Stuck in the Fifth Dimension with Romney

As I've said for over a year and still say, Mitt Romney will limp or crawl over the finish line -- pummeled, bloodied, scorched, necktie all awry -- and win his party's nomination. Even if he loses Michigan tonight.

In short, Republicans are stuck with him, this bumbling Frankenstein of their own making.

Time's Joe Klein is thinking along similar lines and adds a few points:

"In the end, I suppose, Romney must still be considered the favorite to win the nomination. But he has been dragged well right of the American mainstream, and he has proved himself a brittle campaigner who lacks the confidence even to answer questions from the public at his rallies–and who, when he slips, slips into $10,000 bets and twin cadillacs and rhapsodies on the joys of firing people. The sad thing is that Romney, especially, has a potentially important case to make against the economy as Barack Obama has chosen to run it. But at this point, the messenger is as damaged as a used Nash Rambler."

Klein is wrong about the supposed case that Romney coulda shoulda made against "Obama's economy." There is no case, and never was. Global pressures aside, could the U.S. recovery be further along had Republicans put country first and cooperated with Obama? You betcha. But blame the GOP, not Obama. And since the economy is in fact on the mend, whatever Obama did is working. Detroit certainly gets that. So does most of mainstream America -- even if the pundits (who are hopelessly imbued with magical thinking) do not.

But back to the inevitability of Romney's nomination, I've been careful to add one caveat. If Republicans choose suicide, then, yes, they'll use a cyanide pill in the form of Newt or Santorum. But I'm not convinced they are that crazy -- yet. That said, for Republicans, there's no escaping from the Twilight Zone. The "Nash Rambler" they're bound to nominate will still be crushed by Obama in November. Rod Serling would have loved the irony.