Lean Left

So it’s going to be Perry.

I haven’t been paying real attention to the Republican primary run-up, because (a) it’s repulsive, and (b) whatever happens, happens – somebody will be the candidate, and then the real race begins. I see primaries as being largely just opportunities for people to make mistakes that can be used against them later. But things are shaking out now, and the end result is almost a foregone conclusion.

Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll in a walk – an incredibly scary thought tempered by the fact that the Ames poll is essentially a test of who’s willing to pay the most to register supporters on their behalf. (But as Nate Silver points out, it has a good predictive track record.) Pawlenty immediately dropped out; nobody expected him to do anything anyway, but it clears the ground a bit. Most of the rest of the field are joke candidates – Cain, McCotter, Huntsman (who somehow didn’t get the message that sane, decent Republicans died with Nelson Rockefeller). Gingrich is, bizarrely, still taken seriously but he’s getting no traction and has no hope. Ron Paul is polling well but that ain’t happenin’, nohow. That pretty much leaves Perry and Santorum as contenders who at least somebody believes might have a chance at the nomination.

Santorum is strictly from hunger. He’s tainted by his resounding defeat in his own state in his last Senatorial race, and the immense loathing he inspires from anyone who’s not as crazy as he is. He finished well behind Pawlenty in the Ames poll, and barely 1% above Herman Cain. He’ll probably stagger along for awhile because he’s just that narcissistic, but he’s dead meat, and thank God for that.

That leaves Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Perry trailed in the Ames poll, but he didn’t officially enter there – preferring to upstage the event by officially announcing his candidacy on the same day, from a different state, which pissed off some Iowans but I thought was a clever publicity stunt. Romney is a serious candidate but he’s hampered by the fact that he used to be less crazy than now, and, worse, on the two main issues that the wingers are campaigning on: healthcare and abortion. He’s going to get his bell rung from left and right the further he goes, and I just don’t see it happening for him – plus which he polled about 1/8th what Bachmann did in Iowa, and got about 1/4 the number of votes of Pawlenty, who then quit, and about 80% of the votes of Perry, who wasn’t even there. [UPDATE: See below.]

So it’s Bachmann – the Teabagger favorite – against Perry – the angry-good-ole-boy-plus-reluctant-non-Teabagger standardbearer. The Teabaggers are powerful but I don’t think they have the votes, plus some people are finally going to wake up and back away from the super-crazy. (Palin’s a dark-horse candidate but she’s really just milking publicity to feed her own ego and money machine. I predict she’ll tease for as long as it’s profitable, but won’t enter. If she does, she’ll split the crazy vote with Bachmann.)

So it’s Perry. I suspect Bachmann/Palin and Romney will hang in for quite some time, and probably win some primaries, but Perry will gain traction as the convention approaches and people realize that one of these clowns has to run for President in their names.

Frankly, I’m hoping Bachmann stays in it to the end. I’d almost be willing to take the chance of her as the nominee. But even if it goes to Perry, the longer Bachmann pushes his crazy buttons the better chance it will give the rest of the country to see how really extreme he is, and to negate his claim to being less loony than her. It would be unfortunate if the GOP field clears out too quickly and Perry gets to whitewash himself as some kind of moderate. (The weak-governor system in Texas plays to the advantage of wingnuts, who get to say all the crazy crap they want down home, and then pretend they didn’t really do anything when they run on the national level.) If Bachmann gets Perry to show his true colors clearly enough and long enough, that may help downplay his hair and stupidity as electoral advantages. (One benefit of this campaign: we get to resurrect decades of choice Molly Ivins quotations about Rick “Goodhair” Perry.)

But however it turns out, it will be Perry vs. Obama, with Bachmann fading down the wind with an evil screech like the Wicked Witch of the West. Mark my words.

UPDATE: Steve Kornacki, at Salon, offers a similar analysis, but sees Perry and Bachmann in a serious fight for the religious-right vote, and that that will give Romney a better shot at the less-extreme faction. I have to admit that my prediction is predicated on the assumption that GOP voters will see Romney as not extreme enough, and Bachmann as too extreme; but if the religious/economic division that used to be a cliche about the Republican base is still operative, then it could be that those factions will go for Bachmann and Romney, respectively, and leave Perry falling between two stools. I think that division has faded – the entire GOP base have become wingnuts, but not all of them are lemmings. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Romney was also not an official participant in the Ames poll, which makes his weak showing less significant. Lots of commentators are seeing Romney as a major player. Still don’t see it myself, but I’m always wrong about candidate predictions, so this post is looking less and less prescient. We’ll see.