None of The Above?

On of my correspondents writes

I call your attention to Erick Erickson's op ed published [Tuesday] in Red State and picked up by RealClearPolitics...  Being a liberal pinko commie, and yet desirous of actual thinking with respect to politics, I find Eric's article to be particularly damning with respect to the current slate of candidates.  His position is not radically different than Joe Scarboro's Morning Joe position on the current list of GOP Candidates - yet despite Joe being my morning wakeup coffee companion, I can't help but feel his show is a carefully calibrated liberal fantasy of what conservatives think (recall my aforementioned pinko liberal leanings).  Thus, I'm craving a nuanced, real, trusted conservative response to Eric's article.  I know you're busy, but, of course, good Scotch is available for suitable debating of the issues raised by this email, and the article in question!

Since that Scotch -- make mine Lagavulin, please -- will have to remain a virtual experience until we are a thousand miles closer to each other, I'll take my encouragement from the fact that my friend describes his liberal-pinko-commie inclination as just that: a leaning.  I have always detected that certain faculty within him that craves rational political thought and that I believe is incompatible with the emotional tilt to his claimed politics.  Early in our friendship, I described him incorrectly as a genetic liberal, but over the years as I have come to know him better and to know more about his family, I have come to understand that he is indeed a lapsed genetic conservative longing to return to his roots.

But enough about him and his opinions.  Let's talk about me and mine.

I can't say I disagree with Erickson about the lack of an ideal candidate in the Republican field.

Regarding those candidates as an opponent for Obama in the general election, each has his flaw, though not necessarily a fatal one.  I am fairly sure that Romney would dampen conservative enthusiasm because of his inability to address the key issues, just as Gingrich's harsh nature and Santorum's overt religiosity would dampen the anti-Obama energy of Independents.

Furthermore, having had personal interactions with Romney, I think him a completely unsuitable candidate; he's not bright enough to respond to any question for which his staff hasn't prepared him.  The lengthy prep time he and they require means that his campaign would be impossibly slow in the day-to-day, back and forth media volley of ideas with Obama.  With him as our candidate in the Fall battle of wits, we, like those who brought only a knife to a gunfight, would be unarmed.  Santorum overcomes that problem well, but not as well as Gingrich.  I discount Paul for his loony notion that the principles of domestic liberty and safety imply that a free nation of free individuals must eschew all foreign influence.

All that having been said, I think all four remaining candidates are gaining strength and the respect of the electorate through the rough and tumble of this campaign.  I believe now, as I have always believed, that whoever emerges from this primary and caucus fight will be viewed as a serious opponent for the progressivist commander in chief.  The problem with another candidate who might emerge from a contested* convention would be that he or she would not have been through this gauntlet, this test of fire and steel, and would -- as yet another flavor of the month -- most likely be ineffective as a general election candidate.

Therefore, I believe that if the Republican convention fails to nominate one of the remaining three serious candidates on the first ballot, it is almost certain to nominate one of them on a later ballot.  I wouldn't expect that to be Gingrich, given the hackles he raises on our establishment elected officials and party leaders, but I wouldn't expect it to be Romney either, given his weak support among the conservative base.  I think that, at an initially deadlocked convention, Santorum would be seen as an acceptable nominee by those two factions, and I think that he, rather than someone who has not been out on the campaign trail, would likely emerge as the compromise nominee.  I say that as one who would dearly love to support Mitch Daniels.

That's the long version.  The short of it of is that

e) none of the above,

is simply not an option.

By the way, I remain relatively confident that Obama will be defeated by whomever the Republican party nominates.  Neither Obama and his political staff, nor the mainstream media understand the economic aspirations of this center-right country.  Progressivists like Obama, Axelrod, Plouffe, Gregory, Schieffer, Stephanopoulus, Daley, and Colbert all believe that Americans hunger for economic equality.  Faith in this erroneous progressivist dogma is leftist hubris.  American hunger for honest personal economic growth will dominate in the general election, even in the face of a modest economic recovery, and that hunger will return both Houses of Congress and the presidency to Republican control.

It remains to be seen whether the Republicans will use that control to restore individual economic liberty and fiscal sanity, or whether they will again be attracted to the approprationist fires of the party's inner arsonists and consumed in them like Tom Delay in the movie Days of Plunder.  Or was that Tom Cruise?

________
* I previously wrote "brokered" here, as that is the word of the day, but after reading Peggy Noonan this morning, I have changed it to "contested."  It should be obvious from my discussion here that I believe that the conservative base of the Republican Party that will be present in large numbers at the convention would not be led around by their collective nose by some group of establishment leaders coming out of a small side meeting room.  And I have avoided describing that room as "smoke-filled" for obvious reasons!