To answer Larison a bit more directly: right now, I’d almost completely ignore the polls. I’d pay attention to high-profile endorsements, fundraising success, and any other signs of party support — success in signing up prominent staffers, for example. I’d also pay a lot of attention to anti-endorsements: any strong statements by important GOP leaders that a candidate or a candidate’s issue positions are unacceptable (or just the fact of unacceptable issue positions; that’s why Hunstman isn’t, in my view, a plausible nominee). ~Jonathan Bernstein

Bernstein was answering the question I asked at the end of this post from yesterday. This is a fair point. In June 2007, Huckabee was widely considered a marginal candidate and was not polling very well anywhere, and seven months later he was winning Iowa. Having said that, the division of the field into the “serious” contenders (i.e., Romney, Pawlenty, and Huntsman) and the also-rans at this point seems mostly arbitrary. If polls are largely meaningless, and I’ll grant that they are, why are some of the first-time candidates being taken any more seriously than the “fringe” or marginal candidates? On the basis of past fundraising success, for example, wouldn’t we have to acknowledge that Paul and Bachmann have proved that they can raise large amounts fairly quickly, and that Pawlenty has not done very well?

To make the question more specific: why are Pawlenty and Huntsman frequently referred to and treated as “main contenders” when Huntsman clearly isn’t and Pawlenty hasn’t shown that he is? The answer to that is that the rest of the field has been pre-judged as unacceptable to party elites for reasons of ideology or electability, but that’s not a very satisfying answer. Economic conservative activists declared Huckabee persona non grata early on, but it didn’t keep him from winning several contests and being competitive in a few others. McCain received almost nothing but “anti-endorsements” from many party and movement leaders, but these didn’t have that much of an effect. As I was just saying, the party elites’ declarations don’t carry nearly as much weight with primary voters as many seem to believe, and often enough the very things that make the rest of the field unacceptable to party and movement leaders are the things that make them popular with rank-and-file voters.

Even if the party elites had all coalesced around Romney, he’d be deeply vulnerable to an insurgent challenger. But they haven’t coalesced around him. They have either kept their distance or openly denounced him as an apostate. Those in the latter category include such elected officials as Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, Rick Perry, and Haley Barbour, and such pundits as Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, Jennifer Rubin, Stephen Spruiell, Michael Tanner, Kevin Hassett, Matt Continetti, David Boaz, Daniel Foster, and John Podhoretz. (I know I’m omitting many.) Romney has been voted off the island. ~Jonathan Chait

What do all of these “party elites” have in common? They were also almost completely united in their opposition to nominating McCain, who was the de facto front-runner coming into 2007. Enough Republican voters didn’t care what the elites said, and McCain received the nomination anyway. On immigration, McCain was directly involved in promoting much more controversial and widely loathed legislation in 2007, but as long as he pretended that he had “learned his lesson” and stopped pushing amnesty during the campaign he was able to recover enough to head off the other challengers. Romney has never attacked opponents of federal health care legislation in insulting terms. Instead, he is an opponent of that legislation, which is ultimately what will matter to Republican voters to the extent that this issue matters to them at all.

Movement conservatives had a fairly long list of reasons to dislike McCain, not least of which was his pastime of belittling them to gain good media coverage, but all of the activists and pundits’ hostility never translated into sufficient electoral support for any other candidate. Huckabee had also been “voted off the island” by many of the same people who declared McCain unacceptable, and despite that he won eight contests in the 2008 cycle. The conservative vote was split in 2008, just as it will be this time, and that helps Romney to be the McCain of this cycle. When almost all of the party elites were telling people to back Romney instead of Huckabee or McCain, Romney was rejected by two-thirds of Republican voters. It is possible that he could falter again, but by now Romney has become the known quantity, and it is Romney that the party elites have started dismissing as doomed.

There’s also an important difference between the reactions to Romney and McCain. Movement conservatives truly held grudges against McCain for perceived and real slights in the past. Romney’s overriding problem is that he has been so very eager to please movement conservatives that he has often turned into a caricature of one. If movement conservatives complained about the (non-existent) Obama “apology tour,” he made sure to name his next book No Apology, and if repealing Democratic health care legislation was the new conservative cause of the moment Romney made sure to position himself as a leading supporter of repeal. Where McCain’s breaks with conservatives were numerous, Romney has largely lined up with whatever movement conservatives have wanted for the last few years with the notable exception of the TARP.

