Jon Stewart sadly bids farewell to Herman Cain

When Jon Stewart watched Herman Cain announce on Saturday that he would suspend his campaign, the comedian didn't see what many of the rest of us saw -- a bizarre, overlong, bewildering spectacle, replete with the sort of insane antics and half-baked rhetorical devices (read: a reference to the "Pokemon" movie) that have confounded expectations and frustrated Cain's detractors time and again these past several months. No. Instead, the Comedy Central host saw the closing of a comic gold mine. Fittingly, he said goodbye to the Cain campaign with something more than a hint of sadness.

Fear not, though: Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls, and there's plenty of grist for the comedy mill in the former speaker of the House. As Stewart observed:

That's Newt Gingrich's pitch: "I'm the thing that's been in your pantry forever." You could try your newfangled "Popped Tarts" and "Eggo'd" waffles, but if you look way back in there, there's a can of La Choy Baby Corn, a product that may or may not still be offered by the La Choy company. You don't remember buying it -- yet you don't remember ever being without it. And now you have no choice but to elect it president.