Jay Cost wrote an interesting piece for the Weekly Standard recently, giving three criteria he thought the Republican Party would use to decide who to nominate for President
I don't think his criteria are very cogent.
i. Electability? The easy answer to that is for the Republicans to nominate -- wait for it --
Barack Obama! It's a guaranteed win, albeit a very unsatisfactory one.
The Reagan doctrine on Republican nominees is to nominate the most conservative person who can win. It's not certain that anyone we'd want to think of as conservative can win in 2012, but with the Democrats' appetite for tyrannical progressivism exposed before the American electorate, I think it's more than possible. Who that candidate might be is always difficult to know, but a nationwide series of winner-take-all state primaries starting in swing states seems likely to be just the ticket, or, at least, just what is required to select the ticket. The Republican electorate is more conservative this year than in three decades, and that should help the process work toward the Reagan answer. That most conservative candidate will then appeal to the most conservative Independent electorate in three decades, too.
ii. Governing Skill? What Cost describes is negotiating skill, and that amounts to getting a deal, some deal, hopefully not just ANY deal. Legislators are best at that, but a state governor has more experience at wielding the veto power to just say "No!" On the other hand a legislator with the right principles is a better choice for the Party than a governor without principles. I'd take Pat Toomey over Mitt Romney any day.
iii. Party Stewardship? What he describes there is integrity of principle, surely a commodity to be valued, though seldom found in the Republican Party or in its Presidential nominees since Ronald Reagan. The last Republican nominee had already compromised away any principles he ever had by the time he was nominated, and the nominee before that's last worry about principles was how often he had to visit one in the school office (Yes, I DO know how to spell it).
Cost's criteria notwithstanding, the Republican Party will nominate a candidate for President by -- yes! -- adding up the convention delegate's votes, ballot after ballot until someone gets a majority.
It's possible that sorting out a convention winner in 2012 could take more than a few ballots, since no single primary candidate may obtain a majority in the primaries.
In the end I agree with Jay Cost about one thing. That's "No problem!"
