The Anyone But Mitt Primary.

It was two weeks ago, back when the Heisman Trophy was topical and Newt Gingrich was the hot new front runner, that J.D. Crowe of the Mobile Register drew this political cartoon and NPR put it up on their website.

For those of you who don't pay attention to college football, Robert Griffin III of Baylor won the Heisman last weekend.  For those of you who don't pay attention to politics, Newt Gingrich is doing a Donald Trump impression.  When Trump was ahead in the national polls, most state polls had him in second or worse. The same is true for Newt in the early contests.  Romney is polling well in Iowa and some polls say Ron Paul will be second and Gingrich third.  New Hampshire looks like a landslide for Romney and again, some polls are showing Ron Paul surging and Gingrich fading.

For those of you wondering why Gingrich has pointy ears and curly pointy shoes in this cartoon, I was kind of wondering about that myself.

Can Ron Paul be the next Anyone But Mitt? He is showing the largest surge over the past week or two. Paul's biggest obstacle is that the "no foreign aid" plank in his platform really translates in today's political landscape into "screw Israel", a position that makes more enemies than it does friends all over the political spectrum.

I can't bring myself to say that Mitt is inevitable.  Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have been beating him up a lot.  Let's recall that John McCain was not the number one choice of the social conservatives in 2008, but instead he was the pragmatic choice who the rank and file thought could win.  He ran a truly awful campaign and lost in a landslide.  Mitt can do better against Obama than McCain did if it's a two man race, but if the social conservatives get their panties in a twist and put up a third party candidate, Obama gets a second term in a walk.