So this election could prolong the Republican agony for another electoral cycle at least. It could lead to a general election candidate dubbed both rich and out of touch and only lip-syncing the theological truths that evangelicals hold dear. If he loses, it could well mean another spasm of even more Christianist extremism the next time round, since Christianists will argue that running another faux-culture-warrior was the reason they lost.

I say: nominate Santorum and get this over with. Then find a Romney in 2016 who actually is more moderate and doesn’t feel the need to apologize for it. But this won’t happen. The one outlier that might just happen? A brokered convention where a Palin-like figure emerges. Or a mess, where Romney feels obliged to lie even more, smear even more, and war-monger even more to force himself into a stronger position in the fall.

I fear a weak GOP candidate held afloat by a tsunami of smear ads against Obama, using the race card, the Israel card, the religion card, the Birther card, and what have you - thrown in by billionaires who hate the guy or who are obsessed with Greater Israel. It could be one of the ugliest smear campaigns Romney has ever run - and that’s saying something.

it’s possible that the GOP primary plays to Romney’s weaknesses, while the general will play more to his strengths. He’s got a big, top-heavy campaign that has been forced into asymmetrical warfare with smaller, lighter opponents. The dynamics of the primary are forcing Romney to unconvincingly adopt unpopular opinions that contradict what he’s done and said in the past in order to persuade an electorate that’s unusually concerned with purity. But in the general election, he’ll be facing another big, top-heavy campaign, and he’ll be able to run towards the center. Perhaps he’ll perform better under those conditions.

Like Obama, Bill Clinton began the 1996 cycle on the heels of an epic midterm election defeat and with the opposition party convinced it had found the formula to defeat him. But the Republican Party’s image plunged in 1995 and early ’96, the product of overreach by its new congressional majority and the toxic antics of a House speaker named Newt Gingrich, while the economy — and Clinton’s approval scores — improved. By the time Bob Dole, who suffered an embarrassing series of early primary season defeats (including to Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire), finally secured the GOP nomination he was running far behind Clinton. And despite predictions throughout the spring of ’96 that the race would ultimately tighten, it never really did.

After his defeat, Dole was known to lament that the election had come two years too late. Obama’s recent gains are tenuous, but it seems a lot more likely now than it did a few months ago that the 2012 Republican nominee will end up saying the same thing.

Ron Paul is the only candidate for the Republican nomination whose endorsement will matter to Mitt Romney. It is the only endorsement that will bring votes and the only endorsement, if withheld, that could cost Romney the general election.

If Ron Paul speaks at the GOP convention (as he was not invited to do in 2008), the party will be united and Romney will win in November 2012. If Ron Paul speaks only at his own rally in Tampa, Florida (as happened at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota) the party will not be at full strength.

Let’s pause for a moment to appreciate that we live at time when older gay couples in small-town coffee shops aren’t afraid to get in the faces of bigoted politicians and out themselves to the national media in the process. It has gotten better.