It’s weird. It’s both impossible to imagine that Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination and to imagine that he won’t. That actually places him above any of his challengers. I can’t imagine any of them as a genuine presidential candidate. I agree with Jon Chait that Pawlenty comes closest to plausibility, but his wimp factor is so off-the-charts that I can’t visualize him winning anything. Plus, he’s a northerner with a fairly moderate record in a party that is southern and not moderate in any sense.
This does not seem to be a cycle in which the Republican primary voter is desperate to win. It usually takes at least eight years out of power for a party to start turning to pragmatism and to begin to take electability seriously. That’s how it tends to work with the Democrats, although Bush’s first term was so awful that Kerry rode the electability-factor to victory after only four years out of power. So, who knows?
Romney does seem to be the Republicans’ best bet among announced candidates, although perhaps Jon Huntsman would be even tougher for Obama to defeat. But he’s too tied to health care reform, which is basically the rallying cry for the Republicans. It is inconceivable that he can survive dozens of debates where he will be pummeled by all of his opponents on the issue.
I just can’t game the whole thing out in my mind. I have no idea where this is going.
