I've written several variations of the comment I belatedly wrote in yesterday's "GOP Cattle Call" over the past month or so; it's time for me to make it into a diary so that later on I'll remember that I said it.
Take Bachmann and the odds (and put some extra money on Rick Perry.)
I do agree that the greatest likelihood is that, in the end, Republicans will just give up and nominate Romney. "Give him the nomination in 2012 and when he gets his ass handed to him he'll be weaker and hopefully toxic in 2016," the logic will likely go. If not him, lots of people would prefer to sink beneath the waters on the S.S. Pawlenty than to give the Tea Party its due. But I don't think they'll get that chance.
What I'm most confident of is this -- but Bachmann is much more likely than 5.9% winning the nomination. (Perry, who is at 3.3% right now, is also undervalued.) Here's how I see things plausibly playing out.
With Gingrich cratering, Daniels out, and Santorum being santorum, these are your current likely contenders with any chance: Romney, Pawlenty, Bachmann and maybe Huntsman. Note the absence of the name "Palin."
I don't think that Palin will run. It's too much trouble and responsibility, for one. Plus, even she knows that (1) Bachmann will outwork her and run over her, (2) she can be Bachmann's friend and take credit for her success (and the GOP's success in being the first major party to nominate the first women for President, which they will remind people of for centuries) and (3) she can have more fun as a Senator from Arizona, where all she has to do is be a snotty queen bee and wait for Jim DeMint's people to giver her her talking points.
So, with Palin out, let's go state by state through the process:
Iowa
Romney wants Bachmann to win. He assumes that he can beat her; he'd be more afraid of Pawlenty and Huntsman (for different reasons.) If he's smart, in a field this weak he'll just stay out of it and wait for NH. It makes it less easy to win Iowa in November, but there are advantages:
(1) He can take a strong stand on ethanol, which Obama can't.
(2) He can watch others spend themselves into oblivion in the 99 counties and knock each other out.
(3) He can tell people to vote for Bachmann and blow Pawlenty out of the water.
(Those were in increasing order of importance, by the way.)
Gingrich will have dropped out by then (or just after.) Cain doesn't bring anything of value that Bachmann doesn't have. Santorum will just give Bachmann a chance to sharpen her claws, probably about his ethics. (I haven't heard tell of her being corrupt, after all. For someone who wants to flay Obama, putting on the ethics hat is a smart move.) Paul will just get the Paulites (there aren't enough); Johnson will get the non-Paulite Libertarians (there aren't many.)
So then it's a matter of who can generate more buzz: Pawlenty or Bachmann -- especially Bachmann-supported-on-the-sly-by-Romney? Hahahahahahaha! Pawlenty won't even make it past the caucus.
New Hampshire
Bachmann won't do badly among the Granite State's flavor of Republicans, running against a liberal Mormon and a malleable Mormon. Huntsman will be swinging for Romney, but Huntsman doesn't have to win here. (He is playing for 2016.) Bachmann doesn't have to win either -- but if she wins, watch out. If Bachmann looks at all credible and you get a Palin-style surge going behind her, it's pretty much over. Romney will be disgraced in his home court. If not, we move on. What's next?
Nevada
You'd think that the Mormon population would make this a good state for Mitt -- but imagine the excitement that will then exist at the prospect of nominating the first female major party nominee (and the first formal Tea Party nominee.) Bachmann's sales pitch will be that the GOP has always been the party of opportunity, since Lincoln -- don't worry, it's not supposed to make sense to you -- and that since the Democrats botched their chance to nominate Hillary this is the GOP's chance to make Bachmann the "Jackie Robertson" of Presidential politics. (Name chosen advisedly; Republicans still try to get civil rights cred by noting that Robinson was a Republican.) This is a powerful narrative -- you'll see PUMAs interviewed again! -- and the media will be drinking it up like water for the parched. We'll hear a lot about "first female nominee" -- and one who made it on her own! The media wants a contest. Journalists who you never believed would do so will be complimenting La Bachmann.
Beyond that, this is the state party that nominated Sharron Angle -- and caucuses go to the most activated. Is that likely to be Bachmann, or a wounded Romney? Bachmann, at a minimum, doesn't get blown out. And she could win.
