Willard's Turn... Just Like It Was McCain's Turn

Rove, and the GOP Establishment he cultivates, decided long ago it's Willard's turn and that he will be the next Republican nominee for president, despite his obvious flaws and despite the unpleasant but undeniable fact that the aroused right-wing populist base dislikes him almost as much as they dislike Obama. The debates, caucuses, primaries, all that, are just part of the rigmarole.

Every time Romney's lack of right-wing-cred gets him in trouble polling-wise and some unlikely and implausible alternative rears his head, Rove decapitates them. It's his specialty-- and he was surely the source of the leak about Bachmann's mental imbalance ("migraines"), about Perry's rock (though he still hasn't let loose with the closet case story he's surely aware of but that would completely destroy Perry as a viable candidate for anything). And Cain... Rove's fingerprints were all over it-- but not everyone agrees. (Remember what Rove did to McCain in South Carolina in 2000, when it wasn't McCain's turn yet.)

Yesterday at the Frum Forum, Thomas Marier puts forward the theory that it wasn't Rove who ratted out Cain but Newt. It's plausible-- since by definition all these Republican politicians are rats-- but the only way it could have been Newt is if he was quicker off the mark than Rove.

Let us go back to the beginning.

Not to the beginning of the week-- no!-- to when this story truly began. When Gingrich’s campaign nearly imploded as his staffers resigned en masse.

Now it was obvious on the surface why this happened: Perry could pay, Gingrich would not. Less obvious was that this fact: Perry was using Gingrich as a cats-paw all along, to feel on how a Southern politician would do in the presidential primary. Which is why he allowed his lieutenants to join the campaign in the first place.

All very clever, BUT. One thing that Perry did not notice was that two people could play at that game. And Gingrich had his own unwitting cats-paw in the race as well. And that was…
Herman Cain. Yes, Mr. Cain is a fellow Georgian, and one that turned the National Restaurant Association into a loyal ally of the Gingrich Congress during his tenure there. Was this all a coincidence?

So everything was in place. Gingrich knew that Cain would shine in the primaries in a way that Rick Perry-- and alas, he-- could not, thus preventing the three man race from becoming a two-man race between Romney and Perry. Perry’s own weaknesses will then weigh him down and Cain will rise. So much for Perry.

But what to do about Cain? Simple. Step one. Have a two man debate scheduled for a Saturday in early November. It’d be good if it was hosted by a Texas group: it will get Cain off the trail even more, and be another swipe at Perry at the same time. Step two (and this is the hard part): make sure that there is something-- anything-- weighing down Cain by the time that debate rolls around.

But what?

Suddenly, an old conversation with Cain is remembered by Gingrich, about some minor trouble Cain was having the office around 1999…

Two new Romney websites were born today-- one from the extreme right and then a normal one. They suggest the same conclusion-- Willard would make a really dreadful, unfit president.