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.

When Democrats lost to Reagan, they nominated first Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis before finally tacking to the center and putting Bill Clinton in the White House. That was a 12-year stretch. Britain’s Labor Party spent a decade moving left before they finally tacked back to the center after losing to Margaret Thatcher. It took them 18 years to finally regain power. Republicans have only been in the wilderness for either four or six years, depending on how you count. If it takes until 2016 for them to come to their senses, that would be a pretty normal progression.

This now is the party of Palin and Gingrich, animated primarily by hatred of elites, angry at the new shape and color of America, befuddled by a suddenly more complicated world, and dedicated primarily to emotion rather than reason. That party is simply not one that can rally behind a Mitt Romney. He too knows what he has to say - hence his ludicrous invocation of Obama as some kind of alien being. But it doesn’t work. He believes it - since he seems capable of genuinely believing in anything that will win him votes and power. But he doesn’t have the rage to make it work. And that rage cannot be downward, as Romney’s often is - toward hecklers or interviewers. It has to be upward - at vague, treasonous elites. It has to have that Poujadist touch, that soupcon of contempt, that sends shivers up the legs of the Republican faithful, reared on Limbaugh, propagandized by Fox, and coated with a shallow knowledge of a largely fictionalized past.

This is Gingrich’s party; and Ailes’; and Rove’s. They made it; and it is only fitting it now be put on the table, for full inspection. Better sooner than later.

Obama is a poultice. He brings poison to the surface. Where, with any luck, it dies.