We have until March 6, 2012 to pick our poison (which is coincidentally a homonym with an exaggerated New Jersey accent for “person”) for president. Any calls for anyone to drop out before then are premature. I want a Not-Romney to emerge as badly as the next faithful conservative, but while we don’t have a lot of time, we do have some. The next debate could be definitive.

Here is the part where I trash everybody and prioritize some people over others in a way that will be very unpopular with some of my fellow conservatives, but hopefully you will read this without the sunglasses of your prejudice and find some perspective:

• I don’t want a philandering former Establishment guy with questionable ethics as my president, but he’s a DAMN SIGHT BETTER THAN
• the guy who equates the private lives of consenting adults with the violent felony of pedophilia and never met an earmark or spending program he couldn’t go along with–but even he’s a DAMN SIGHT BETTER THAN
• the guy who would forfeit our interests abroad, leaving an overwhelming vacuum of power that our enemies would be only too glad to fill–but yes, even he’s a DAMN SIGHT BETTER THAN
• Willard Mitt Romney

Maybe Operation Chaos (vote for whoever is 2nd in delegate total) is a good thing–our only chance at a Jeb Bush or a Paul Ryan or a Jim DeMint at the convention.

Contrary to what Mr. Create-an-Aura-of-Inevitability would like you to believe, now is NOT the time to be going after Obama. The time now is to be trying our candidates by fire. Well, we’ve been doing that, and they have so far come up sorely lacking. There is still time to see if one of our candidates not named Romney can pull it out by March 6, 2012 (trust me, that’s the deadline, not before, and not after). If not, that is what a convention is for, the ultimate backstop.

DON’T WORRY, we will emerge from the convention united around someone not named Romney, and everyone will get along again, and we will defeat Obama with this individual. As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, “do not doubt me!”

In 27 days…pick your poison.

I appreciate the substantive discussions of Redstate, but there’s a little political junkie in all of us, and this post is to that end. With all the drama of Iowa and the ups and the downs of the polling, here is your chance to go “on the record” (as Greta would say) and show off just how politically astute you are.

You’ve followed the race for months now. You know your stuff. You know the polls. You know who has the momentum. You know who doesn’t. Make a comment saying who you think will finish 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. It’s time to take off our partisan hats and put on our neutral political analyst non-wishful-thinking caps. Let’s show the world how tuned in we are and how accurate we can be. I’ll start us off:

1st – Ron Paul

2nd – Rick Santorum

3rd – Mitt Romney

If you want to throw in what you’d ideally like to see the order be, you can add that to your comment. Just make sure you put your actual prediction first. Have fun and we’ll see ya back here Tuesday night!