As they did with Romney during the last election, party elites will anoint the acceptable anti-Romney that they are willing to tolerate, and they will desperately promote him as the alternative. It seems as if Tim Pawlenty has been auditioning for this role, and he may get it. These elites will probably overlook or dismiss more populist and Tea Party-aligned candidates because they are considered “unserious,” and one or more of these candidates will surprise them by undermining their preferred alternative. The conservative voters who are “supposed” to support Pawlenty to stop Romney will likely find one or more of the very conservative candidates in the race to be more interesting, and Romney will likely dominate among moderate Republicans. The minority of primary voters that follows the lead of party elites and backs the “serious” anti-Romney candidate will probably find that candidate outflanked on right and left. The 2008 cycle showed that party and movement elites judge the candidates very differently from the way most Republican voters do, and the former have surprisingly little influence over the candidates the voters choose to support.

Seeking to avoid a showdown over Libya, House GOP leaders have pulled back from a floor vote on a resolution by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that would bar U.S. involvement in the NATO-led campaign to topple Muammar Qhadafi.

GOP leaders were scrambling on Wednesday morning to come up with an alternative plan for considering the measure. These could include having the Armed Services or Foreign Affairs committees draft back-up proposals.

Citing “lots of unrest on both sides of the aisle,” a senior House GOP aide said Republican leaders are still working through their options.

Another senior Republican staffer said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “is concerned that if this were to come to the floor now, it would pass” and could adversely affect the NATO mission in Libya. ~Politico

If the resolution passed, it probably would adversely affect the mission in Libya. Of course, it is supposed to affect the mission adversely. The purpose of the resolution is to withdraw U.S. forces from that mission. That probably would make it very difficult for the non-U.S. allies to continue attacking Libya, and NATO might be forced to settle for a negotiated settlement. Had the administration gone to Congress and sought authorization before the war began, the U.S. and our allies wouldn’t be in this predicament. The administration seems to have counted on such abject surrender from Congress that something like this would never come up, and for the last two months they have been right, but it is just remotely possible that the administration’s contempt for the nation’s representatives will come back to haunt it. The House majority leadership may succeed in stopping this resolution from passing, but at least they will have been forced to take a public stand on the war in the process.

Update: Roll Call reports that the House GOP leadership is trying to rein in Republicans dissatisfied with the administration’s handling of the war:

Frustrated by the White House’s handling of the civil war in Libya, House Republicans will meet Thursday to discuss what steps Congress should take to intervene — including the possibility of backing Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s resolution calling for an end to U.S. involvement.

Although GOP support for the Ohio Democrat’s resolution is far from certain, an aide said the fact that it is even being discussed is a sign of how unhappy Republicans are. “Members are really angry with the way the administration has handled this,” a GOP aide said.

Second Update: Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway once again explain why the war in Libya is illegal.

Doug Mataconis looks at the new PPP poll from Iowa and asks:

Finally, if Palin doesn’t run what happens to her 15%?

The pollster has an answer for that one. PPP asked respondents which candidate they would support if Palin were not running, and this was the result:

Michele Bachmann 14%
…………………………………..
Herman Cain 16%
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Newt Gingrich 15%
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Jon Huntsman 1%
………………………………………….
Ron Paul 11%
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Tim Pawlenty 10%
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Mitt Romney 26%
…………………………………………….
Someone else/Undecided 8%

Comparing this against the poll that includes Palin, we see that her supporters split up among several candidates. Romney gains 5 points, Paul, Gingrich and Bachmann gain three points apiece, and Cain picks up one and moves narrowly into second place. Romney’s lead expands to ten points over the closest competitor instead of six with Palin in the race, and notably Pawlenty gains no advantage from Palin’s absence. Pawlenty continues to poll in next-to-last place and trails behind four candidates that are officially treated as marginal or “fringe” candidates. At what point are we going to start acknowledging that the national and local polls are telling us that it is Pawlenty and Huntsman that are the clearly marginal candidates, and Paul, Bachmann, Cain, and even the ridiculous Gingrich are the competitive ones?

Update: Andrew comments on the poll:

Poor Huntsman, easily the most promising of the candidates, gets 0 percent.

Granted, this is an Iowa poll, and Huntsman never expected to be competitive there, but Huntsman doesn’t deserve any sympathy for his weak showing in this or any other poll. Everyone except for his advisors has been saying that he had no chance whatever of competing in the 2012 nominating contest, and everyone except for Huntsman and his circle understood why he would go nowhere, but he is preparing to jump in anyway. Huntsman never had a constituency except for some admiring journalists, and he had to know that going to Beijing meant that his political future in the GOP was finished.

