2012 Republican primary spoiler

[imperator_mei]

There's been a lot of writing lately about how the Republican primary is a dead heat, and there's a lot of ambivalence, and it's anybody's guess what's going to happen. I've even seen some speculation that there could be a brokered convention. Woo! Humdinger of a primary we got ourselves, folks!

But except: there's no mystery to this at all. It's going to be Romney. Sorry if that comes as a shocker, but there's not actually another viable candidate.

Back in 2008 there was some legit drama in the Democratic field. The reason for this was the Obama and Clinton were both plausible. You looked at both of them and saw presidential material in the making. They both had longevity. You could imagine either one of them taking questions from all angles while maintaining gravitas, fire in the belly, and the general feel of leadership.

But right now, nobody besides Romney looks plausible right now. Let's eliminate the obvious:

• Gary Johnson, Buddy Roemer: the equivalent of the guys in red shirts on Star Trek whose only real job is to get eaten by the alien to establish some dramatic tension, of sorts. You probably didn't even know these guys were running. 'Nuff said.
• Palin, Bachmann, Paul: too kooky to be taken seriously.
• Santorum, Huntsman: if they were presidential material it would have shown up by now. Months of non-presence means death in a primary. (Full disclosure: I thought Huntsman showed some promise to be a serious Republican candidate, something I'd genuinely like to see. Oh well.)

That leaves a handful of candidates that require some brief consideration.

• Perry: really only makes this part of the list because it's worth saying that he used to have some promise but has completely washed out.
• Gingrich: getting a lot of attention right now, but he has way too much baggage to survive an actual election. He'll get drubbed on too many broken marriages, or his frantic attempts to explain his lobbying income as not being, you know, lobbying. And worst of all, right now is a really bad time to have a candidate who is the guy best remembered for shutting down the government in a fit of partisan obstruction. The easiest and most effective game plan for the Democrats right now is to cast the Republican congress as the The Thing Standing In The Way Of Fixing This Godawful Mess, and aside from maybe Darth Vader, Gingrich is perfect as the lead bad guy in that series of commercials.

And so not to belabor the point: this whole drama about the "highly volatile" Republican field of candidates is completely contrived by the yelling politics shows so they have something to yell about. Democrats seem to be gloating over this, thinking that the candidates must be so bad that there's not much to worry about. In fact, I think nobody actually cares enough for there to be an opinion at all, so of course there's no clear opinion.

And thus, really, it's not that the Republicans are desperately trying to find an alternative to Romney. It's just that there's a lot of jostling in the line that leads to second place. Romney is biding his time and keeping his cool. Six months from now, nobody will really remember all this "drama" and the only thing worth thinking about will be who gets second billing on the Republican bumper stickers.

So it's all boring right now
Nope. It turns out there's a mostly neutral third party organization that is doing the footwork to get a third party ticket on the ballot in all 50 states. For my money, this has more potential to shake things up than does Gingrich or any of the other understudy candidates. A viable third party ticket (and uh…none comes to mind right at the moment) could push the candidates towards the center and push the lunatic fringe where it belongs.