How can this be? Cain doesn't have a ground game in Iowa.

Must be all that Gardisil in the water.

The key to Iowa is being pro-ethanol and virulently anti-SSM. Even if Cain starts to burn out elsewhere, he should stay strong in Iowa -- his only anti-Romney threat is there is Santorum.

(a Cain collapse would benefit Perry in other states, though)

Mmmmm. Well, maybe his message appeals to the public. Have you ever thought of that? Not the high-and-mighty intellectuals like your-obvious-self, but the actual lumpen-proletariat who pay the taxes and bear the brunt of the economic downturns.

It may be hard to understand, but the new media are disintermediating the existing media, so people don't have to get messages from Carl Rove, or Andy Card, or Mary Matalin, or James Carville, or National Review before making decisions about the guy they like.

Oh, and after 60+ years of taking cr*p from the world for saving the, well, world, Americans are pretty happy to get all politically isolationist. That is, if you assault us, we'll nuke you; otherwise leave us alone and we're happy to trade peacefully.

A lot of people think Herman Cane would serve well in such a regime. And just how complicated could that be?

I don't see a viable path to the nomination for Perry without winning Iowa. The problem for him is that, even if you assume Cain is the new flavor of the month, some significant portion of Cain's support will likely stick. He's been at the debates since day one and the Iowa caucus goers likely have more familiarity with him as a candidate than they did Perry and Bachmann. i.e. I don't know that there's as much potential for him to drop as hard and fast as the others did because he's less likely to "throw up all over himself" in a debate. It's also much more difficult for the others to attack Cain whereas they all seem comfortable going after Romney in their sleep.

Who knows? If Cain does turn out to be the flavor of the month, I would guess that Santorum may get to wear the "not Romney" crown for a while. Perry needs to put that oft noted war chest to use and go all in on Iowa, IMO. As long as Romney doesn't win Iowa, I think that the person who does win will see their numbers improve overnight in the subsequent primary states.

Your Romney fantasy won't implode, however----I bet you have a Romney 2016 bumper sticker all ready to paste on after his concession speech.

When 3/4 of the party consistently won't support you despite your running for President for the past two cycles, you're going nowhere.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and I'll suggest: times are tough, maybe he can only afford one string for that banjo of his.

...pluck-pluck-romney sucks-pluck-pluck-romney sucks...

See, it kinda' explains it...

...then again, so would Tourette's .

Drop the "Mittbot" garbage.

70% of the GOP agrees with you, but acting like a jackwagon will allow make that number smaller.

Once again, The American Thinker proves to be far more reliably conservative than NR, probably because many of its contributors live outside the blue state bubble:

External Link 

"Sometimes it seems as if the GOP Establishment is sleepwalking off a cliff. In 1996, having scored the stunning victories of the off-year congressional elections, the GOP suits dutifully lined up behind the impossible Bob Dole. From the moment Americans realized their choices would be Clinton or Dole, "Bubba" was never behind one day in the polls.

It's looking like déjà Dole all over again. Mitt Romney is the proverbial GOP next-in-liner. After the Tea Party helped Republicans score major victories in '10, the GOP Establishment is hunting desperately for a way to lose the very next election."

See, this is the fallacious supposition you continue to make. I can't speak for Ed, but I believe there are three serious candidates in this race: Romney, Gingrich and Santorum. These are the men who are earnest, articulate and informed and credentialed. The rest are pretenders.

My personal political sensibilities probably more closely mirror Gingrich. But, I recognize Gingrich's other shortcomings and for that reason I think I'll probably vote for Romney; not because I agree with all or even most of Romney's positions, but because Romney is the most likely candidate to beat Obama, in my estimation. In the absence of both Gingrich and Romney, I would support Santorum. Now, some of Santorum's positions, particularly as they relate to social issues, are a bit too strident for my taste. But, Santorum at least is capable - quite capable in fact - of artfully and persuasively defending those positions.

At the end of the day, that's really what it comes down to for me - and I would suspect this plays in Ed's calculations as well: What candidate will be most successful in the general election, AND what candidate(s) would have the most effective presidency. In the age of the electronic media, being an effective communicator isn't an important criteria, it's the ONLY criteria. Why? If no one will listen to, and subsequently be persuaded by your message, then it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever what that message ultimately is.

You see this primary process through a single pane of glass: What candidate most closely mirrors your own political positions. And, because of that, you immediately assume that others think the exact same way. They don't. There are plenty of people just like me - people who would love an orthodox conservative candidate, but they won't pick an orthodox conservative candidate to the exclusion of everything else - primarily because it's the "everything else" that matters more in national political campaigns.