A few days ago, everyone was predicting that Mitt Romney would have the nomination sewed up by the time of the Florida primary.  The theory was that he would have won Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and would be the inevitable nominee.  The problem is that he didn’t actually win in Iowa, although he came extremely close.  Now Newt Gingrich has won South Carolina.

I don’t expect Gingrich to run away with this..  The Romney campaign is about to take the gloves off and those boys have a well-deserved reputation for playing political hardball.  So far, whenever anyone looks like a winner, someone else surges past.  It looks like a majority of Republicans don’t want Romney and a majority don’t want Gingrich.  Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are just clogging up the middle going nowhere. 

How can we possibly predict this?  Most of us thought Gingrich was dead and buried last summer.  Romney looked more and more like the best of a bad lot.  All we know right now is that Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman and Perry are gone.  But there are a lot of signs that “none of the above is the candidate of choice.”  That is why so many people were speculating about a “late entry” candidate.  That isn’t going to happen.  There just isn’t enough time for anyone to enter the race now and mount a real challenge to either Romney or Gingrich.

But, what if nobody won?  What if the primaries are over in early June and no one has enough delegates to win the nomination.  That is exactly what happened in 1976, a little over 35 years ago.  Gerald Ford had more delegates than Ronald Reagan, but not enough to win.  Reagan might even have pulled off getting the nomination, but he foolishly selected Richard Schweiker as his potential VP.  Schweiker was a liberal, and rather than gaining moderate support, Reagan lost conservative support.  Ford was nominated on the first balled.  But, for all practical purposes, it was still a brokered convention.

Sarah Palin has the best political instincts in the Republican Party.  She did not endorse Newt Gingrich.  What she actually said was the following:

 If I were a South Carolinian — and each one of these primaries and caucuses are different, Sean — I want to see this thing continue because iron sharpens iron. Steel sharpens steel. These guys are getting better in their debates. … If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I’d vote for Newt. And I would want things to continue. More debates, more vetting of candidates. Because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago, with having a candidate that was not vetted to the degree he should have been

Read carefully.  She would vote for Newt, not because she necessarily wanted him to win, but rather because she wanted to prolong the process.  Perhaps Sarah has figured out that if no one wins, she wins.  At a minimum, she is going to be a major king maker. 

There is no shortage of “draftable” candidates like Rudy Giuliani, Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and even Jeb Bush.  None of them are currently running, but none of them have said they wouldn’t take the job. We started out with Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.  All of them spent millions campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Wouldn’t it be a stitch if after all that time, money and effort the result was a loud:  “none of the above” decision?

I am not predicting this, but it looks a lot more possible today than it did yesterday.

TDM