Mitt Romney has been strangely...

...silent lately for someone presumably jockeying for position for the GOP nomination in 2012. Or is it so strange? After all, the big topic for the last few months has been health care reform and the Republicans have made it very clear that they will oppose pretty much anything that Obama and the Democrats propose. (Okay, maybe one--Olympia Snowe--may sign on, but even the chances for that are only about fifty-fifty at this point.) Now that the Baucus bill has emerged from the Senate Finance Committee (which some experts have said all along will be the basis for the final bill), it looks like Obamacare may end up looking a lot like the reform Romney signed in Massachusetts. This has to be awkward for the former governor of the Bay State and would effectively eliminate health care as an issue if he runs.

So what would this leave Romney to run on in 2012, foreign policy? Although it's been done before, it's hard for a former governor to run against a sitting president absent some burning foreign policy issue. The economy? Romney certainly has the chops, but if the U. S. is in a recovery by then it pretty much takes that off the table as well. Culture Wars? Hard to see Romney's voice rising above a Sarah Palin's, a Mike Huckabee's, or even a Newt Gingrich's in that area. And then there's that pesky Mormon thing (best not to even bring that up).

So where does that leave good old Mitt? It's still early, of course, and it's important to remember that at this point in the last cycle Obama wasn't even on the radar screen. But it's never too early for political junkies like me to speculate and, while I think Romney is still the early favorite of the establishment, he has some rough going ahead. I would never place a large bet on his candidacy (or a small one for that matter). Even though Romney is a proven money-raiser, he's a horrible campaigner. (I think of him a little as a modern-day Republican Al Gore.)

If I had to guess--and again I know it's early--I think the next GOP nominee will be someone from the wing-nut branch of the party. (Michele Bachmann, anyone? Just kidding.) The general election would then be disastrous enough to make Republicans nostalgic for the Goldwater debacle of 1964. But this could then be a turning point for the party. It could be the catalyst for a serious re-thinking of the GOP's future. If not, move over Whigs.