It’s no wonder the Republican voters are veering back and forth, rejecting one candidate after another. Fred Thompson, who was supposed to be likable once upon a time, has gotten so desperate that he submitted a four-minute candidate profile that was composed almost entirely of attacks on Romney and Huckabee. Lately, Thompson has also been busying himself attacking the Fox network for bias against his alleged campaign.

McCain and Huckabee, the candidates who seemed to speak from the heart did best, even though their hearts occasionally seemed to be completely nutty. McCain absolutely dismembered Romney on the question of torture. (Mitt refused to denounce waterboarding because he said he didn’t want the terrorists to know what we were up to.) “It’s in violation of the Geneva Convention ... how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me,” he said. Having whipped his opponent good, McCain then turned right around and started refighting Vietnam. (“We never lost a battle ... ”)

It was suspenseful, waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the next candidate to go whacky. Rounding out the field was Representative Duncan Hunter, who has  well, he has a grandson who says cute things to his teacher. Hunter appears to have done his hardest campaigning in Florida, which means he has made approximately as many stops over the last six months as a low-energy tourist on a single weekend.

Every sign points to the party nominees being chosen by the first week in February. (If given the choice, would you prefer to see your Christmas stocking filled with a lump of coal or 10 months of Clinton vs. Romney?) But on the Republican side, it’s not hard to imagine the poor voters veering from one to the other. (Him?  Oh, god no. How about  him! No, wait, what were we thinking? )

Maybe they’ll vacillate until the bitter end, leaving it all up to the final primary in South Dakota in June. And that would be great. Finally, instead of allowing a few thousand corn farmers to decide the fate of the nation, we could place the power where it rightfully belongs, with a few thousand wheat farmers.