Bachmann Wows Iowa Republicans

The other day Democratic pundit James Carville predicted that Mitt Romney would win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Until very recently I had tended to agree with that assessment. I thought that surely they would nominate one of their rabid right-wing fringe candidates (although I would love to see that). Surely they wouldn't want to position their party that far to the right going into a national election (because that could have an effect all the way down the ballot, especially in close swing states).

But lately I've been reassessing that position. I think I (and a lot of Democrats) may well be underestimating the extent to which the teabaggers have taken over the Republican Party. While both parties used to have a lot of moderates (Democrats call their's "blue dogs"), the moderates in the Republican Party are disappearing fast. The few moderate Republican office-holders are being targeted for elimination (and even supposed moderate Romney is running hard to position himself on the far right). Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republican moderates are leaving the party and are now calling themselves Independents.

There is a much better than average chance that the next Republican convention will be controlled by teabaggers, and if no candidate arrives at the convention with a majority of the delegates there is a good chance that a teabagger nut-job could wind up with the nomination.

This idea was given some credence a couple of days ago in Iowa. There was a get-together there of two to three hundred state party activists. They had three of the possible candidates for the presidential nomination speak to them. Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour, both rabid right-wingers, received a friendly and polite response from the crowd after speaking. But the best and most rousing response was received by teabagger nut-job Michele Bachmann (who is so far to the right that she would embarrass most right-wingers).

Those Iowa Republicans seem ready to pass up any real chance of winning the election to elect someone like a Bachmann or Palin, and the same seems to be true in many other states. I don't really have a problem with that because I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot to do that -- Americans don't seem to like candidates on either extreme. I'm just kind of surprised that it might really be a possibility.

Could this really be true? Could the Republicans really be ready to give the election to the Democrats by default (by not nominating a viable candidate)? This whole thing is starting to get very interesting.