And the winner is...

This year's race for the Republican presidential nomination is one of the most wide-open contests in modern history: every frontrunner has fairly significant reasons why they likely won't win, and the whole contest is practically begging for a dark horse to come and steal the nomination. In the past few months, there has been a steady stream of candidates not running or encountering debilitating problems affecting their own chances at winning. So, where does the race stand? To find out, let's take a look at the candidates and where they stand. I'm only going to talk about candidates that I think have a legitimate chance of even making noise in the campaign; sorry if I skip over your favorite candidate, but if there are any incensed Buddy Roemer fans out there, feel free to call me an idiot in the comments section.

(Fun fact of the day: Jimmy McMillan, of the Rent-Is-Too-Damn-High Party, is running for the Republican nomination to avoid a nomination fight with President Obama. I'm sure the president is duly grateful.)

Anyway, back to people who matter. First up: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is an interesting case: he combines actual national political experience with a conspicuous years-long absence from politics. His campaign would have us believe that this makes him an outsider, and so would be appealing to the Tea Party, but I really can't see it helping him. Let's all think back to the last time Newt was in a position of political power, when his House Republicans forced a government shutdown, and then lost seats after trying to impeach President Clinton (which the majority of the country was against) instead of focusing on, you know, issues people cared about. Gingrich has, through his political career, backed himself into a very unique corner: he seems to be too polarizing for the GOP. Whether you like his political ideology or not (and it should be noted that it has moved way to the right since he started contemplating a run), very few voters remember the end of the Gingrich years with fondness, regardless of their party. Gingrich has tried to counter this by, again, running as an outsider (a stretch for anyone who had a pulse during the '90s) and by adopting far-right political ideals in an effort to endear himself to the Tea Party. The problem here is that, even if he can convince voters that he isn't part of the Washington establishment, I don't think that Newt can win social conservatives, key Republican primary voters who have huge influence within the GOP and the Tea Party, because of his personal indiscretions. It's hard to preach family values when you've been divorced twice, and you had an affair with your third wife while still married to the second. Newt clearly has some major issues that he needs to overcome in order to win the primaries, and I just don't think he can do it. He's too known and too many people have formed an opinion about him already.

Congressman Ron Paul: If you're a casual observer, you would probably think that Paul has a ton of positive energy from his supporters, a valuable commodity in primaries. But, I'm sorry, he just can't win. His positions are just too radical, even for most in the Republican Party. The man is a diehard libertarian at heart. That's not a bad thing per se, but it means that no matter which way you slice it, he doesn't share the political views of about 95% of the country. He's making a great decision to run as a statement: his contributions to the Republican primary debates in 2008 did give him some political clout on his signature issues, and he is a Tea Party favorite. Because of this, he could very well make some noise, but again, he just can't win.

Former Senator Rick Santorum: the former senator from Pennsylvania was thought to have a decent shot earlier this year, especially after last year, when he took a similar path to Gingrich: he moved as far to the right as he could possibly go in the hopes of attracting Tea Party support (although in all fairness, he was very conservative to begin with). The problem with Santorum is that he doesn't have a big enough public profile for someone who is no longer a rising star in the party. A dark horse is usually someone whom no one has heard of because they have very localized support. Santorum, on the other hand, has already seen his political star rise and fall. He was elected to two terms in the Senate starting in the '90s, but lost reelection in 2006. To put it bluntly, he's old news, so no one has a reason to care about his conservatism. Not to mention the fact that his campaign went dead in the water when he started the race-baiting of 2012 with his lovely little comment about how President Obama should be against abortion solely because he's black.

Former Governor Jon Huntsman: Huntsman's biggest problem is that his conservative credentials will be challenged in a primary filled with Tea Party voters. While liberals will disagree, Huntsman had remotely progressive positions on gay marriage and climate change during his time as governor of Utah, things that will come back to bite him in primaries that tend to be dominated by conservatives. Additionally, he's basically been co-opted by the Obama Administration for the past two years as the president's Ambassador to China (the Obama death-hug strikes again!). He'd be a scary candidate for Democrats in a general election, but I seriously doubt he'll get that far against Tea Party opponents.

