Even if Romney won every delegate from now on, and he won’t, it wouldn’t be mathematically possible for him to lock up 1144 delegates at least until early April. It is now too late in almost every state to get on the ballot, so barring a brokered convention where a compromise candidate can potentially emerge out of nowhere, we are down to these last four candidates. Ironically though, the longer Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich stay in the race, the more likely the Republicans will be headed toward a brokered convention, and new developments keep making what was once a journalist’s dream a palpable possibility. Gingrich’s superPAC just got a 10 million infusion from Sheldon Adelson, and with a lock on Georgia’s delegates, he has no incentive to drop out anytime soon. Ron Paul, of course, is the only candidate in this race in it for the ideas and the ideas alone, so he is guaranteed to stay on for as long as he can shape the debate. When 2012 is wrapped up, it may well be that the only person who unambiguously benefitted from Citizens United and the rise of the superPACs to sustain the campaigns of what would once have been longshot candidates may be the same person who had initially opposed Citizens United, Barack Obama.

With a steady trickle of good news coming in about the economy, Mitt Romney’s strong suit is losing its luster, which is why the game between the two front-runners is fluid and difficult to call. With contraception in the news, Romney’s moderate credentials pale in contrast to Santorum’s authentic conservatism, or as Romney has tried to say of himself, “severe” conservatism. Funded by a billionaire, Foster Freiss, Santorum now has the resources to fight a longish race. More important, he is polling ahead of Romney in Michigan, where Romney’s father was once the Governor. If Santorum ekes out a victory in Michigan, he may get enough of a momentum to win in delegate-rich Ohio, a key battleground state that will cause Establishment Republicans to give him a fresh look. Things could then get really messy this summer, and this is bad news for the GOP. The difference between the Obama-Clinton battle in 2008 and the Romney-Santorum battle is that Clinton wasn’t able to pull Obama to the Right; each of the anti-Romney candidates have taken their turn to drag Romney so far to the Right that the eventual nominee may not have time to race back to the center to stage a plausible general election campaign.

Already, the divergence of interest between the presidential and primary candidates and incumbent republicans is occurring. On the one hand, Republicans in Congress have already caved in to payroll tax cuts proposed by the Obama administration, and succumbed to the pressure to moderate in order to produce some legislative outcomes in an election year. On the other hand, the primary electorate is being invited to live in an alternate universe, where ideological purity and consistency rather than moderation will be rewarded. The net result is that the overlapping of general and primary election imperatives — the incentive to go Right and go center – is going to get increasingly glaring and damaging to the GOP the longer the nomination contest goes on. The Republican party therefore has every incentive to end the nomination race soon, so that it can begin the move toward the center that will position the candidate to take on Obama in the Fall, and to mitigate the potential embarrassment of more congressional cavings in to come as the lame-duck session tries to find something to show after two years of unproductive bickering.

More Faster Politics:

Ten Deep Thoughts on the All-Male Panel on my Vagina

The Road To Super Tuesday

What changed in the last few years was an concerted effort to democratize the Republican Party, fueled in part by the success of the Democratic nomination contest between Obama and Clinton in generating an enthusiasm gap in 2008. This included expanding proportional representation in nomination contests, and an unprecedented number of debates to the calendar. The result thus far has been chaos, restrained only in part by the overriding imperative to find a candidate who can unseat Obama. Republicans are relearning their earlier intuition that more voices do not always lead to a coalescing chorus.

The White House understands this. One wonders if the Obama administration’s blunder about a birth-control insurance mandate on religious institutions was so poorly executed that it may actually have been perfectly timed. On the heels of the Catholic candidate Rick Santorum’s trifecta win, the administration decided to announce a controversial mandate requiring that women in religious institutions be entitled to contraception coverage in their health insurance, only to reverse this decision almost immediately. Either this was spectacularly amateur politics, or a high-risk attempt to put social issues back on the Republican primary agenda on the eve of the CPAC conference to aid Romney’s Catholic rivals. Romney ended up winning the CPAC straw poll and thereby entrenching his conservative credentials, but Santorum ended up a close second.

With barely any media attention devoted to the recent victories for gay marriage in California and Washington, the Obama campaign recognizes that the only reliable issue left for social conservatives to fight on is abortion (immigration being a sensitive topic for both parties), and this is possibly why they took the risk of taking it on. Social conservatives, for their part, were very wise to quickly connect the contraception mandate to the anti-Obamacare animus shared by other conservatives, so that God may remain relevant in an election year that will be mostly dedicated to the economy and debates about big government. This ideological fusion is Santorum’s ticket to unseating Romney — at least this is what the White House hopes — because as long as values matter, the conservative alternative to Romney will.

