Losing with Santorum

This post is not about whether or not Santorum would be beaten like a gong in the general election. I think that he would, for the reasons that John Oliver discussed last night on the Daily Show.

No, I think that the GOP will lose with Santorum for the same reason that they lost a century ago: The party elite will shudder at the candidate whom the party's grass roots have chosen and they will rig the game to choose someone else. That will not sit well with Santorum's supporters, who will not go along with the anointing by the bosses.

Whether or not Santorum will accept the nomination of a third party will be another question that he'll have to consider.

On the other hand, if the party bosses pull the same trick against Romney, I don't imagine that most people will give a shit. The one consistent thing about ol' Rmoney is that nobody seems to really like him.  Romney's strongest argument for being the nominee is "it's my turn", because the GOP's tradition is that the nominee is the clown who came in second the last time around.*

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* Think about it. It's been that way since Ford.  McCain came in second in 2000 and was the nominee in `08. Dole came in second in `88 and was the nominee in `96. Bush I came in second in `80 and was the nominee in `88. Reagan came in second in `76 and was the nominee in `80. The one outlier was Buchanan, who came in second in `92 and `96, and who arguably was denied his turn for having the temerity to primary a sitting president (and who was privately blamed by the GOP for weakening Bush enough for Clinton to win).  The same stench of challenging a sitting president didn't seem to attach to Reagan, but he did come in second in `68, so it could be argued that Watergate had displaced Reagan in the Unofficial Line of Succession.