I looked back to see when I had written about Herman Cain, and saw that it was mid-October. I think that was shortly after the Florida straw poll when he surprised everyone by winning handily, and his candidacy was just beginning to catch fire. There's nothing but ash now, of course, and burned up in that conflagration was any chance of Cain being selected as another candidate's running mate--a place I thought from the beginning was ideal for him.
About a month after that, I got distracted from following up on Cain, by another story that caught my eye, but mentioned along with him my 'new man,' Newt Gingrich. Since then he has surged and faded, too, although he's not going quietly. (Maureen Dowd actually got a laugh out of me--she referred to him as 'a crazed Chuckie doll.)
Which leaves Mitt the last man standing, because Santorum is unlikely to maintain any momentum outside Iowa, Perry's last hope is South Carolina and he doesn't appear to be polling well there, and Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire notwithstanding, I can't see him getting enough traction in time, or ever engaging the more conservative wing of the party.
So that leaves very few Republicans, or interested Independents like myself, satisfied with what's on the menu. Conservatives can't stand him and threaten to stay home in November or cast a protest vote, establishment Republicans support him not out of any great enthusiasm but because he seems the only viable choice, and the Obama re-election team rejoices, because not only have they have been handed the perfect foil for their planned strategy of class warfare, but the other Republican hopefuls are providing lots of good video clips for attack ads against Romney.
Is what has so far been a raucous, surprise-filled run-up to the 2012 election going to turn into just a long, boring slog? If so, I might just have to check out the news once a week instead of daily, because it will all be the same--blah, blah, blah. There is an occasional flare sent up by one or another of the pundits about the possibility of a brokered convention, but one can't even imagine who could ride in on a white horse at the end of August, and go on to win. The Republican establishment would only be forced into that if they really came to believe disaffected conservatives would stay home in sufficient numbers that Romney didn't have a chance. And again, even if they considered it, who could turn out the vote in only two months? The only conceivable choice would be Palin, but that would be a huge gamble, in terms of losing the Independents/centrists Romney is presumed to have garnered. Not only that--and I never thought I would hear myself say this--I think Palin is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future; she would be reluctant to jeopardize that with a probably futile attempt to unseat Obama this time.
The wild card, of course, is Paul. If he were to run on the Libertarian ticket, whose chances would he spoil? The usual answer would be a given--the Republican. Think Ross Perot. But Paul is wildly popular with a lot of young people, one of the Obama team's key demographics. If the messages coming out of OWS were any clue, their grasp on economics is tenuous, at best, but there's certainly a growing awareness that, as Obama rails against the likes of Mitt Romney, he's filled his administration with exactly those people. They are beginning to see (contrary to Michelle's pronouncement that the public is 'confused' about how much her husband has accomplished and needs to be educated to that end) that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. Paul could hurt him a lot more than Romney.
However, it's widely held that Paul won't run as a third-party candidate because of the damage--fatal damage--it would do to the career of his senator son, Rand. No other Libertarian candidate could make so much as a dent in the outcome, so it would have to be Paul, and it's a crying shame that he is so 'out there' on certain things, because he is perhaps the only candidate who really seems to comprehend the seriousness of our financial future as a nation.
So, I think it's Romney and, to use the president's phrase, those of us who hope a Republican candidate will at least steer us away from the abyss instead of stepping on the gas will just have to 'eat our peas' and vote for him.
