TIME TO PICK UP THAT STALE CRUST OF ROMNEY THEY TOSSED US.

Sorry, my friends, the RINOs have won. Romney is obviously going to be the GOP nominee. If Santorum or Newt had the horses to win, they'd have exhibited a lot more strength than they've shown so far. C'est fini, c'est tout.

As I pointed out a few weeks back, Romney's victory is really a reflection on the fundamental weaknesses of his opponents not his own strengths, but you know what? In the land of the quadraplegics, the one-legged man is king. At least the establishment RINOs ended up supporting the man they torpedoed 4 years ago.

But Romney had one key advantage over Gingrich and Santorum (Paul isn't really Republican, although his relative success strengthens this point) that is often overlooked. He's run a national campaign before. Since 1952, only 2 GOP nominees have won that never ran nationally before: Barry Goldwater and George W. Bush. And Bush was running just 7 years after his Dad's 3d consecutive national campaign (1980, 1984, and 1988), and thus simply stepped into the old man's shoes, inheriting his cadre of supporters and contacts. So Goldwater was really the only one to legitimately hack a path to the nomination on his first try.

If Newt had pulled the trigger 4 years ago, he might have avoided, ohhhhh, 50% of the unforced errors he made this time, and won it easily on his second shot. But Newt stayed in his cozy thinktank offices, while Romney chewed the rubber chicken from Iowa to Pennsylvania. And made thousands of valuable contacts.

To summarize: it sure helps winning the nomination this time around, if you've had even a rudimentary trial run 4 years earlier.