By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The Iowa Caucus is over and Mitt Romney won by eight votes. But the real winner was Barack Obama.

I have been watching in fascination as the top candidates for the Republican Party have been busy convincing the American people that none of them are capable of being President of the United States. In the Presidential election of 2012, the Democrats will not have to create negative ads. They will just run sound bites from the Republican primaries. There is little President Obama can say about the Republican candidate, whoever it may be, that his Republican colleagues have not already said.

In this election, I believe we will see, nationally, the same thing that happened in Nevada in 2010, resulting in the re-election of Harry Reid. Conservative Republicans will fail to support a moderate Republican candidate and moderate Republicans will fail to support a conservative Republican. This will lead to the re-election of Barack Obama.

While Republicans like to think they are the party of the intelligentsia, they often out-think themselves. Where a Democrat will campaign for his/her specific candidate once a candidate is selected by the party, he/she will throw his/her whole-hearted support to that selection. This is not the case of the Republicans. As we saw in the re-election of Harry Reid, moderate Republicans will go so far as to support a left wing Democrat rather than support a conservative Republican.

While an attempt was made to paint Harry Reid as a moderate, that s a stretch. Harry is a man who never saw a gun law he could not support, a welfare program he did not champion, an abortion law he could not live with, or a debt increase he did not like. Even so, most of the prominent state Republicans, including Mr. Republican Bill Raggio, supported the liberal Democrat Reid against their party’s selection.

Before I get letters explaining what a weak candidate Sharon Angle was, let me say: I agree. The point being made is that if she had been the Democrat Party candidate, they would have elected her and then worked to move her in the direction the party wonks wanted. There is no way the Democrats would have carried on a scorched earth program against their candidate allowing the Republican to be elected.

I am not championing the rightness or wrongness of this, I am merely stating a fact. This Republican mentality will, more likely than not, carry over to the national election in 2012.

Let me speculate that the Republican ticket will be Mitt Romney at the head and, if he is lucky, Rick Santorum will take the Vice President slot. For what it is worth, I believe that is presently the strongest ticket the Republicans can present. This will remain the case until the Republicans destroy it.

With Mitt at the top, the moderates will have a man they can support and the conservatives could look to Santorum. I place Mitt at the top, because I believe if someone as conservative as Santorum were to head the ticket, the moderate Republicans would desert the party. While they might not vote for Obama, they would stay home and that would have the same effect.

The real kicker in the election is Ron Paul. After his supporters (21% of Iowa Republicans) have done their damage to the Republican Party, they will flee the party like rats leaving a sinking ship. They will support Ron Paul as the Libertarian Party candidate. Ron Paul is a Libertarian who is taking Republican votes that the party cannot afford to lose.

Nationwide there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. The Republicans can ill afford to lose a single voting bloc. A party running on the promise of cutting federal employees by ten percent, eliminating entire federal departments, cutting welfare programs (in a nation where over forty percent of the people receive welfare of one kind or another), and who has attacked unions in general and government unions specifically, will be hard pressed to find a majority to support their candidate.

The fact of life is that the majority of the American people cannot afford to support a conservative Republican. While conservative Republicans talk of the economy in the long run, and may well be right, people don’t eat in the long run.

The American people may cry about the national debt, but they will cry even harder if a serious effort is made to curb that debt. A people who live on credit in their private and business life don’t come off very sincere when they lament the nation living on credit.

The Republicans may have the right economic message, but the Democrats have the bread and circus, and America has become a bread and circus nation. It has been said if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul. Now, however, in America, Paul has asked Peter to borrow from Ralph to meet Paul’s needs. The question becomes will Peter be able to pay Ralph when the loan is called in? It is a sure bet that Paul doesn’t plan on paying.

We must remember there is no such thing as a compassionate conservative or a rational liberal. The country cannot survive being run by the extremes of either party. Therein lies the dilemma of the American people in the election of 2012.

The question is: Can the person elected in 2012 govern from the center or will we have another four years of the two extremes butting heads and getting little or nothing done?

I am aware that it is too early to be making predictions as to who will be the candidate for Republican Party; however, no matter who the candidate is, I believe the problems are the same. Change the names and the problems don’t go away.

Thought of the week… American politics … fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

– Charles Krauthammer

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