The elephant races

Reading the Republican primaries, as Florida prepares to vote

As the days tick down to the January 31 Republican presidential primary in the American state of Florida, the three remaining mainstream candidates would like to think that it is still an open race. The former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, has always been the candidate to beat; but of the three completed primaries so far, he has only won one, in New Hampshire. The Midwestern heartland state of Iowa went to a former senator, Rick Santorum, after a closely-fought election that was, at first, awarded to Mr Romney. And socially conservative South Carolina, in which Mr Romney initially built a commanding lead, gave the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, a 12-point victory. Hammered by these victories, the rest of what was a crowded Republican field dropped out; these three candidates steam into Florida with honours evenly divided. Of course, it is not that simple. Mr Gingrich’s South Carolina victory was followed by a sustained attack from his own party's leadership on his credentials as an intellectual and leader. (One said: “If Newt Gingrich is ever the smartest guy in the room — leave that room.”). These, together with a poor showing in debates, have combined to turn Mr Gingrich’s early lead in Florida opinion polls into, at last count, a nine-point lead for Mr Romney.

In India, the conspicuous shortage of inner-party democracy is often contrasted to the sometimes raucous debates within parties in other countries. The nature of the Republican primaries so far points to both the strengths and the weakness of the transparent American system of preliminary internal elections. The strength of the system is evident in the fact that, from day one, Mr Romney has always looked like the likely candidate. If he does indeed win, then a Republican base often condemned as extremist will have nominated a pragmatic moderate who would, based on his record, likely govern from the centre of the political spectrum — not too different, in truth, from Mr Obama.

The weakness of the system is evident from how, farcically, one unlikely candidate after another became the “front-runner” before dropping out. These have included Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, first noticed for calling then-Senator Obama “anti-American”; a former pizza-company CEO, Herman Cain; the big-talking reality-television star and real-estate developer, Donald Trump; and the Texas governor, former air force pilot, and all-round George W Bush clone, Rick Perry. Observers have begun to worry that the primaries are less like elections and more like reality TV, with some candidates jumping in to promote their books, raise easy money, or burnish their celebrity status. And the bruising nature of the primaries — in which Mr Romney, the former CEO of Bain Capital, has repeatedly been caricatured as a predatory capitalist -- could leave its mark on the general election campaign if he is nominated. It will be intriguing to see if the radical Republican base, so supportive of the free market, effectively torpedoes its moderate nominee’s campaign by painting him as too much a beneficiary of deregulation and the market.