2012 presidential race guide
Okay, it’s here. Or, at least, the election which is the one genuine substantive event at the end of more than a year of posturing and jockeying and godawful TV ads is, at last, now less than one calendar year out. Indeed, a mere ten more months of this horse-race horse-shit and we’ll be home free, probably pining away for all the fun and excitement.
At least, if we happen to be political “journalists” who apparently genuinely do savor this grotesque farce known otherwise as the American presidential campaign.
For everyone else, how about one post to take stock of the prospects, as realistically as possible this far in advance. And then, ideally, just tuning it all out (again, as much as possible) for several more months.
First of all, the Republican nominee for president will be Mitt Romney. I don’t think this even really qualifies as a “prediction” at this point, so much as an observation. Romney will be the nominee, obviously, and all the chatter about other “possibilities” can be ignored. Who is actually a credible threat to defeat Romney at this point? How can anyone else in the race be taken remotely seriously when, even setting aside their own inherent clownishness, we’ve now been through months of one rival candidate after another popping in the polls, reigning as a nine-day-wonder, and then sinking back to irrelevancy. Bachmann, then Perry, then Cain who was such a complete cartoon by himself as should have put an end to anyone taking these wannabes seriously… and in any event, by that point the pattern was so obvious that people could (and did) make a ridiculous suggestion like “Newt Gingrich will probably be next,” and be proven right.