Getting set to finish Newt? Mitt Romney (r.) chatting with Vietnam vet Bob Garon in New Hampshire — where a win could pop Gingrich’s bubble. (Reuters)
The GOP contest for president has gone on so long now that it has its own convoluted plot. It’s like “Lost,” only without the smoke monster. We’re halfway through the story, and no one has even voted yet.
Episode One — “The Straw Poll” — centered on the rise of Michele Bachmann and the fall of Tim Pawlenty.
Episode Two — “The Texan” — pivoted on the rise of Rick Perry and the fall of Michele Bachmann.
Episode Three — “9 9 9” — gave us the rise of Herman Cain and the fall of Rick Perry.
Episode Four — “Frankly” — was the fall of Herman Cain and the rise of Newt Gingrich.
And the subplots? Well, there were the would-be saviors — Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie — who made cameo appearances and then just disappeared down the hatch. There was Sarah Palin, who came sailing by in her ship . . . and then just kept sailing.
And there’s the current subplot, the one in Episode Five — “The Caucuses.” It involves the isolationist libertarian pro-life cranky old “get off my lawn” guy, Ron Paul, who flirts with the idea that 9/11 was an inside job and made millions of dollars on extremist anti-Semitic newsletters published under his name that he says he never read and he didn’t approve and he wasn’t in the loop — but he sure cashed the checks.
The question is whether Episode Five will feature the fall of Gingrich and the rise of Paul, and what that will do to the race going forward.
Paul has concentrated his entire campaign on Iowa. They say he’s well-organized, which is what you need in a caucus state where voters actually have to attend long meetings and “stand up” for their candidate. And if you want to cast a protest vote against government without considering what that protest vote might otherwise mean, Paul is clearly your man.
But he’s not a serious candidate, if by “serious” you mean someone who has even a whisper of a prayer of a possibility of a hope of a wish to be president. He can win delegates to the Republican convention. He might even run as a third-party candidate. But he will not succeed Obama.
So that makes him a spoiler. The question is what and whom he spoils.
And the clear answer, for the immediate future, is Newt Gingrich. Paul is running viciously effective ads against Gingrich that are partly responsible for stalling out and possibly reversing the former speaker’s momentum in Iowa.
At this point, though, the plotline gets more complicated than the previous episodes. If Paul wins Iowa outright on Jan. 3, and Gingrich finishes well behind him, that could really mark the end of the Newt candidacy. Because one week after Iowa’s caucuses, New Hampshire voters take to the polls. Gingrich will almost certainly lose there as well, this time to Mitt Romney.
Two losses in a row, one to an outlier flake and one to the establishment choice, would mark Gingrich as an ineffective tribune. His leads in South Carolina and Florida would likely dissipate.
There will be no one else to pick up the slack. Paul will continue to run and pick up votes and delegates, but will be far behind Romney.
What this means is that, in Iowa, Ron Paul may help secure Mitt Romney the nomination. Episode Six — “The Massachusetts Miracle.”
This may be good news for Romney, and fun news for everyone who loves the ironic machinations of politics — but it’s horrible news for the Republican Party.
If Gingrich fades away and Paul sticks around, the GOP will come to the convention with a flake as the No. 2 vote-getter. And don’t think the Obama-friendly media, which has treated Paul with kid gloves until now, won’t leap on his extremism when it suits them, and turn him into a poster child for the caricature of the GOP they’ve been drawing for years.
Only in this case, the caricature will be somewhat warranted. Episode Seven — “The Lunatic.”
Cue the smoke monster.