• Huckabee and McCain are "flaky and/or can't win"


• Rudy is in trouble


• Huckabee has made Romney the Iowa underdog


• Huckabee hasn't a prayer after Iowa for New Hampshire


• McCain has a chance after Iowa but everyone knows he's the establishment

Enter Mitt Romney. He hasn’t been Mr. Excitement, but he has succeeded in positioning himself as the acceptable default — the “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” guy. His cornering the market on “undecided (non-evangelical) conservatives” is the beginning of this consolidation. The blue-haired ladies who sit on the county committees won’t make a fuss over him. There will be no “Stop Romney” movement should he vault to the top of the polls, as he almost certainly would after Iowa-New Hampshire wins. (Indeed, the way he has muscled himself into the mold of GOP establishment frontrunner will be studied for decades to come.) Now at 15% in the national polls, he has demonstrated an adequate-enough base of national support to be able to leverage big wins into the nomination.

...

So, unless Rudy manages to turn the election into a referendum on leadership-in-a-time-of-crisis in the next three weeks, at least how it stands now, say hello to Mitt Romney as our nominee.

Labels: Patrick, ruffini