El candidato inevitable es Romney

Es lo que viene a decir Steve Kornacki (Salon.com) en su último artículo. Cree que el favoritismo de Romney es indiscutible y los antecedentes históricos lo avalan.

(...) When you look back at other competitive nominating contests in the modern era, the reality is that the GOP tends to nominate candidates who began the campaign with potentially severe problems with the base. John McCain, who was championing a Ted Kennedy-backed immigration reform plan when the '08 process began (and immigration was hardly his only problem), is the extreme example. Bob Dole, once dubbed "the tax collector for the welfare state" by Newt Gingrich, was hardly a perfect fit for the rabidly anti-government Republican Party of 1996. Nor was George H.W. Bush the ideal option for conservatives in 1988, even if he was Ronald Reagan's vice president. After all, he owed the vice presidency to a compromise after the 1980 primaries, in which he'd run to Reagan's left as a pro-choice opponent of trickle-down (or, as Bush put it, "voodoo") economics. Bush had been nothing but loyal to Reagan as V.P. (and had dutifully switched his positions on abortion, tax cuts and other issues), but the "New Right" hardly trusted him -- and Reagan himself actually stayed neutral in the GOP primaries.

All three of these apostates survived, even though there were elite-approved alternatives challenging them. Part of this was luck: A panicked GOP rushed to Dole's side when he lost New Hampshire to Pat Buchanan in 1996; but had Lamar Alexander finished in second place instead of Dole, all of that support might have gone to him instead -- with Dole wiped out. Similarly, McCain benefited from the inability of either Romney or Huckabee to corner the market on cultural conservatives, allowing McCain to win South Carolina and hold his own on the South on Super Tuesday (while winning the big non-Southern states with ease).

But the examples of 1988, 1996 and 2008 also demonstrate that simply being an elite-approved candidate with potential appeal to the GOP base (think Jack Kemp -- aka Reagan's "true" heir -- in 1988) doesn't ensure that you'll break out, even when your opposition has serious problems with the base.

Indeed, there are some troubling early signs for Pawlenty, who is trying as hard -- and probably harder -- than any other Republican candidate. It's not that he's polling so poorly in national and early state polls; it's early and no one knows who he is yet -- that will happen. But even with audiences among whom Pawlenty is known and has had a chance to make an impression, the reviews and the results haven't been impressive.

(...) So, at least for now, my money's on Mitt. I just don't think Pawlenty has the chops to break out from the pack. (And even if he does -- let's see how he holds up under that microscope.) Nor do I see any of the other likely Romney rivals winning, for the reasons Chait describes. Now, if Chris Christie were to change his mind (...)