Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November—or, rather, when he does—the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.
What should readers who despair of a second Obama term make of all this? Hope ObamaCare is repealed by the High Court, the Iranian bomb is repealed by the Israeli Air Force, and the Senate switches hands, giving America a healthy spell of Hippocratic government.
All perfectly plausible. And the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers.
And Stephens is basically praying that Israel attacks Iran, because Rick Perry won't be able to make that (immediate) call.
Of course, the joke is that all the Republican names being bandied about have the same exact problem: they can't win the rabid right and the moderate middle needed to beat President Obama. After all, if it was as easy as Stephens yells it is, they'd be in the race now, wouldn't they?
Republicans swear up and down that any "thinking" American electorate would make a permanent GOP majority where liberals are regularly thrown off cliffs for sport, and yet they can't figure out why they can't achieve it.
Bret Stephens is a big clue as to why that's the case. Keep begging. I'm sure that Magical Super Republican will jump in the race any day now...
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