But the bloom has been off of the Rose Revolution for a long time. Mounting evidence implicates Saakashvili in political corruption and human rights abuses. Dozens of political opponents languish in his jails. Saakashvili’s administration has brutally suppressed opposition street demonstrations, jailed dozens of political critics, and harassed or even shut down opposition media outlets, including the main television station. Such developments mock the breathless enthusiasm that Americans had for the Rose Revolution. ~Ted Galen Carpenter

On top of this, there are reports of the potential abuse of power by the Georgian government in resolving commercial disputes, as Businessweek reported earlier this year on the case of Rony Fuchs. According to the story, Georgia may have arrested Fuchs on bribery charges to avoid paying money owed to Fuchs under an arbitration judgment. Even if Fuchs’ claim is not valid, the controversy over the case has significantly harmed Georgia’s reputation as a place to do business:

Mamradze, the former Georgian Presidential chief of staff, says he doubts Fuchs and his co-investor deserve anything close to $100 million. “They did absolutely nothing” during their time in Georgia in the early 1990s, he says, despite the findings to the contrary by the arbitration panel. On the other hand, Mamradze acknowledges that the unfolding trial is an embarrassment for his country and will hurt Georgia’s reputation. According to Israeli media reports, business leaders there are warning investors to steer clear of Georgia. The Fuchs case has “made a lot of people furious around the world,” he says. “The damage is huge.” Now that the Georgian government has allowed its sting to blossom into a full-fledged trial, it would be difficult to compromise without admitting that the country’s criminal justice system has been used as a tool in what amounts to a commercial disagreement.

The treatment of Fuchs and the chilling effect it is having on foreign investment in Georgia are worth noting here because the one thing that Saakashvili can legitimately claim during his tenure is that his economic reforms have been fairly successful, and since he came to power there actually has been some improvement in reducing corruption. The Fuchs case is one example of how even the Saakashvili’s liberalizing, anti-corruption measures are not quite as credible as his Western cheerleaders have made them out to be. These developments do mock the “breathless enthusiasm” that Americans had for the Rose Revolution, but the real trouble is that a great many Americans who pay attention to Georgia continue to have much of the same enthusiasm despite all of this. Just a few weeks ago, four Republican Senators gushed about how wonderful Saakashvili was:

The dynamic leadership of Mikheil Saakashvili is modeled on the economic principles of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman.

Presumably, the economic principles they had in mind don’t include using government coercion to avoid honoring business agreements. Of course, the flaws of the Georgian government under Saakashvili are not so different from the flaws of many other “hybrid” and semi-authoritarian regimes around the world. Among those regimes, Georgia would not be worth special comment, except that its boosters want to pretend that it is a beacon of democratic reform. On the basis of this misrepresentation, these enthusiasts push for greater U.S. support for a regime that advances no U.S. interests and which has mostly become a liability for the U.S.

One thing in Carpenter’s article that I would modify slightly is his emphasis on U.S. leaders being taken in by “sleazy” foreign opportunists. Yes, the foreign leaders he criticizes are certainly opportunistic and they are hardly the heroic figures their American supporters claim, but there’s no question that equally opportunistic Americans are pursuing their own agenda in linking the U.S. to them. There would have been no enthusiasm for Saakashvili or Yushchenko, to say nothing of the thuggish Bakiyev, had some Americans not seen them as useful anti-Russian pawns. The underlying error that these enthusiasts made was not that they misjudged the new “pro-American” leaders or engaged in wishful thinking about their desire for political reform, though they may have done those things as well, but that they identified with them because of a basically misguided desire to project U.S. influence into post-Soviet space where the U.S. has little or nothing to gain at the risk of unnecessary foreign commitments and entanglements.

