The night the music stops

Spin rooms will be awash in losers’ arguments that momentum—“the big ‘mo,’” as George Bush the elder famously called it—is more important than actually winning, that what American voters are really looking for is a good also-ran. But nobody gets to cash the ticket of an also-ran, not at the racetrack and not anywhere else.

Wednesday morning we won’t have to listen to either the horse-race pundits, with their three-for-a-dime predictions, or doom-crying candidates of desperation. We’ll have the results to thin the bloat.

The smart money is on Mitt Romney, the castor-oil candidate, where the smart money has been since the primary season opened an eon ago. Castor oil tastes awful, but Grandma insists it’s good for you, and the best a lot of Republicans are counting on is that Granny shows up with a small spoon.

The Pundit Primary is mercifully behind us now, no more debates before the actual voting begins, and a lot less trivia. From here on, beginning next week in New Hampshire, presidential politics is for the grown-ups. After South Carolina on Jan. 21 and Florida on Jan. 31, the suspense is likely to be over. The Republicans will have their opponent for Barack Obama.

While everyone else was having fun rummaging through Newt’s baggage, Herman Cain’s date book, and listening to Ron Paul’s endless funeral dirge for America, the minions at the White House and at Republican headquarters in Washington have been hard at work on catalogs of stuff the candidates only wish would go away. The candidates and their campaigns are about to feel the pain of the meanest, vilest, lowest-down trick you can do to a candidate—reciting his own words back to him, accurately. Since nearly everything a modern president says is captured on tape, there’s an abundance of material. ...

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