PROCESS OF ELIMINATION. Jonathan Chait's case for Fred Thompson as the odds-on favorite smartly starts by eliminating purportedly major candidates with no chance of winning the nomination. As I and several TAPPED colleagues have mentioned before, Chait is clearly right on two. Giuliani is a pro-choice and pro-gay-marriage candidate in a party whose base is dominated by social reactionaries, and also has enough baggage to sink a candidate without those virtually disqualifying characteristics. McCain, too, has obviously been a non-starter for a while. Chait mentions the fact that he's hated by the conservative base; when you combine that with the fact that he's the most right-wing major candidate and that his more-lunatic-than-Bush foreign policy has crushed him among the independents who were his former base, his campaign is obviously as DOA as Giuliani's. On Mitt Romney, though, I don't really buy it. Chait says that "Romney has been defined as a flip-flopper in a way that just destroys his public persona, and his religion makes him utterly anathema to the very constituency he hopes will be his strongest supporters." I find this somewhat less of a death warrant. Being defined as a "flip-flopper" needn't be the end of a campaign -- cf. Democratic primary, 2004 -- and it's hardly unusual for an elite Republican to switch positions on social issues. The issue of his religion is more interesting, and I could be persuaded by an argument that it will rule him out. But there seems to be a lot of debate about it, and my guess is that it will only be a big deal if Christian conservatives latch onto another clear candidate. To me, this means that this opens the door for Thompson, but isn't a guarantee that he'll walk through. (For one thing, Thompson isn't exactly a staunch lifelong anti-choicer in his own right.) Still, even if Romney remains a credible candidate that leaves Thompson with a very good chance. It is, at best, a two person field as things currently stand, and I wouldn't bet much against Thompson if forced to pick. --Scott Lemieux
