The Florida Republican debate wrapped minutes ago and, sadly, we are no closer to learning the truth about Mitt Romney’s underwear. I watched some of the GOP debate tonight. I think it will have to be up to Newt Gingrich to finally make Romney’s unmentionables an issue in the campaign, because that’s exactly the kind of exquisite bastard he is. Ron Paul doesn’t care and Rick Santorum clearly wants to be vice president, so they are not going to say anything.

Normally I knock the mainstream media for its unwillingness to touch Mitt Romney’s underwear, but I have to give props to USA Today, which recently ran a story titled “Many Americans uninformed, but still wary of Mormon beliefs,” which you can read here. It mentions gold plates and temple garments. From the article:

Some adult Mormons in good standing with the church do wear a simple cotton T-shirt and fitted pants that have been blessed by the church.

“Once someone actually lifted the sleeve of my shirt to peek while asking, ‘Do you wear the magic underwear?’ Stop! I don’t check your underpants!” recalls Erin Gillie, 26, who moved to Washington, D.C., from Alabama last week. She wears the undergarments, she says, “as a reminder of who I am: a child of God who should live by certain standards.”

No, it wasn’t me.

The readers in the story’s comment section do, of course, mention Mormon underwear a few times. It is for them that I continue this potentially award-winning series.

More developments in the world of Mitt Romney’s underpants. Examiner Liz Brown writes: “Howard Stern says he only needs Mitt Romney to answer one question to find out whether he’s fit to be the next President of the United States–and it’s not about his magic underwear.”

Stern is upset that in 1983 Romney reportedly piled the family into the family truckster for a trip from Boston to Ontario. As the story goes, Romney strapped the family’s Irish Setter into a carrier on the roof of the car for the entire trip, during which the dog made diarrhea. Looks like the poor dog could have used some special underwear, too.

More on this not-at-all-bizarre story from the Examiner.