With no closure in sight, the Republican candidates must trudge on to Michigan and Arizona. It will not be until Super Tuesday, when the big delegates counts are at stake, before Romney’s coronation can be confirmed.

More Faster Politics:

Santorum Surges; Romney Recoils; Paul Presses On; Newt Nears Nadir

Mitt Romney: Common Man

The very reason why Gingrich appeals to primary voters is the reason why he will not do well with independents voters in the fall. (And that’s an assessment coming from Anne Coulter.) Gingrich has fire, but placed alongside No Drama Obama, he’s going to look like a very unlikeable candidate. There’s hardly anyone who has worked closely with the former Speaker who has endorsed him — which tells us a lot about the guy. In the era of televisual politics, a bitter old man is not going to beat a likeable (or even less competent, if that is what Obama is) younger man. The Establishment from either party talks the talk of the virtue of debates, grassroots activism and decision-making, but in the end they care more about winning and nominating the most electable candidate than a tip of the hat to primary voters and “democracy.”

The fact that a coordinated strategy against Gingrich is happening within party ranks conveniently on the eve of the last debate before the Florida primary is particularly striking given that Gingrich doesn’t really have a fall back plan beyond Florida. Romney took a landslide victory in Nevada, the next state up in the primary calendar, back in 2008, so it is difficult to imagine that Gingrich would be able to pull an upset there, or in Arizona or Michigan on February 28.

But everything changes if Gingrich wins in Florida. Then the momentum will keep him going until Super Tuesday on March 6 when the South speaks and Gingrich will rise; and civil war will erupt in the Republican party. The Establishment will do everything to thwart him there, and that is why they are taking no chances and are already making headway. Mitt Romney’s superior debate performance tonight was also a reflection of a campaign in full knowledge that the Florida firewall must not fall.

Two days after the President’s State of the Union address, hardly anyone is talking about it because Obama’s fate in November will depend more on forces he cannot control than on anything he can do. Every single poll out there placing Gingrich and Obama in a head-to-head match gives the election to Obama — by a 12 point spread on average. If the Republican primary electorate delivers Gingrich to Obama, even Bob Dole and William Buckley think it’s going to be four more years.

Volatility, though, has been the hallmark of the nomination race this year, and there is no reason to think this will change. The higher quantity of debates has helped Gingrich build a momentum in the last week, as has his superPAC — both are new developments from the last cycle. For the first time in modern history, the Republicans have picked a different winner for each of the first three states. For the first time ever, the Republicans are going to nominate either a Mormon (Romney) or a Catholic (Gingrich). This denominational diversity reveals a conservative electorate much more concerned about the economy than about social values, which was the major issue just 8 years ago. Finally, the loyal supporters of Ron Paul are a wild card, because no one knows to whom they will turn when Paul finally bows out — and he intends to to hang around. All told, there are 1150 delegates to get to earn the nomination, so this race pushes on at least until the Spring.

Gingrich did not win in South Carolina because of “electability” as the SC exit polls misleadingly say; he won because of the rage that South Carolinians believe is necessary to take on Obama. Gingrich received the first standing ovation in the debates so far when he observed that more people had been put on food stamps under Obama than under any other president – a line he has been repeating in the last week. Obama will not and cannot receive credit for whatever he has done because his very presence in the White House is perceived by some conservatives as a criminalization of the the state in the service of socialism. This newly rediscovered “southern strategy” worked in South Carolina and it may well work beyond.

Gingrich is in a good position but not a front-leading one, however. He will not enjoy native son of the South advantage in Florida as he did in South Carolina, so the next contest is going to be important for him to prove his viability. He would need a huge infusion of cash after tonight to be able to afford the television ads he or his superPAC will need to run in Florida. Gingrich will not be able to sustain his momentum with just the free media, though two debates next week will help. For now, Romney still enjoys a lead because Florida’s electorate is older and less evangelical than in South Carolina. Early voting has already started in Florida, and will continue until the 28th, so Romney’s initial lead there would help him.

It is also worth noting that Romney is the only candidate who has done well in all three states. He is still, therefore, the frontrunner. But he cannot afford any more mis-steps. The tax return questions from the media were just poorly handled, and Romney has stuttered repeatedly on a question that he should have been more than prepared for (as Gingrich was about ABC’s interview with his ex-wife). Romney’s fundamental problem, paradoxically, is that he is a happy, privileged man. He has no axe to grind, no grievances — not even with the liberals and the feds. Worse still, he doesn’t even perform anger very well, and that is why he could not gain traction in South Carolina. Romney is going to have to go after Gingrich’s ethics violations, Fannie and Freddie Mac associations, and his multiple marriages; while Gingrich is going to go after Romney’s Bain history, his healthcare positions in Massachusetts, and his tax returns. Things will have to get much uglier before the results of the nomination contest become clearer. And so onward toward the Sunshine State we go.