The U.S. and allied military campaign in Libya is an embarassment. From the very beginning, U.S. and allied political and strategic objectives have been unclear, and thus U.S. and allied military forces have been asked to carry out military operations without a clear commander’s intent or end state. Out of all the operations orders that have been issued by the U.S. military for operations in Libya, in fact, only one — the order to carry out the evacuation of non-combatants — included an end state. None of the other orders issued to and by the U.S. military included an end state, in large part because senior military and civilian leaders either could not or chose not to explicitly articulate what the end state might be. The U.S. and allied military intervention is thus the very definition of an open-ended military intervention — the kind in which most U.S. decision-makers swore we would never again engage after Iraq and Afghanistan. ~Andrew Exum

Via Greg Scoblete

Like Greg, I am puzzled by the last sentence. Greg asked, “Which decision makers “swore we would never again” engage in an open-ended military intervention?” Perhaps Exum means that senior officers in the military wished that the U.S. would never engage in another open-ended military intervention, and possibly Secretary Gates put up some resistance to intervening in Libya because of this, but what evidence is there that “most U.S. decision-makers” made such a vow? U.S. forces have not yet left Iraq, to say nothing of Afghanistan, but that didn’t stop most of the decision-makers from plunging into a new open-ended intervention or acquiescing in the decision when it was made. Some of the people responsible for involving the U.S. in Libya’s civil war were opponents of the invasion of Iraq, but they and their supporters have been so eager to distinguish this blunder from the Iraq blunder that they seem to have learned very little from the last eight years.

The open-ended nature of the war received another boost today as NATO approved an extension of its mission for an additional 90 days beyond the end of the first 90-day period on June 27. In a few days, the Libyan war will have been going on longer than the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, and it has already dragged on quite a lot longer than any of the intervening governments and the war’s supporters believed. By my count, today is day 75. Gaddafi remains defiant and has once again rejected calls to step down, and why wouldn’t he? Unlike Milosevic, he has nothing to lose by continuing to resist. He has been given no incentive to give up, and instead the U.S. and NATO have given him every incentive to fight to the bitter end. Russia has strangely decided to wreck whatever chance it had of being an effective mediator by siding with the other members of the G-8 in calling for Gaddafi to depart, which makes it that much less likely that Moscow will be able to use diplomacy to help bring the conflict to an end as it did in 1999. There is still the possibility of a negotiated settlement. This would appear to be the most plausible way of halting the fighting for now to make it possible to provide relief supplies to the civilian population in all parts of the country, but this is something that NATO and rebel leaders have repeatedly refused to consider. The humanitarian intervention in Libya is creating a humanitarian disaster, and the longer that it drags on the worse conditions are going to become.

Walter Russell Mead’s paean to the “victory” in Iraq is baffling. It is an extended version of the disgraceful “fly-strip” argument for the war that hawks began circulating after the original reasons for attacking Iraq were quickly discredited. Since the war in Iraq did not actually have anything to do with fighting Al Qaeda, the new excuse for this colossal strategic error and moral failure was that the war would bring jihadists to Iraq and create the opportunity to eliminate them there. Some hawks added on the ludicrous claim that “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” which conveniently ignored that they were “there” mainly because of our military presence. The occupation of Iraq encouraged massive jihadist recruitment and led to a spike in jihadist atrocities against the unfortunate Iraqi population (not to mention attacks on allied capitals by groups sympathetic to Al Qaeda).

These jihadists had not had a significant presence in Iraq prior to the invasion, but between the security vacuum that the war created and the rallying effect that the occupation had they briefly acquired one. After the population suffered greatly enough from jihadist brutality, terrorist attacks and sectarian conflict, they did recoil from those jihadists that had exploited and used the war for their own ends, but only after hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died and millions were displaced or driven into exile, and tens of thousands of Americans were killed or wounded. The Iraq war needlessly opened a country to jihadist violence, and it was largely thanks to the jihadists’ own discrediting tactics that Iraq’s Sunnis turned against them. If there has been some sort of victory, it has been won at far too high a price.

American soldiers did achieve real military successes, and they did display great skill, courage, and competence in performing their duties in Iraq, and they did so despite being disastrously ill-served by their leadership at home. If we don’t fully acknowledge just how wasteful and needless the Iraq war has been, we are likely paving the way for similar blunders in the future, and it will be the soldiers who will be among those that suffer the most as a result. As Prof. Bacevich wrote in a very powerful column late last week, the empty rhetoric of “supporting the troops” masks a commitment to perpetual war whose burdens will be shouldered entirely by American soldiers:

As a practical matter, they [the civilian leaders] devote themselves to war’s perpetuation, closing one front while opening another. More strikingly still, we the people allow our leaders to evade this basic responsibility to articulate a plan for peace. By implication, we endorse the unspoken assumption that peace has become implausible.

