GOP standings to date - the pretenders

Eliminate all the options that are impossible and whatever is left, however unlikely, will happen.

Starting with the pretenders:

• Duncan Hunter, who he? He has a delegate because he is a delegate. Shift a few bellwether brain cells, and he could be tied with Rudy Giuliani
• Rudi, ah, Rudi, it's not that we hardly knew ye. It's just that you are too obviously a mean, authoritarian SOB. And to the Republican base, those are your good qualities. I never thought a repeat cross-dresser could win in the Republican Party; his poll numbers were a media creation doomed to die embarrassingly. Except that nothing embarrasses Rudi, not even all that icky personal stuff.
• Fred Thompson was the guy you date, not the guy you marry. Seriously, does that show how gag-a-maggot the Republican Party is, or what? Fred jumped the shark (I am so glad I finally learned what that means) before he even jumped into the race. He wanted the Presidency as a retirement gift, and even the Grand Old Party is not that senescent.

Ron Paul needs a category all to himself. He has managed to attract all the scruffy Objectivists who think they're the second coming of John Galt, whoever he was (the man ain't got no culture), and evidently some of them know how to charge a credit card on the Internet. He's right about Iraq for all the wrong isolationist reasons, and the rest of his platform would have been neandercon in the 19th century, which is where he evidently found a wormhole from which to emerge into contemporary Texas daylight. Good thing, too - in any other state except maybe Louisiana, more people would laugh at him than vote for him. OK, maybe Idaho, too.

More to come...

What Iowa means - Republicans

Even less than it means to the Democrats...

Huckabee blunted Mitt Romney's early money-buys-name-recognition strategy. Mitt won't be running the table.

Huckabee, though, is still a big question mark. Ed Rollins only thinks he helped.

Mitt Romney still has money. I expect to see ads leaking over the border that tag Huckabee as an opportunist.

The three old fossils are still as viable as they were before. For Fred Thompson, it's probably a disappointment that he did too well to fade out of the race.

Duncan Hunter is still hopeless. He's probably crying that everyone stole his issue, but that's his face-saver for quitting.

A mistake he'd keep on making

Jim Ogonowski (R-Whoami) has no position papers on his web site, but one thing is certain from his public statements: He'll keep the troops in Iraq indefinitely.

He's also with Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter on immigration reform. He wants to send 'em all home. He hasn't said how he'll close the borders, but I'd guess a big-ass fence is in there somewhere.

This combination puts him in the odd position of being more extreme than Duhbya. Ogo also apparently thinks moving 12,000,000 people will be a cake walk, when moving 190,000 is impossible.

Oxymoron - Presidential Republican

It's hard to imagine that any of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates could possibly close the deal with the voters. Still, one of these cavemen has to win, and after all Duhbya managed. To America's eternal shame, twice.

The Republican frontrunners have serious problems. (Note to Democrats: Start exploiting them now, before the media sets its narrative in permanent ink.) And it's not just that most of them can't keep their flies zipped.

Rudy Giuliani has insinuated his America's Mayor branding into the media narrative, but his real appeal is visceral. Rudy is America's Augusto Pinochet. He is offering to save America from the brown people as long as we don't look too closely at how he does it. This is obviously his appeal to the anti-democratic reactionaries known as strong Republicans. I still don't think even Rudi's faux tough enough to look macho in a dress, and I expect Romney to put cross-dressing fashion ads in heavy rotation if he needs to. If Romney doesn't, those of us on the left need to.

Mitt Romney is slippery, a completely shameless and craven opportunist, which is why he'll nudge-nudge-wink-wink some 529 to go after Rudi. From what he says in public, you can tell his only core conviction is me, me, me. In the primary season, he's one step away from executing women who have abortions. Should he win the nomination, he'll try to average his pro-choice positions from Massachusetts with his current positions. He believes in the power of false advertising to do this. If he were not Mormon, he'd be the frontrunner.

Fred Thompson is everything wrong with Washington - and I don't mean the May-December sex. He's a vacuous media creation who has been double-dealing his entire career, starting with leaking Watergate Select Committee investigative direction to the Nixon White House. While he seems like the perfect Republican candidate - lazy but can hit his marks and deliver a line with that great voice - he missed his window of opportunity. The summer stock Hamlet role bored us with too many rehearsals. And, by the way, his health is not off the table; he has non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which killed Paul Tsongas. Does Huckleberry Fred, as Roger Ailes calls him, really have the indolent form (slow, incurable - sounds like a Republican)?

John McCain used to be the list. He kissed so much Bush ass, though, that even his vaunted appeal to moderates (mostly because they haven't paid attention) has a carbuncle on it. If I were attacking McCain, I'd go right after his undeserved reputation as a straight shooter.

Mike Huckabee is trying to get enough oxygen to be the dark horse. The press is playing along because the field is otherwise so lame.

All the other guys and Huckabee, too, are running for some other office than President. VP? Long shots don't win Republican Presidential nominations.

Maybe they're just pimping their favorite issues. Tancredo is running for president of the militia movement, but he's neck and neck with Hunter. Brownback is probably trying to abort Rudi. Ron Paul strokes the GOP pretense of libertarianism. Maybe they're all just there for the nasty puns I could make on their names.

Or maybe they just needed to get out on the road for a little campaign sex.