No thanks. Next!
As
noted earlier today,
Rick Perry may be fading, but that's not
Mitt Romney's gain. In fact, Romney has been stuck in the high teens to mid-20s
the entire year.
The last two Fox News poll (and yes, unlike the network, their polling is legit):
Perry is now the liberal in the race. And if that makes you laugh incredulously, see
Rush Limbaugh, taking a dig at Perry (and Romney) while discussing Herman Cain's straw poll victory in Florida:
Herman Cain won the straw poll in Florida. Why do you think he won the straw poll in Florida? You want to know why Herman Cain won the straw poll in Florida? 'Cause you can't find one example of Herman Cain, at any point in this campaign, not being a conservative [..]
I know where this country is. I know what the people of this country want and they don’t want John McCain, Jr. They don’t want another moderate Republican to work with the other side. They don’t want somebody who wants to cut it both ways on illegal immigration or on health care. They want a conservative.
And Glenn Beck and his sidekick Pat:
“There’s nobody on this stage who has spent more time working on border security than I have. For a decade I’ve been the governor of a state with a 1200-mile border with Mexico. We put $400 million of our taxpayer money into securing that border. We’ve got our Texas Ranger recon teams there now. I supported Arizona’s immigration law by joining in that lawsuit to defend it. Every day I have Texans on that border that are doing their job, but if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state from no other reason than they’ve been brought there, by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said.
“That is a progressive talking point, that you don’t have a heart, you don’t like children. Shut up. Don’t give me that,” Pat said.
“It’s the old Rick Perry,” Glenn suggested.
The "old Rick Perry"? That would be the one who was a Democrat. So yeah, he's now a liberal.
So what does this Fox News poll tell us? It tells us that GOP primary voters are now flirting with Herman Cain—the conservative version of "some of my best friends are black"! It makes them feel good about themselves, without actually having to vote for him come election day.
It tells us that Newt Gingrich is getting some traction. Can you believe it? Newt! It'll be interesting to see if his boomlet is confirmed by other polling.
It tells us that Michele Bachmann is doing her best to make me look like a fool for predicting she'll be the nominee. Am I recanting? Not yet. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I still don't see a viable ballot box alternative for the teabagger set.
Rick Santorum certainly hopes he's there to pick up the pieces after the inevitable demise of Cain's boomlet. Michele Bachmann will try to win her defectors back. Sarah Palin will be tempted to fill that void. You know she's chaffing at her sudden irrelevance. Getting in the race would bring back the spotlight.
But in all of this, look at poor Romney. He's still in those low 20s—the sum total of Wall Street Republicans and conservatives who can read the polls and want the most electable candidate in 2012. No matter what other candidates do, Mittens treads water, forgotten by the other 75 percent or so Republicans looking for the purest conservative.
And that's why the GOP establishment continues their search for savior—that mythical creature who is acceptable to Wall Street, is acceptable to the teabaggers, and is electable in a matchup against Obama. Is it Chris Christie? Is it Mitch Daniels? Is it zombie Ronald Reagan? (Certainly not the latter. Reagan would be unceremoniously booted from the modern day GOP without hesitation.)
The GOP establishment would be thrilled with Romney as the nominee. They just know he can't survive the GOP's primary electorate. And the alternative (Perry, Bachmann, Cain, Santorum, etc) is just as scary to them as it is to us.