So let’s get down to the real results before the morning spin begins. Santorum has the most room for growth among the top three finishers in Iowa. Most important, Gingrich is furious, and he will be taking Romney on in the days to come (even if he would be wiser to go after Santorum so he doesn’t sound like a petulant child). That leaves Santorum free to try to get a decent showing in New Hampshire, which is why he has decided to put his chips in that state rather than divide it equally between there and South Carolina, where presumably, he expects to do well with the social conservatives there as he did in Iowa. Meanwhile, if Bachmann or Perry drop out, their votes are now up for grabs. They may go to Gingrich, but Santorum will be vying hard for then. All this points to Santorum as the potential anti-Romney candidate in the days to come, but things are very fluid because Santorum does not have an ground operation set up the way Romney does, it does not look to be a year for social (values) conservatism, and the media has done a darn good job of shining the spotlight on and taking down every anti-Romney candidate who has emerged in the last couple of months — and they have already started.

Here are some non-stories that are worth exploring. That Ron Paul, who is at the fringe of the Republican Party and who has not ruled out a third-party run, came in third suggests that his message cannot be taken lightly. Add his support to Santorum’s support and one can almost say that the shake-up of the Republican establishment is underway. But this is still anybody’s game because number 2 and 3 are as far apart ideologically as any two contenders in the Republican primary could possibly be. This is unusual, and suggests a party in deep self-introspection. This is a chance for a serious recalibration, but clearly also a chance for a drawn out battle that will benefit the incumbent, Barack Obama. (Incidentally, turnout was about the same as it was in 2008, at 122,000 – good news for Democrats who are expecting an enthusiasm gap in the Republicans’ failure this time.)

Romney’s best chance forward is to say that he is the candidate with the best chance of defeating Obama. He should repeat that ad nauseum, and remind people that he visited Iowa only 9 times this round (Santorum had visited every county) after his embarrassing defeat in 2008. Romney is clearly a seasoned operative who knows how to play this game. Even more important, a win in New Hampshire, which the polls right now predict, could give him the earliest hint of an inevitable winner. Why? Because he would be the first non-incumbent Republican candidate to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. (Edmund Muskie in 1972 and Al Gore in 2000 managed that on the Democratic side.) For all the talk of a disunited Republican party, this would be a non-trivial milestone if Romney maintains his considerable lead in New Hampshire.

Newt Gingrich’s rise and fall in the past month has several lessons to tell. First, no self-serving candidate would ever dare commit himself to a positive campaign again. Gingrich tried, and by refusing to counter fire with fire until recently, his poll numbers have dipped under a relentless barrage of negative ads coming from the Perry campaign and the Romney superPAC. What was particularly foolhardy about Gingrich’s pledge to remain positive is that the anti-Romney vote had shifted to him precisely because he had the fire in the belly that conservatives felt was missing in Romney. Second, this is only the most recent proof that negative ads work. Of course, what is bad for the candidate is even worse for the country. But in the heat of the campaign, no one cares. And the heat is on for 2012. Third, Gingrich’s failure to get on the Virginia ballot tells a cautionary tale to any candidate who tries to play a national strategy when elections in this country are won by an organized war on the ground, state by state. Gingrich’s failure to get his organizational act together only reinforced the narrative that he was erratic and not up to the grueling task of a long campaign.

As Gingrich supporters in Iowa return to the Romney camp, others have gone to Rick Santorum and especially to Ron Paul. This should not be surprising. Ron Paul is the original article. A Tea Partier before the (modern) Tea Party who has spent the better part of his life advocating his libertarian, small government philosophy. Between Paul and Santorum, Paul is likely to finish nearer to the top in the long haul because he has an organization on the ground in more states and because 2012 will be about the economy, not culture. What the Republicans want more than anything else (other than to defeat Obama) is to overturn Obamacare, not protect human life or restore DADT in the military. Cultural issues, in any case, are not going to be salient in a primary race where everyone already agrees on them. This is one reason why all the ads Rick Perry are putting out touting his Christian faith are gaining so little traction. (They will be enough, however, to split the socially conservative vote between him, Michele Bachmann and Santorum so a Huckabee-like surprise victory as in 2004 is not likely.)