South Carolina
Let's see. We've got Nikki Haley as Governor, who owes her win to Sarah Palin -- who will likely be pallin' around with Bachmann rather than risking her own cred -- and we've got Teabagger Godfather Jim DeMint. Who do we suppose DeMint would like to see -- Romney, Pawlenty, Huntsman, or Bachmann? To ask the question is to answer it. He'll go with the lady and feel it proves definitively that he's not sexist.
Florida
Bachmann could easily be 4 for 4 at this point, and would have won Iowa and South Carolina at least. But Florida is bigger and more delegate-rich than all four previous states combined. Can't Romney recoup there? Maybe -- but it may be too late for him.
Romney wants to wait until California and such, but at some point people start smelling the blood. And if you think that people hate him now, wait until he starts losing to Bachmann. If Bachmann can do a credible job as a candidate at this point -- and, again, she'll be judged by the party that fawned over Sarah Palin! -- people will have to adopt her. She's pretty, a good speaker, etc. Her opponents and their surrogates are not allowed to say that she's insane and a lightweight.
It would be clear at this point that Romney could not win the Tea Baggers and that not nominating Bachmann is inviting a third-party candidacy from someone who would divide the party. At some point, it becomes better to give in to the fringe, let her activate her base for downticket elections, and spend money elsewhere. Maybe you let the Teabaggers prove their unelectability in 2012 so you can hope they'll learn their place (i.e., not as the nominee) in 2016.
There is an alternative, though: some late-breaking, not-yet-discredited candidate could swoop into the race when Romney falters and be seen as the savior of the party (because Bachmann, after all, is a horrible choice.) It would need to be someone who could have instant credibility, unlimited money and essentially thank Bachmann for opening the door but noting that she's not heavyweight enough to punch it out with Obama. In other words, it would be a "Gene McCarthy vs. Bobby Kennedy" sort of dynamic.
Who could do it? It could be Jeb Bush -- but he won't. He'll wait until 2016 -- if ever. The more likely "savior" is Rick Perry. He'll have skipped the pain of the early races, he'll be saving the party from Bachmann-induced despond, and he'll have lots of people begging him to get in. (He will have, carefully, not ruled it out entirely before then -- but he doesn't want to move too quickly. He wants to pick up Romney's supporters as the "anti-Bachmann," after all.) And if that happens, that will be one entertaining race.
The problem for him is: when can he get in? Romney will be holding on to the waning prospect of power like a man with epoxied fingertips. But Perry's best region is going to be the South -- he can't wait for long. Ideally, he'd be in by Florida. If he can't be, he'd need a favorite son in the race. I don't know the calendar and the ballot access rules well enough to see how he'd pull it off -- but I'll bet that some Republican out there will have figured it all out.
Conclusion
I haven't mentioned (except for alluding to it in the title) another main reason that I think that the Bachmann scenario is likely: the Democrats want to run against her. For Democrats, the most beautiful story of 2010 was how Harry Reid managed to get Sharron Angle as his opponent -- and thus to win despite his unpopularity. Insiders LOVE THIS STORY. And even though it shouldn't apply to Obama -- far more popular nationally than Reid was in Nevada -- this is the kind of clever manipulation that professional politicians do.
I think that this angle -- "the Angle angle" -- is short-sighted. It "normalizes" the Tea Party and increases the chances that -- when Democrats do next lose the Presidency, as we inevitably will -- it will be to someone whom we'd currently define as "insane." But what I see from DC suggests that the Dems want their weakest opponent, and if they can't get Santorum nominated (and they can't), Bachmann best suits their bill.
The most significant thing in the Republican race over the past month may be this: when Obama released his long-form birth certificate, Bachmann said "OK, that's over, move on to the next problem" -- and she survived. She didn't stick with the crazy past the point when it was tenable. She showed pragmatism. She's the cool kid who can decide what other kids do and don't get exercised about. She can play it as straight as she needs to, when she needs to, if she needs to, for as long as she needs to. She's not dumb; she can figure out when to ease off the accelerator and coast on her momentum.
Bachmann-Rubio. You can still get good odds for it. And, if that happens, with a woman and a Hispanic on the Republican ticket, you might want to place one other longshot bet on this Democratic ticket, while the odds are astronomical: Obama-Solis.