Burning Up Ants

For me, the analogy that best fits the Republican presidential-primary race is one of a small child burning up ants on the sidewalk with a magnifying glass.  The child is the national media who seem to be taking a sadistic puerile pleasure in incinerating the candidates one by one with opposition research, innuendo, gotcha debate questions, and sneering asides.  And it has worked beautifully.  Tim Pawlenty, pffft!  Michelle Bachmann, pffft!  Herman Cain, pffft!  Rick Perry, pffft!  Jon Huntsman, pffft!

Who's next? 

Mitt Romney barely escaped the searing magnifying-glass flash when George Stephanopoulos, as a debate moderator, asked him in early January if a state could ban contraception (see: Contraception Question).  This out-of-left-field question was so bizarre that Romney deftly batted it away.  But it clearly presaged the current White House tactic to eliminate a GOP candidate or two by swinging the focus away from the economy and onto social issues.  Does Stephanopoulos's then-silly question seem staged to you now?

Unfortunately, poor Rick Santorum has taken this media bait on the White House's "social issue strategy" and is slowly frying under the ensuing media magnification.  And the Democratic machine is now taking the unusual tactic of spending part of its huge war chest to run opposition ads against Romney in the Michigan primary ... since the convenient media narrative is that he must win there to have a chance at the nomination.  And I think the Democrat strategy with Newt Gingrich seems to be that his ego is so big that he will seek out the seering sunlight focused beam all by himself ... thinking it is the spotlight.

And, looking back on things, I can see that the decisions that were made by Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, and Sarah Palin to stay out of this nomination melee were quite perceptive.  I think that they must have seen that big magnifying glass in the sky ...