As a sign of his newfound confidence, Mitt Romney’s closing argument in Davenport, Iowa, as the campaigns wind down for the New Year just days before the Iowa caucuses was focussed entirely on Joe Biden and Obama, not any of his rivals who are struggling for political relevance. Having survived the Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich insurgencies, Romney has proven his mettle to many who had doubted him before that he can take on Barack Obama. And that — a competent candidate — is what Republican primary voters are ultimately looking for.

Whether or not there has been a method to the madness, with less than a month to go, it would appear that Newt Gingrich has a shot to the seat at the top. New polls show Gingrich overtaking frontrunner Mitt Romney in the key states of Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida. Assuming Romney takes New Hampshire, Gingrich looks set to take three of the first four contests. He would then look like a formidable frontrunner by the end of January, if he doesn’t slip.

Whether or not Gingrich will hold on to his lead will turn on whether and how much Democrats and the press decide to publicize his history of ethics violations and his prior experience as an alleged lobbyist. It will also depend on the effect of Gingrich’s rather hasty acceptance of Donald Trump’s invitation to host a debate for the Republican candidates, most of whom have wisely declined. Finally, Gingrich’s fate rests on how soon the supporters of Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann join the Gingrich bandwagon. The longer the second-tier candidates stay on the campaign trail, the more likely Romney would be able to use his own considerable resources to fight on by a war of financial attrition.

It appears that the DNC ad on Mitt v. Mitt, timed to coincide with the implosion of the Herman Cain campaign, could be working. Meanwhile, a story just broke that electronic records of Romney’s gubernatorial administrations were deleted when he left office. Coordinated by the White House or not, David Plouffe must be delirious with the possibility of a Gingrich nomination, but he’s probably taking no chances. In Kansas this Tuesday, President Obama delivered his inaugural 2012 campaign speech, making clear that he anticipates that the central issue of the upcoming election to be the debate about the role and size of government. Why give this speech now? Perhaps because the White House hopes that Republicans who cannot forgive Mitt Romney for “Obamaneycare” will place their hopes on Gingrich.

And if that happens, Obama would be feeling a whole lot more secure about his seat at the Oval Office through 2016.

More Faster Politics:

The Gingrich Surge: How, Why, and What It Means For Romney

The End of Herman Cain: How it Happened & What Happens Next

Here is the all-too-familiar cycle of American electoral politics in the last few decades. Campaign gurus draw sharp distinctions to get out the vote. The impassioned vote wins the day. Impatient voters watch their newly elected president or representative fail to pass in undiluted form the the reforms promised during the campaign. Disillusion ensues. The gurus step in with a new round of fiesty charges, and the cycle begins anew.

At some point, citizens are going to get tired of being stoked, poked, and roped, and all for nought. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements are reactions against a system gone awry. The low approval ratings for the Congress and the president are another indicator. The Republicans’ perpetual search for an anti-establishment alternative is another.

And now we are facing a spectacular new failure. The “super committee” charged to reach a budget reduction deal has proved itself anything but super. If twelve people can no longer agree to make hard decisions, it is reflective of the larger malaise of which we dare not speak. It is that democracy has run amok in a republic founded on the idea that out elected representatives should be able to make decisions on our behalf, and sometimes in spite of ourselves because representation is a higher calling than mimicry. Maybe that is why Abraham Lincoln did not deliver a single campaign speech in 1860.

Each of the twelve men and women in the committee are thinking about their constituencies, their parties, and their base and so bluster and bravado must take precedence over compromise and conciliation. When the voice of the people, artificially stoked for shrillness, begins to infect the deliberative process even in between electoral cycles, there is no chance for serious inter-branch deliberation. We have reduced our representatives to sycophants whose mantra is do nothing but heap the blame on the other party.

The solution is not to exploit the disillusioned by way of new campaign slogans and negative ads to artificially jolt their temporary and baser passions, but for the noise and the trouble-makers fixated only on winning at the next ballot to be weeded out of the system. To do that, citizens must realize that the lion’s share for what counts as democracy today is making it nearly impossible for the representatives of our republic to make decisions on behalf of We the People. Remember: ours is a republic, if we can keep it.

Let’s start with Rick Perry’s campaign. Now we know why his campaign advisors were telling him to skip upcoming debates. Perry’s oops moment in last night’s debate will enter into the political hall of infamy, because that was the moment when his sponsors will realize that he is just a bad investment. If Perry cannot think just one sentence faster than he can talk, he will be demolished by a law professor when they debate next year.

Perry’s gaffe’s was probably a godsend to Herman Cain, but it would be little relief in the worst week of his campaign yet. It doesn’t matter if the accusations of sexual harassment are true, but they are now distractions to Cain’s message that he was already struggling to explain. And then he had to go call former Speaker Pelosi “Princess Nancy.”

