George Will has no confidence in Romney and Santorum:

Today, conservatives dismayed about the Republican presidential spectacle may write a codicil to what is called the Buckley Rule. He said that in any election, conservatives should vote for the most electable conservative. The codicil might be: Unless the nomination or election of a particular conservative would mean a net long-term subtraction from conservatism’s strength.

If nominated, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum might not cause such subtraction. Both are conservatives, although of strikingly different stripes. Neither, however, seems likely to be elected. Neither has demonstrated, or seems likely to develop, an aptitude for energizing a national coalition that translates into 270 electoral votes.

Will is right that neither Romney nor Santorum seems likely to win the general election, but his lack of confidence in these two can’t be separated from his earlier prediction that Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty were the only Republicans that stood a chance of defeating Obama. I suppose we can credit Will with consistency on this point. He never took Santorum seriously at any time, he wrote off Romney at least ten months ago, and his preferred candidates failed to live up to his expectations (or just refused to run), so it’s more accurate to say that Will must have resigned himself to Obama’s re-election shortly after the Ames straw poll when Pawlenty was driven from the race. It’s clear that Will was already thinking about focusing on Congress at the end of 2011:

Although they have become prone to apocalyptic forebodings about the fragility of the nation’s institutions and traditions under the current president, conservatives should stride confidently into 2012. This is not because they are certain, or even likely, to defeat President Obama this year. Rather, it is because, if they emancipate themselves from their unconservative fixation on the presidency, they will see events unfolding in their favor. And when Congress is controlled by one party, as it might be a year from now, it can stymie an overreaching executive [bold mine-DL].

Will’s problem is that he has been connecting a very sensible and even admirable proposal to discourage conservatives from idolizing the executive branch to a recommendation on party electoral strategy. Further, he is doing this after having spent the better part of the last year showing everyone that he has been consistently misreading the political landscape and misjudging the viability of presidential candidates. It would be much more productive if he simply argued against fixation on the executive.