George Will thinks so. He doesn't, of course, take aim at campaigning shenanigans and funny business with contributions. He's looking at voters' perceptions and he has a point.
If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.
The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who won the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa and reached that year's national convention with more delegates than Mitt Romney, and who might run again. Huckabee, now a Fox News host, was asked by Steve Malzberg, a talk radio host, this...
Well, we all know there was a moment last week when Huckabee went from being a nice (if impossible) candidate to being a birther, a concept which is embarrassing to Republicans who believe themselves to be "sensible," in Wills' term. Okay, let's pretend for a moment that there are still "sensible" Republicans out there. Even if they scratch Huckabee off their list, what do they do with Palin? What about that guy who stores his dog on his car's roof?
What about Newt?
Gingrich isn't any better. Gingrich gets tangled up in that anti-colonial Kenyan thing. Will counters Gingrich's claims about Obama, noting -- sensibly-- that "Obama's natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America's academic mentality..." That, you have to admit, is bad enough, almost as bad as straight-out calling the president an intellectual.
Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.
Dry and charmless. That's "charmless," not harmless.
