The contest is thus turning into the party elders’ nightmare. They have begun to unite behind Mr Romney, hoping to focus all attacks on Barack Obama. Instead, Messers Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and even Mr Paul, must now attack one another. Many of their one-liners are good, meaning dangerously memorable even in November. Mr Gingrich, for example, delights his crowds by calling Mr Romney a “Massachusetts moderate” and belittling him as “little Food Stamp” next to Mr Obama’s “big Food Stamp”.
All this prevents Mr Romney from following his preferred strategy. All along, he has tried to look presidential by attacking Mr Obama rather than other Republicans. But each loss is forcing him to descend into the gutter of attack ads against his Republican rivals. He hopes to do well in the next several contests, from Maine to his native Michigan and Mormon-friendly Arizona. But if he can’t seal the deal by March, things could get ugly.
If Romney was battling against another credible candidate, in the manner of Obama vs Clinton, maybe this dance of death doesn't get everybody killed. But when you have one electable candidate getting pulled into an uber right mud fight with a bunch of unelectable candidates... well, what you end up with is a bunch of unelectable candidates covered in mud.
The Economist article also points to something else I was talking about a few months ago, ie a looming civil war in the republican party between the base and the intellectual elite - since 2010, when Tea Party extremes led to the nominating of several senatorial candidates that were unelectable and ended up costing republicans the senate, a conflict has been hinting at it's presence - if this ridiculous primary leads to an Obama second term when the man's first term is virtually crying out for a sound drubbing, an irrefutable repudiation, then hostilities could definitely break out in GOP land.
Now, sure, you could argue that if Romney were a better candidate these problems would have been mitigated or even nowhere in sight - but is that true? After all, I considered Daniels a better candidate and yet you can trace his loss of interest in it to the giant shit the base dumped on him after he had the nerve to suggest a truce in the culture wars - and I think Christie and Ryan might have been better candidates but I believe they decided against runs for two reasons: one, they were confortable with Romney as the candidate; and two, they had no stomach for putting up with the nonsense Romney is now stuck with. Certainly Christie strikes me as a guy who would have bristled at having to please the Limbaughs et al.
I suppose it's legitimate to think Jeb Bush would have had a much better chance of navigating this uber right minefield - but is America really ready to vote for another Bush, even if he might prove the best of them all? Good chance no.
The whole mess raises the spectre of a troubling thought that keeps returning to me - namely, what if Western democracy has reached a watershed moment that could lead to either decline or renewal, with decline being the most likely outcome since it requires no fundamental change? The problems we face are complex yet the actions required to address those problems depend on ratification by voters who, even when well intentioned and sufficiently motivated, can rarely hope to understand the complexity involved to a degree necessary for the making of good decisions - and then this problem is compounded by cynical politicians and other scoundrels feeding off the beast who play to the ignorance, play to peoples vulnerabilities or worst instincts. Perfect example - apparently Santorum did well in Colorado yesterday because his daughter's been sick and this humanized him which of course allowed the average voter to excuse themselves from actual thought and just feel their way to an answer. When the electorate is engaged in such a simplistic and superficial way, at what point does the system just stop working? At what point does confusion and apathy and ignorance and cynical self interest and blind partisanship and the demagoguery that serves it weigh the system down so much with nonsense and bull shit that not even idiot momentum is enough to carry it forward anymore?
[and then when you consider that Santorum's daughter is ill because she was born with birth defects stemming from fact her mother was 48 years old when she conceived and that happened I'm guessing because Santorum thinks contraception is evil, evil enough to be made illegal if he only could - well, how does the absurdity of this not leave a person incapacitated by despair? A guy who thinks contraception is a plague upon the nation, thinks that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in science classes, who thinks Catholic priests raped children in Boston because liberalism has turned that city into a modern day Sodom, a guy who is so fanatical about pro-life issues that he took the corpse of his still born son home from the hospital so he could show it to his living children - a guy like that has no chance of being elected president - I mean, there are definitely a lot of stupid people out there, but still not enough I think to do something like that. Although, we did elect a guy president simply because he was black - and some of our most intelligent people swore up and down that not only did this make complete sense, was fucking brilliant man, but also claimed that this simple act was just so incredibly inspired, just so utterly awesome, that the whole freaking world would become infatuated with the brilliance of it and usher in a new age of, ya know... awesomeness. We did do that - so who's to say how stupid we can get]
