Is it too terribly hyperbolic to characterize last night's debate as an atrocity? For probably most of us watching, the collective horror was an abomination; an assault on even the commonest intellect; a full-scale, overcompensating offensive against rhetorical blandness, so that one could break out to challenge the party's Inevitable One. It was, perhaps, the most painful political experience of my adult life.
Though suffering through it alone, I actually found myself facepalming on rather frequent occasion. It was like watching a platoon of Mister Rogerses on high-quality crack, machine-gunning an innocent national audience with malice and aforethought. I was embarrassed for the Republican Party's unmistakable Faustian corruption and self-inflicted dementia; I was embarrassed for America -- embarrassed as an American.
Perry's latest campaign-ending collapse was entirely superfluous; Cain needlessly confirmed himself as an immensely uncouth prick; Gingrich bellowed and bloviated with anticipatory second-place steam; Santorum was irrelevant; Bachmann was irrelevant; Paul was irrelevant; and Huntsman merely moved his popularity from either zero to .5 or from .5 to 1 or from 1 to .5 ... -- you get the point.
The tragic causation of all this bumbling dog-and-ponyism has, nearly all along, been this mistaken and deeply flawed concept, as expressed this morning by Politico:
It’s viewed as a foregone conclusion that somebody will emerge from the GOP field to challenge Mitt Romney for the 2012 presidential nomination. But ... it’s still uncertain who will give Romney a real primary fight.
Naturally that would be good business for political journalists. But it was only briefly realistic. It's true that several candidates have now triumphed and fallen as holders of the second-place slot versus Mitt Romney, but with a probably regretful Pawlenty out of the running, none could ever promise "a real primary fight." Given his depressingly inept competition, Romney has possessed a lock on the nomination for months.
Yet, given Romney's depressingly ept ineptness, the illusion of some, any, real competition took hold. Second place translates not into a genuine threat against Romney; further, a second-place showing cannot even translate into a veep-choice competition, given that only a madman -- Romney may be acrobatically principled, but he's not crazy -- would select a running mate from among six, extraordinary embarrassments, and one fellow Mormon.
It's not even Romney's to lose, any longer. It's over. And it's been over since the T-Paw went extinct.