by Ed Morrissey’s post "The Two Words That Strike Fear Into The GOP" has an interesting premise, that the RNC is afraid of the competition that’s going on now between the major Republican contenders:
Republican primary voters have sent a very clear message: they have not found their candidate. After a remarkable full-year, full-court press, the top five candidates remain bunched together closely enough to have a serious shot at winning at least one of the early states. No one has broken out of the pack on either a national or state-to-state basis, and all of them have serious obstacles to uniting the conservative coalition, fair or unfair.
What happens if Huckabee wins Iowa, McCain wins or comes close in New Hampshire, Romney wins South Carolina, and Rudy can’t close the deal in Florida? The other large states would normally take cues from early momentum, but instead, they will have no clear bandwagon on which to jump.
…
The Republicans will have to continue the same campaign for another seven months, until the convention in Minneapolis in the first week of September. It makes for high drama, but almost certainly for disunity and wasted effort — and a huge head start for the Democrats.
Maybe. But competition brings out the best in people and can potentially do so in political candidates as well. Of course it can also bring out a candidate’s ugly side, as we’re seeing now as Hillary Clinton tries to reverse her downward momentum, but that too is informative in regard to which candidate deserves one’s vote, if any do.
For my part I welcome the fracas the Republicans are fighting through so long as the campaign focuses on issues and ideas rather than mud slinging and back stabbing. Thus far it has not been too bad.
As Ed says, no candidate has put together an utterly winning set of campaign promises. Well, what of it? Do we expect presidential candidates to formulate a platform based on electability? Or would we rather have men and women who state their beliefs outright, make their cases the best they can, and let the chips fall where they may?