Sarah Palin wasn’t an aberration in a line of competent Republican candidates from Eisenhower to Nixon. She is the new rule. The thing about modern conservatism is that it has become so anti-establishment that it now happily accepts any political outsider as a potential candidate for the highest office in the land. Political outsiders aren’t tainted by politics, by Washington, so we are told. But, by the same token, they can therefore also make terrible candidates!

The irony, of course, is that the slew of debates being held this year was meant to give voters greater choice and knowledge of the candidates’ positions. But all this is doing is reinforce the front-runner status of the establishment candidate. There is a reason why Mitt Romney and his perfect haircut has coasted through the debate without any oops moments. He’s a professional politician! Tea Partiers are going to have to come to the uncomfortable realization that it takes one professional politician to beat another.

One relatively unmentioned reason why Mitt Romney is still hovering at 25 percent is because the Republican party changed the nomination rules in 2010 away from winner-take-all, so that states (except the first four) would allocate their delegates proportionately to the candidates at the national convention. This has the effect of giving less known candidates more of a chance of lasting longer in the race than they normally would, but the unintended consequence is that republican voters will have to watch their candidates battle it out, and even suffer the potentially demoralizing conclusion that in choosing their candidate, they must follow their mind, not their hearts.

It is far from clear, then, that 2012 will be a Republican year. Conservatives have yet to explain away a fundamental puzzle: if government is so unnecessary, so inefficient, and so corrupt, why seek an office in it? This is possibly why the very brightest and savviest would-be candidates are in Wall Street, and can’t be bothered with an address change to Pennsylvania Avenue. Except Rick Perry and Herman Cain, of course.

I’m going to hazard a few hypotheses here to highlight the paradoxes of contemporary American politics. Only four years ago, Democrats were afraid that candidate Obama lacked the knowledge and the experience to take on the complex issues of the world — a reason why Hillary Clinton was the presumed frontrunner. At the time, Obama drew sharp contrasts between himself and the Bush administration, essentially portraying himself as a kindler and gentler ambassador to the world rather than the abrasive tough-talking cowboy that his predecessor was. Also, at the time, it was thought that Obama’s strong suit was what he would bring to the domestic policy-making table in substance (health-care reform) and style (bi- or post-partisanship). None of these expectations turned out to be accurate.

As it turns out, you don’t really need all that much experience to have a successful foreign policy. Ronald Reagan didn’t, and neither did Barack Obama. What mattered was that they were able to appoint personnel to get the job done. Delegation works when the President operates as Commander-in-Chief, when he does not need to negotiate with Congress or convince errant blue-dog Democrats yapping at his side. Call it what you will: “Leading from behind,” engaging with the world, reasoning based on evidence, or hiring Hillary Clinton — it has clearly worked. But another reason for why Obama’s record on foreign policy isn’t the topic of most Republican candidates’ talking points is that it really isn’t all that different from Bush’s. He hasn’t had to draw a line in the sand between a Democratic or a Republican approach. The tone and the execution may have been better, but in its essentials, such as the unilateral use of force (and especially predator drones), a preemptive presumption in favor of democracy, and a realist approach to “enemy combatants” (and Guantanamo Bay), the two administrations have not been all that different.

A gentler style and tone directed at the rest of the world may well be productive for the Commander-in-Chief, but it appears to have done nothing for the President at home. We may soon have to consider the grand irony that a person brought in to reconcile differences and to put red and blue states together has actually been spectacularly bad at doing so. It is almost as if it is precisely in those areas where Obama does not need to open his mouth to convince either side that he has met with the most success. That is to say, Obama has been most successful when he has been unilateral, picking and choosing what works and what does not and not really having to sell his selection to either party. And he has been the least successful when he has attempted to be persuasive, pragmatic and deliberative, trying so hard in town hall meeting after meeting to sell his domestic program — the putative virtues he brought to the political table in 2008, no less.

Talk works in campaigns, but it appears perfunctory for the successful conduct of foreign policy and practically counter-productive when it comes to selling the president’s domestic agenda. To be sure, the president is back on the road. But it is very likely, given the uncompromising Republican stance on raising taxes, that the speeches will be more effective in drumming political support for the president that it will be for his jobs plan. But this shouldn’t be so surprising. We hire our presidents on the basis of their ability to talk, not their ability to govern. There is no real test for the latter until it actually happens. However counter-intuitive this may sound, the very stark contrast in Obama’s leadership on foreign versus domestic policy strongly suggests that talking has much less to do with governing than our infotainment culture insists it does.