Eight votes. Eight lousy votes. That’s all that separates Willard “Multiple-Choice Mitt” Romney, the presumptive nominee-in-waiting, the guy who’s been running for a half-decade or so, from a former Senator who was an afterthought for most of the last year and who polled somewhere in the low single-digits until Christmas.
Santorum, on paper, can’t be the guy. Not enough money, not enough organization, and a track record that strongly suggests he’s running in favor of a pre-Vatican II Catholic theocracy, plus a Google problem (courtesy of Dan Savage) that is going to be embarrassing to talk about for most of the national press. But elections aren’t run on paper. With the functional elimination (de facto if not de jure) of Bachmann and Perry, the roster of surviving candidates has been winnowed to four, and the GOP establishment – much as they might be ambivalent about Romney – have already declared that Newt Gingrich is persona non grata. Which won’t keep him from sticking around chucking bombs for a while, because that’s all Newt knows how to do and he won’t be able to resist the media spotlight until it turns elsewhere. Put it this way: Newt won’t ever decide to quit. Somebody will have to force-quit him.
More interesting to me is that Ron Paul finished third. I would have bet sure that he would win or as close as makes no difference, and the drumbeat of revelation about his old leanings in the 80s and 90s might have had some impact, but it’s still a poorer finish than I anticipated. He does have his loyalists and they aren’t going anywhere, but he has yet to ever make a substantive splash outside his pre-existing circle. He apparently polls well with the kids, though, which is just one more sign that we’re headed for a generational showdown in the GOP between the aging Teabagger right and a younger cohort which honestly isn’t that bothered about the gays and the demon weed and a political message that’s been largely stuck in the same groove since well before they were born.
Everyone seems to think this is bad for Mitt Romney, because a winnowed field means that the “Anybody-But-Mitt” forces can line up behind one guy. But the problem is the same as it’s always been, which is that there’s no one guy out there. Trust me, Mitt polled worse in Iowa this year than he did in 2008, and if there were a known-good viable alternative, that person would have trounced Romney last night. The mass of the GOP faithful is not going to drop into line behind Santorum, Paul or Gingrich – they’ve had a year to do that. It’s not going to happen, because if it were, it would have already. Harold Hill isn’t going to march in and rally everybody and form a boys’ band and have the whole town marching behind his baton.
And if you think this whole post wasn’t just an excuse to wedge in some awkward The Music Man shtick, well, welcome to 2012. Broadway musical comedy is probably the best genre for this season. Well, either that or post-apocalyptic doom drama.