It occurs to me that the Republicans might be close to being in a great position.
What if we found ourselves in a month or two in this position? There are only three top-tier candidates—Cain, Romney, and Christie.
Each, in my view, is intelligent and admirable, and they could certainly learn how to work on their weak points from each other. Cain more or less admitted knows he needs to learn lots of details from Romney, as well as some sense of what the center-right (note the word center) really wants in terms of policy reform. (I’m tempted to say Christie should ask Romney about his fitness secrets, but I won’t.) Romney could learn something about authenticity or just being comfortable being utterly forthright from both Cain and Christie.
Christie would need to learn a lot fast about the cool confidence of the natural debater from the other two. And Romney and Cain could learn from Christie that compromise can flow from true principle—or that it can easily be distinguished from flip-flopping, just as they could learn from him how to eloquently express the exceptionalism of American principle.
I have to admit that I pretty comfortable with Christie’s stand on about every issue, although I don’t want to start gushing until he’s actually in the race and been vetted for a while. And I consider Cain an upgrade from Perry as the TEA PARTY favorite. Romney continues to have a lot to offer. It’s just that he’s not getting the love or even the trust.