Here at last we come to the dirty little secret that underlines all the chatter about “supporting the troops.” The people in charge don’t really believe that the burdens borne by our soldiers will ever end and they are not really looking for ways to do so.

As Prof. Bacevich notes, we are all complicit in this shameful abuse of our soldiers, because we refuse to hold our government accountable for their decisions to wage war. One reason for that lack of accountability is the activity of shameless apologists for unnecessary wars.

Mead writes:

The coalition victory in Iraq was a historical turning point that may well turn out to be comparable to the cannonade of Valmy. It changed the course of world history.

This is insane. The war in Iraq had some significant effects on the surrounding region, and most of them were harmful, but the humbling truth is that “the course of world history” would not have been much different had U.S. and allied forces departed from Iraq in 2005 before the occupation invited the worst of the violence that Iraqis suffered, nor would it have been all that different if U.S. and allied forces had cut their losses and come home in 2007. Iraq might or might not have been worse off than it is today, but considering how awful living conditions in Iraq still are it is hard to imagine how they could be that much worse.

One cannot properly honor the fallen and wounded soldiers in an unnecessary war if one cannot first come to grips with the reality that the war was unnecessary and not all that significant for the rest of the world. Iraq war supporters have consistently exaggerated the importance of the war for U.S. security and the rest of the region (and indeed for the rest of the world), and some of them continue to imagine that this major strategic blunder has been redeemed from failure to success. Exaggerating the significance of the war for the rest of the world does not respect the sacrifices that Americans, Iraqis, and other nations have made there, but disgracefully tries to distort reality. This is done not to acknowledge the achievements of American forces, nor is it done for the sake of honoring the fallen and wounded, but to gratify those who supported this disaster every step of the way and whose hubris and poor judgment plunged American and allied soldiers into a war that they should never have been called on to fight.

“It is certain that Poland is one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, only that the temperature of that pro-Americanism has fallen,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita newspaper this week.

When asked why Poland is no longer as enthusiastic about America, Sikorski replied: “It comes from American mistakes. The administration of President Bush promised all sorts of things to the [social-democratic government which ruled from 2002 to 2005] in return for our engagement in Iraq — and did not follow through. Now we are seeing the consequences.” ~Jan Cienski

Cienski’s article is another helpful reminder that the claim that the current administration “betrayed” or “abandoned” Poland as part of the “reset” with Russia was always deeply misleading. Poland already felt ill-used by the Bush administration on account of Iraq, and it was, but hardly anyone referred to Bush-era mistreatment of Poland. While the missile defense decision didn’t help U.S.-Polish relations directly, it ended up matching up more closely with the stronger European orientation of Poland’s current government, and improved U.S.-Russian relations has made it easier Poland to pursue more constructive relationships with Russia. Certainly, the Polish political elite was irritated and embarrassed by the administration’s decision to cancel the missile defense installation in Poland, and it was understandably annoyed by the way the decision was made, but in the end the decision was better for the U.S. and Poland. Cienski notes:

The project had been supported by political elites in both countries as a bulwark against Russian aggression [bold mine-DL], but it never found much favor with the broader Polish public.

It’s important to note here that in the eyes of the Kaczynski government the missile defense installation was valuable because it was seen as anti-Russian move. While the Bush administration defended the plan by invoking a non-existent Iranian missile threat, both Polish supporters and Russian critics of the plan understood what it was supposed to represent.

The hysterical way that American hawks reacted to the decision to cancel the missile defense plan is instructive for understanding how they define U.S. and allied security interests. Hawks tend to apply the same definition no matter which ally it is. According to this definition, U.S. and allied security depends on the U.S. endorsing the most confrontational and nationalistic policy view in the allied country, which in practice means that U.S. “support” for an ally becomes identified with American acquiescence to relatively hard-line nationalist allied policies, and any reluctance or refusal to acquiesce is dubbed betrayal, abandonment, or put under the catch-all label of appeasement. In this way, American hawks insist that the U.S. not only tolerate, but actively indulge Israeli intransigence regarding its settlements and occupation, and any attempt to challenge the allied government on these points is viewed as a hostile act. Likewise, American hawks believe the U.S. should enable and encourage Georgian intransigence vis-a-vis Russia and endorse unrealistic goals of reclaiming the lost separatist republics. In some respects, this isn’t surprising, since hard-liners abroad tend to view their neighbors in the same way that American hawks do, and they endorse the same sort of confrontational policies. What’s important to take away from all this is that American hawks have just as much of a warped definition of allied interests as they have of U.S. security interests, and when they charge that the administration has “betrayed” an ally it is a safe bet that the allied government the hawks are backing is pursuing a reckless, confrontational policy towards its neighbors.

