In truth, Rick wasn't completely alone. Four people wound up eating lunch with him (probably because there were no seats left at the jocks' table). Rick was able to throw in a few nasty statements about gay couples, just in case you were starting to feel sorry for him, and ate onion rings in a clear sign that he didn't care how fucking bad his breath stunk.

A reporter approached him at one point and he perked up a bit, until she told him that she was at the diner because it's her other part-time job. Journalism!

How lousy are Rick Santorum's prospects right now? Super-lousy. Never been lousier. Sure, he's been at the back of the pack before, but never this far back: he's running neck-and-neck with Donald Trump, just barely getting 4 percent support.

Part of Santorum's trouble right now is that he hasn't locked down support from any particular demographic, as he did in 2012. Back then, he had the backing of white evangelicals, but this time around the race is so crowded with similar candidates (none of them Mormon) that he can't count on any particular group for support.

To his credit, poor Rick has been doing what he can to get attention: last month he raised some eyebrows when he said the U.S. should go after ISIS and "bomb them back to the 7th century." Nice idea, except the U.S. has been bombing ISIS for months. So far, they're still persistently remaining in this century. Got any other bright ideas, Rick?

Rick's inability to raise anyone's interest is going to be increasingly problematic for him as we draw close to the debates. Rick knows that there's a very real possibility that he won't be allowed to participate unless he can crack the top ten, and that's looking unlikely. But rather than try to distinguish himself as a stronger candidate, he's just going on TV to complain about the rules. "We should have the opportunity for everyone to be heard," he told unsettling potato Chris Wallace. "You know, if you would have taken the top two-thirds of the folks in 1992, Bill Clinton wouldn’t have been on the stage."

"Mostly false," Politifact responded. Bill Clinton only had four opponents, and a lot of the expected candidates in 1992 wound up deciding not to run after all.

Santorum also claimed that none of his 16-ish Republican opponents are polling above 10 percent, but oh dear he's wrong again: Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio are all polling a little over 10 percent.

It's kind of a shame that Rick probably won't get to participate in the debates, because he makes for such a reliable heel. It's nice to know when to boo the loudest! But then again, Rick Santorum has been a failed presidential candidate for the better part of the last decade, and it's probably time for him to fade away into obscurity. Depriving him of attention is probably the best way to do it — but before he goes, let's please just make fun of him as much as possible.