According to conservative columnist George Will, Rick Perry need not worry about his crazy comments because there is no Republican establishment. There is only the Tea Party.
“A lot of establishment Republicans worrying that [Perry] might give the plot away, do you think that is that a legitimate concern or can he come up and be a credible nominee?” ABC’s Christiane Amanpour asked presidential historian Michael Beschloss Sunday.
“I think he might well be nominated,” Beschloss predicted. “Because this is the year that Republicans think they’re going to have a very good chance to elect a president, they don’t have to be so careful… The more optimistic Republicans are about victory, the more likely they are to go with someone who is as full blooded a conservative as Perry is.”
“There is no Republican establishment,” Will interrupted. “Google the Republican establishment, you’ll get 20 million hits. Google the Loch Ness monster and you’ll get a whole bunch of hits. They’re both dead or never existed.”
“There is a tea party and many say they are outside the establishment,” Amanpour noted.
“They are the establishment today,” Will explained. “In fact, the Republican establishment died at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964 when Goldwater was nominated against their frenzied wishes.”
If what he says is true, and the Tea Party has actually become the establishment, and the moderates are now the fringe -- a notion which seems to hold up to scrutiny -- then a Rick Perry nomination would seem almost inevitable.
Rick Perry's recent drop in the polls is not an implosion. It's simply a sign that moderate voters are dropping their support of him, most likely due to his comments on Social Security and his new status as the Executioner-In-Chief of the nation. Moderates do not chose the nominee, however. It's the lunatic base who shows up on primary day and chooses the nominee.
The Tea Party absolutely will not elect Mitt Romney regardless of how much pandering he does. In fact, the more he panders, the worse he looks to them.