Staffless, broke anachronism Newt Gingrich is still running for president, hoping in vain that his campaign can save face and survive until Labor Day. Is there any good news for Gingrich, for whom there hasn't been any in at least 16 miserable years? Yes! Many people follow him on Twitter.

Politico notes today that Gingrich is "miles ahead in [the] Twitter primary," which means that a bunch of folks have clicked a button on a website once. This is kind of sweet of Politico, to cheer up the old fartsack. Twitter followers! That's something, eh? You, uh, can, uh, etch it on your gravestone maybe:

Gingrich has a whopping 1.3 million followers on the popular social media site. His three closest Twitter rivals from the 2012 GOP presidential field, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Reps. Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann, all hover around 60,000 followers apiece. Even Twitter enthusiast Sarah Palin, who hasn't indicated whether she'll run, has less than half the followers Gingrich does.

And yes, sure, of course Newt Gingrich was an active Twitter user well before any of the other candidates. But that important detail that fully explains the large gap is not really the important detail that fully explains the large gap, Politico writes. "Rather" — oh God — "it's his personal touch: He tweets and manages his Twitter feed himself, his campaign confirmed to POLITICO. All told, he has tweeted 2,611 times in the 29 months since he joined the site."

Let's tweak this. We all follow him to procure mocking material. No one wants to think about Newt Gingrich's "personal touch." That's gross.

[Image via AP]