Nobody can win the GOP nomination

The GOP primary does not so much resemble a political process as a reality TV show. Reading the commentaries in the wake of the first contestant being voted off the island, I can only conclude that none of the candidates can win the nomination.

Romney is too phoney, Bachmann is too whacko, Perry is even more whacko than Bachmann, Gingrich is a has-been whose campaign staff quit... The list goes on. For every candidate there is a reason that they definitely can't be the one. But someone has to.

The establishment media just loves this stuff. Its horserace politics with none of that difficult-to-explain policy stuff to worry about.

Conventional wisdom is that the GOP has to pick Romney as the most electable candidate and the only one likely to beat Obama. But that assumes that Romney can win the nomination and still be placed to reach out to independents. In the Karl Rove GOP the only strategy that works is to turn out the GOP base and depress voting by Democrats by whatever means they can.

The GOP base thinks that evolution and global warming are hoaxes, that budgets can be balanced by the tax cut fairy and will soon believe that George W. Bush personally killed Bin Laden with his brush cutter before he left office. Why shouldn't they also believe that Michelle Bachmann is their best chance to win the White House?

Of the current field, my hunch is that Bachmann would be the GOP's best bet. The power of being the first woman to run on a major party ticket is not to be dismissed. If Bachmann is the GOP nominee, Biden should probably start packing his bags as Obama would be practically obliged to pick a female running mate.

So facing a serious possibility that the GOP actually nominates Bachmann or Perry, are they really as whacko as we think?

If you haven't read Matt Taibbi's piece on Bachmann, you should. She is worse, far worse than most of us could imagine.

As for Perry, try this piece by Yglesias who has been reading Perry's book.

That Palin-Trump ticket is starting to look attractive in comparison.