You may recall that in both 2008 and 2004 there were passionate debates among Democrats about which of the competing presidential candidates had the most electability. In retrospect, most of the arguments people made were wrong. In 2004, for instance, much was made of how John Kerry's heroic war record would make him immune to national-security attacks from Republicans. Ha!
This internal debate is now beginning among Republicans. They are faced with some clearly unelectable candidates (Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Haley Barbour), and at least one theoretically electable candidate with real problems in the primaries (Mitt Romney). And then there's Tim Pawlenty, who may be, as Jon Chait says, "Not crazy enough to be mayor of crazytown," meaning that he could fail to catch fire in the primaries, due to his insufficient radicalism. I don't worry too much about that -- between flip-flopping on climate change and adopting a phony Southern accent, Pawlenty is obviously touring Crazytown with a realtor in hopes of establishing residency there.
But the thing about these electability debates is that they're very difficult to have when you care deeply about the outcome. There are a hundred different factors that can affect an election, and it's almost impossible to tell which will be important. Weaknesses can be turned into strengths and vice-versa, people who ran brilliant primary campaigns can run inept general election campaigns (see Dukakis, Michael), and events can make things fade or increase in importance. From the vantage point of the primaries, it can be almost impossible to game out the general.
It can be easier to see which characteristics make someone unelectable than which make him or her electable, but even that is uncertain. Yes, it seems impossible that the American people would elect to the presidency a former tobacco lobbyist from Mississippi who talks like Foghorn Leghorn, but there were lots of reasonable people who thought the idea that an African-American half-term senator whose middle name is Hussein could get elected was equally ridiculous. Without too much difference on issues separating the candidates, Republicans are going to be dividing their loyalties based on more emotional and identity-based factors, just as Democrats did. Once you've made that decision, it's easy to come up with plenty of justifications for why your guy or gal is the one who's the most electable. But nobody really knows.
