Why Republicans can’t find a decent presidential candidate

Distressed Republicans, dissatisfied with the runners who are in or approaching the starting line, are publicly pining for another choice. By post time, the GOP may have a decalogue-worth of dropouts who have no wish to replicate Abraham Lincoln’s description of the man who was asked how it felt to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” Lincoln quoted him as saying, “I’d rather have walked.”

Fox News’ Roger Ailes, the GOP’s strategic guru from Richard Nixon to the first Bush (George H.W.), has been actively if unsuccessfully recruiting. The neo-con editor of The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, reacted to Daniels’ decision with the establishment’s standard lamentation: “[T]he current field…doesn’t exactly represent an overflowing of political talent.”

There must be someone else. But there’s the rub. As the old political saw has it, who the hell else they got – that is, who’s willing to be gotten?

None of the renunciators will reconsider. Bet on that – unless the economy craters or Obama nosedives. Even then, no late entry in modern times has prevailed in either party. There’s too much money needed; there’s too much Iowa to organize, too much New Hampshire to stroke; and there are too many careful calculations of long-term self interest. In any event, party rules make it impossible to barge into the primary process halfway through.

So who’s left to jump into this shallow tank by mid-summer, or at the outer edge of practicality by mid-September?