GOP elephant finally hears from little old Whoville!

Last week, the Republican primary season took as its inspiration the Dr. Seuss classic “Horton Hears a Who” — only in this new version it was the big fat GOP elephant that needed to get the wax out of its ears.

The people of Iowa had tried to speak, but no one heard them. The people of South Carolina had yelled as loud as they could, but they were dismissed as Neanderthals from the Deep South.

But finally when the people of Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado all shouted together on one night, not only the elephant but even the elephant’s handlers in the national media could hear the message loud and clear:

“WE DON’T WANT ROMNEY!”

Of course, in the original story, Horton the elephant was the good guy who used his super-sensitive ears to realize that a small speck of dust was talking to him, and lo and behold, actually contained a multitude of people — or in this case Whos, the creatures who inhabited the tiny world of Whoville.

The GOP elephant, however, didn’t quite fit the bill. In fact, in this version of the story, the elephant has been playing the role of the bad guy. Everywhere you looked, the GOP establishment has been trying to use its heavyweights to crush Whoville, also known as the Republican conservative base. They sent in John McCain. They sent in Robert Dole. Heck, they even sent in that shape-shifter Ann Coulter to confuse the masses.

Don’t listen to the voices of those “little people,” they said. Move along — there’s nothing to see here, they told anyone curious after earlier victories by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

“Little people,” it seems, weren’t supposed to get a vote — unless they agreed to vote for Mitt Romney, the predetermined winner of the GOP primary process. After five states had voted, Romney had a lead of three states to two. Even though he had less than one-tenth of the delegates needed to actually win the nomination, it was declared by the party mavens like Karl Rove that Romney was the “inevitable nominee.” 

The elephant handlers in the media just went along with the official story. Everyone was secretly hoping that they could watch the true conservatives, the true Republicans, be boiled in a vat of Beezelnut oil, just like Dr. Seuss envisioned as the potential fate of Whoville. Let’s face it, for someone like John McCain, that would be height of fun!

Except it never happened... Instead, the Republicans of Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado convincingly, overwhelmingly, shouted just like the tiny Whos in Whoville who were about to be boiled in oil, “We are here. We are HERE! WE ARE HERE!”

Indeed, in two of those states, they voted for Rick Santorum by a measure of two to one, over Mitt Romney. That was a message that could not be denied. The little people had spoken LOUD AND CLEAR.

That doesn’t mean they can necessarily stop Romney. And it certainly doesn’t mean they can stop President Obama. But it means that at least for now, they can’t be ignored. And we owe that not to John McCain, not to Robert Dole, not to Karl Rove and certainly not to Ann Coulter. We owe it to the people of Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.

Thank you, folks.

And to the people of Arizona and Michigan, who will be heard from next, and to the people of the other 41 states that still have yet to vote, don’t give up and don’t listen to the pundits who tell you that you don’t matter. Instead listen to Dr. Seuss and his elephant hero:

“Don’t give up! I believe in you all.

A person’s a person, no matter how small!

And you very small persons will not have to die

If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!”

• Frank Miele is the managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. He can be reached at edit@dailyinterlake.com