The Shrinking GOP Field

Obama stands next to the GOP dream candidate.

So, Foghorn Leghorn Haley Barbour has decided not to run for President.

Sigh.

Given the modern GOP's fondness for secession, nullification and questioning whether African Americans are really American, it's a shame that the least "reconstructed" potential candidate for 2012 has already dropped out.  I mean Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump are trying, but really, it's a suit that doesn't fit as well.

GOP presidential primaries used to be boring, staid affairs.  Someone like McCain might win one in New Hampshire, but everyone pretty much knows who will win before the first primary.

That ended in 2008, when everyone knew that McCain Giuliani Romney McCain would win.  McCain limped along, winning pluralities of the primary votes and all of the delegates but never captivating the imagination the way Obama and Clinton's epic slugfest did.  His weaknesses as a candidate only became apparent later, most notably his impulsive decision to anoint a semi-literate grifter his heir apparent.

So this time around, the GOP has axed the winner-take-all primary system and gone to proportional representation.  This should prevent someone like Bachmann sewing up the Iowa social conservatives and New Hampshire libertarians and riding that to a premature victory.

But if a GOP candidate falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it stand a chance?