Republican nominee by default

If just about every political pundit in America is to be believed, the Republican party is preparing to nominate a presidential candidate that many of its most loyal members neither like nor trust.

The formal nominating process begins in five weeks with the Iowa caucuses followed, in short order, by primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Over the last two weeks Herman Cain's star has dimmed and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has replaced him at the top of the polls.

And sitting there beside Gingrich, as he has sat beside a half-dozen other real and potential candidates before him, is Mitt Romney.

Hardly anyone believes that the famously undisciplined Gingrich has any hope of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency. He is merely the latest beneficiary of the Republican party's year-long search for a candidate to Romney's right who can also pass muster as a plausible president.

One by one the others have risen, only to wither in the glare of the national spotlight. Through it all Romney's support has remained consistent: about 23 per cent. This is far from decisive, but in a crowded field it could be enough to win. The problem is that a candidate in Romney's position ought to be picking up support from his rivals as they drop away, but he is not.

Romney's problem is one of authenticity. The son of a long-serving, moderate-Republican governor of Michigan (the late George Romney, himself once a presidential contender), Romney first emerged onto the political scene in 1994, running against Ted Kennedy for the senate in Massachusetts. He lost, but managed to make Kennedy work for his reelection, something the ‘Lion of the Senate' had not had to do in decades.

Strong views

In the process Romney took a number of positions — on abortion, gun control and gay rights, for example — that played well in solidly Democratic Massachusetts but are anathema to most Republicans in the rest of the country.

In seeking the presidency, Romney disavowed all of these earlier positions. He has been at particular pains to distance himself from the signature accomplishment of his years as Massachusetts governor: a sweeping reform of the state's health care system — one that became the model for Obama's own national health care plan.

In addition, Romney is a Mormon. Polite people do not tell pollsters that they are bigots, but the fact remains that a significant portion of the Republican base absolutely believes that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (to give it its official name) is a cult and they are not going to vote to put one of its members in the White House.

One might ask how such a candidate came to be seen as a top contender in the first place. The answer is that Romney inherited the frontrunner's mantle largely by default.

Historically, the GOP prefers political elder statesmen as its presidential nominees: candidates who have sought the White House before, have been on the national stage for years and, as such, have been vetted by voters, the media and the party's big donors.

Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush are successful examples of the type. According to this theory Romney is the frontrunner because, simply put, it is his turn.

But none of those earlier Republican nominees had anything like Romney's problems with the party's base — many of whom suspect that he has no core beliefs beyond a burning desire to be president. This is why so many Republicans have been searching for an anti-Romney and why one second-stringer after another has risen briefly into the top-tier alongside the former Massachusetts governor.

Plausible president

Why, then, do many people believe the GOP will go ahead and nominate a figure so unpopular within its own ranks? Because when all of the GOP's candidates are lined up on a stage, Romney alone looks like a plausible president. Ordinary Republicans may not like him, but they sense that he can beat Obama and, ultimately, they care more about winning than about ideological purity.

That, at least, is the theory. The key to Romney's fate will be whether Republican voters believe their own rhetoric about Obama.The idea that the Obama's ‘socialist' policies are ‘destroying' America is, simply put, nonsense. It is also, however, now sufficiently mainstream in Republican circles that Rick Perry has been saying it straight to the camera in nationally-broadcast television ads.

If GOP voters really believe the president to be a radical leftist then they are also likely to believe that the rest of the country shares their alarm and may indeed nominate someone far to Romney's right.

Romney's campaign is banking on a reasonable number of voters seeing that rhetoric for what it is, and choosing a candidate who won't excite the base, but will be more attractive to voters in the political centre.

Any other year that would have been a pretty safe bet. In 2012 it is, at best, a toss-up. Entering a political year that promises an excess of angry rhetoric there's a chance the ‘normal' rules of political nominations will be stood on their head.

The conventional signs still point toward Romney as the Republicans' nominee — but there is a lot about 2012 that promises to be unconventional.

Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and commentator, teaches political science at the University of Vermont.