It would be a great and fitting irony if the victory of Democratic scare tactics in NY-26 spooks other Republicans into backing off from bold deficit reform and reduction plans, which in turn forces Ryan into the presidential race—ultimately the Democrats’ worst nightmare. ~Bill Kristol

Yes, I can see them shaking in terror already. Who actually believes this? Are there people in Obama’s camp worrying about having to face a single-issue Congressman identified with a very unpopular budget that includes significant entitlement reform? It’s hard to see why they would. If the “scare tactics” succeed in getting other Republicans to flee from his plan, wouldn’t that be an indication that Ryan shouldn’t run? More to the point, if the “scare tactics” are working, wouldn’t that hint that Ryan’s candidacy is going to be unsuccessful?

In addition to having little credibility on fiscal responsibility thanks to past votes, he spent the better part of the last two years joining with his party leadership in attacking the Democratic health care legislation because it included cuts to Medicare. Technically, Ryan objected to these cuts because they were going to fund the provisions of the new legislation, and Ryan would say that his plan saves Medicare by preventing it from going bankrupt. It is possible that Ryan could persuade voters that these two positions are consistent, and that his previous opposition to Medicare cuts wasn’t simply an attempt to use the same “scare tactics” that he now decries when they are used against his plan. Indeed, the latest refrain from Ryan and his supporters is that opponents of the Ryan plan would prefer for Medicare to go bankrupt, and so even in defending their large cuts to the program they feel compelled to continue presenting themselves as defenders of Medicare.

Peter Suderman commented on the backlash to the Ryan plan earlier this week:

During the ObamaCare debate and the 2010 election, the party’s loudest, most frequent criticism of last year’s health care overhaul was that it cut Medicare. That was an effective message, but also a short-sighted one. Now as Republicans look for ways to reform Medicare on their own, their own words are coming back to haunt them.

As someone who would like to see Medicare overhauled along the lines that Ryan proposes, I can’t say it’s fun to watch. But the GOP—Rep. Ryan and a handful of others excepted—helped ensure that the Democrats’ current Medicare message would be popular and effective. One of the reasons Ryan knew what was coming, it’s safe to say, was that his own party had been there before.

The real trouble for Ryan wasn’t just his party that had been there before, but he personally used this line of attack.

Suppose Ryan heeds all of these absurd demands and joins the race. All of the declared and likely Republican candidates have already endorsed Ryan’s plan or something very much like it. His presence in the race will be redundant and could be harmful to him and his plan. Since everyone in the field already agrees with him, he would not be running to draw attention to entitlement reform and force the other candidates in his direction. At first, his rivals will bury him with praise. Everyone on the stage with him will say, “Chairman Ryan is doing outstanding work in Congress, and that is why he should go back there and continue what he started. When I am President, I look forward to working with Chairman Ryan on these and other important issues.” If Ryan actually wants to try to win the nomination, some of his more conservative rivals will then point out that he voted for all the bailouts and Medicare Part D, which will remind voters that his enthusiasm for fiscal responsibility and Medicare solvency is a fairly new thing. The more compromised “main contenders” that have similar problems in their record will embrace Ryan even more closely, but they will also be able to point to Ryan’s past votes to make their own flaws seem less important.

Unless Ryan scores some improbable victories in the primary process, the perception will be that Ryan took his message to Republican primary voters and it was rejected. That won’t be entirely true, since all of the candidates have more or less aligned themselves with his proposal, but it will be one more thing opponents of Ryan and his plan can throw at him. In the meantime, he will have wasted months on a fruitless presidential bid that could have been spent on legislative work. A Ryan candidacy will likely be about as successful as Fred Thompson’s, but its failure will have some significant consequences for Ryan’s ideas.

It is not unique to their party, but Republicans have a particularly bad habit of wanting to promote their new political talent too quickly. Many of their Senators and governors are barely in office before partisans begin building them up as possible VP or presidential candidates, and usually this means that the partisans want them to jump in as soon as possible before they have done anything. The calls for Ryan to run are an extreme form of this impulse to draft young politicians before they are ready. What is worse is that they are being driven by the delusion that Ryan’s plan is not politically toxic and sheer desperation on account of the perceived weaknesses of the other candidates.