Former Governor Sarah Palin: Sorry Democrats, but she's not running, as much as you'd love that general election matchup.

Governor Mitch Daniels: Governor Daniels is in many ways the wild card, a dark horse that this race is looking for. He's a well-known fiscal conservative in GOP circles, who has a massive amount of policy knowledge and passion for closing the national budget deficit, which figures to dominate the primary and general election debate. He may run into trouble in a primary, though, because of his well-known opinion that the GOP should stop focusing on social issues and talk more about fiscal discipline, a desire that will likely irk the social conservatives who dominate the GOP institution. Still, he is well-liked by many Tea Party figures and would probably give President Obama the biggest fight of any prospective Republican nominee besides Governor Huntsman, who has a much worse chance of winning the nomination, in my opinion. His biggest problem, though, is that I still can't convince myself that he's going to run. He has so far publicly voiced an extreme reluctance to join the race due to the strain it would put on members of his family (who are also hesitant), and continues to tell party leaders that he hasn't made up his mind. Party leaders are privately telling the media that they believe he will run, but I feel that at this point, if he doesn't want it yet, he won't be able to work up the fire in the belly needed for a national run. There's no shame in that; indeed, more well-known candidates than Daniels, like former Governor Mike Huckabee and Governor Haley Barbour, have declined to run for the exact same reason: they didn't want it badly enough. I just don't think that Daniels wants it badly enough, and I think he knows that. If he does end up running, it will be interesting to see if he can truly give his campaign the attention and energy it needs to be competitive.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: There is a good chance that the primary calendar could help Bachmann. If she can get enough Tea Party support to score an upset victory in Iowa, a socially-conservative constituency that plays to her strengths already, she will be a force to be reckoned with, regardless of the fact that she doesn't really appeal to mainstream Republicans. Still, it's unlikely that she will win in Iowa because of her extreme political views, and just as unlikely that she will be able to translate an Iowa win into winning the nomination. I think that the best Bachmann can hope for is to have a major voice in the debate.

By process of elimination (which doesn't seem like a great way to choose a candidate), it seems that there are only two viable candidates left: former Governors Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Let's look at Romney first. Most people think he's the frontrunner in the Republican race. He does have a lot of positives: an obscene amount of money, high name recognition, and he's competitive in national polls against President Obama. The problem is that I highly doubt he can make it out of the primary, for two reasons. First of all, “Romneycare.” The Obama Administration has been saying for months that they got many of their ideas for health care reform from the programs that Romney implemented in Massachusetts, including an individual mandate for health insurance. In case you haven't noticed, Republican voters don't really like Obama's health care reform. They really hate it, in fact, and this is an issue that isn't going away, as much as Romney wants it to. The second thing that'll hurt him is the same thing that arguably prevented him from winning the nomination in 2008: the primary calendar. Looking at the big three GOP primaries that come first (Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina), the calendar begs the question, which of these contests can Romney win convincingly? I don't think he can win Iowa, as he lost in 2008 and really isn't a good fit for the state. Same goes for South Carolina. New Hampshire is a good fit, but N'ampshire voters are notoriously independent swing voters, meaning that all it takes is a Romney loss in Iowa to cripple him in the Granite State (the same thing that happened in 2008). If he can't win any of those three, and win them convincingly, then I don't see any way for him to be the nominee.

This means that the Republican with the best chance of winning the nomination is Tim Pawlenty.

T-Paw looks like he will be the beneficiary of the clusterfuck that is the Republican primary. He's equal parts insider and outsider: he's well-known to the GOP establishment (he was on the short list for John McCain's running mate in 2008) and has a strong fundraising organization set up, but because he didn't run for president in 2008 he still is a new face to many voters outside Minnesota. Also working in his favor is his age: Pawlenty has said himself that he can win the youth vote, both in the primary and against President Obama. Toss in the fact that he was immensely popular at the end of his term in democratic Minnesota (near Iowa, hint hint), he has a good record on economic issues and the fact that he hasn't said anything particularly offensive on social issues, and the Republicans just might have found a nominee. It's not a lock by any means, but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on seeing Tim Pawlenty on the ballot in November 2012.