In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

John Cuneo

David Brooks: Gail, we’ve been having our online conversations since the 2008 election, but this is the first one they’ve asked us to do for the actual newspaper. Are we really ready for the big time? My view is that it’s like when Jennifer Aniston tried to make the leap to the big screen. A possible disaster, leading to embarrassment for all involved.

Gail Collins: Yeah, right now we’re talking for Web and print. Does that make us biplatform? I’ve never had a conversation on paper before. It’s making me feel all crinkly. But our mission is to discuss the Republicans. Super Tuesday is coming! What are you feeling?

New rules empower protest candidates and weaken the parties.

David: My first emotion is pity, and the tremendous ocean of it I feel for Mitt Romney. Think of it. There he was a few years ago sitting on the front porch of his fourth summer home innocently wondering why the trees of New England are so unpleasantly tall, and he turns to his buddies, who own Nascar teams, hotel chains, political parties and various small emirates, and he asks them if it would be a good idea if he ran for president.

They point out that a presidential campaign would allow him to recite obscure verses of patriotic songs all across America, so he agrees to do it.

Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Gail: All the while knowing that he would eventually have to explain why he once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car …

David: It must have seemed so innocent. Now here it is eight years later. He’s stuck in a miserable slog against kamikaze candidates who have nothing to lose. His reputation is flushed down the loo. The passion of his most fervent supporters rarely even rises to room temperature. The value of the nomination, even if he gets it, is quickly diminishing, like a bowl of potato chips on Newt Gingrich’s TV tray.

Do you think Mitt Romney is enjoying himself right now? Would any normal person want this?

Gail: Well, my answers would be A) if he’s winning, he’s happy and B) presidential candidates are not normal.

But what do you think is going to happen next? If this campaign has made Romney sound like a goofball, it’s made Rick Santorum impersonate a rabid ferret. Santorum actually started out the season sounding like the smart-but-ignored, off-putting-but-hardworking guy in the debates. But now he’s the candidate who thinks it’s a good plan to appeal to working-class voters by saying that John Kennedy made him want to puke.

I’ve always thought it was going to be Romney. I think everybody outside of the Santorum family thinks it’s going to be Romney. Even Callista Gingrich is probably secretly resigned to the inevitable.

David: My guess is that we’ve entered the long, slow gantlet phase of the campaign. Romney gets the nomination, but everybody gets to spend the next few months poking him with hot irons — his competitors, the media, the Democrats.

If I were Romney, I’d spend the next period of the campaign reading the Stoics, maybe Marcus Aurelius: “Misfortune nobly borne is good fortune.” Or perhaps Epictetus: “Difficulties show what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.”

Gail: I do love the way you throw Epictetus in when I’m least expecting it.

David: The odd thing is that Santorum seems to be enjoying all this. That’s in part because he has a tropism for the tragic. Most of us look past bad events. We want life to look like our photo albums — a bunch of happy faces, editing out all the bad times. But Santorum seems to dwell on misfortune — the enemies the country faces, the depravity closing in on us, the unfair criticism hurled against him, the terrible things that have happened. When the campaign goes into its fallen state, he has the pleasure of seeing his tragic worldview confirmed.

Gail: One of the interesting things we’ve learned during this campaign is how many really loopy billionaires this country has. How could somebody who had enough judgment to make more than $20 billion come to feel that what this country really needs is President Newt Gingrich?

David: The primary campaign would be over if not for the Citizens United decision. If Gingrich and Santorum didn’t have “super PAC” sugar daddies, they couldn’t afford to run campaigns. They’d have dropped out and Romney would be cruising.

Super PACs empower protest candidates. Super PACs prolong primary campaigns. Super PACs weaken parties. The irony is that Barack Obama is the first beneficiary of the new campaign finance rules.

Gail: Although he is definitely short on billionaires. No matter how many rich guys the president has in his corner, I am confident that super wealth unleashed is going to wind up helping the Republicans in the long run. And I can’t believe any normal citizen is looking at what’s happening with anything but horror.

Since we’re on the subject of campaign rules, tell me: What’s the story with the demise of winner-take-all primaries? Romney won Michigan, but Santorum got nearly the same number of delegates. Even if Mitt does really well on Tuesday, the delegates could still be divided up in a way that may well leave him with only a modest lead over his opponent. So Santorum can keep on losing but still send the nominating convention into chaos.

This used to be a system that only the softhearted Democrats inflicted on their primaries. Everybody wins! The Republicans were the tough guys who said, sorry, we can nominate only one person.

David: Excellent point. The shift in the Republican delegate selection process is an insult to the ghost of Ayn Rand, assuming she has a ghost. I’d only point out that there is no sign that the quality of nominees has increased since the bad old days when party bosses ran things.

Gail: Another reason it’s so hard to round up enough support to clinch the nomination — no matter how nuts your opponents are — is because many people who are elected as delegates in caucus states aren’t actually committed to voting for the person they were theoretically committed to.

Are you ready to admit the caucus system has to go? Look what happens! You hold the elections under conditions that exclude a vast number of qualified voters. Then you tally the votes in a way that makes it impossible to tell who really won if the race is close. And based on those totally suspect results, you send people off to a state convention, where they elect delegates who can generally do whatever the heck they want.

One of the interesting things we’ve learned is how many really loopy billionaires this country has.

David: Personally, I love the caucus process, while acknowledging its flaws. I remember once going to a Democratic caucus in Iowa where the supporters of John Edwards tried to lure away the vegan supporters of Dennis Kucinich by offering them steaks. It’s the sort of quirky artifact that us Burkeans love.

Gail: So where are you with Mitt Romney these days? You used to tell me that he’d be really good once he actually got the nomination and was free to repudiate all the positions he’d made up to get through the primaries.

David: I don’t know if he’ll be a great nominee, but I still think he’d be a fine president. I keep running into people who worked with him at Bain or when he was governor and they saw he was an awesome manager. Even Democrats say this.

Gail: I hear that, too. However, I cannot stress too often that running the country is not the same as running a business. Not even remotely.

David: One way to think about Romney is this: Are his troubles mostly a result of his weaknesses as a candidate or the oddities of the Republican electorate this year? I’d say it’s 30 percent Romney’s fault and 70 percent that large parts of the Republican electorate want someone who either is a joke (Cain) or can’t possibly win or govern (Santorum).

I just wish one of these candidates would describe an enactment strategy. How, realistically, are any of them going to get their legislation passed?

Gail: This has been a bad patch for moderates in general. Did Olympia Snowe’s retirement from the Senate send another signal that their days are over?

David: Not over, but in hibernation. On Tuesday I wrote a column calling for mainstream Republicans to get in there and fight for their party. The very same day, Snowe decides to call it quits. Shows my influence.

There’s no way the Republicans can continue to drift inevitably into a protest movement, though. The electorate has moved right, but not that far right.

Here’s what I think may happen. Romney gets the nomination and is defeated. Republicans decide they are sick of nominating “moderates” and next time they go haywire. Then the party gets really crushed and sanity returns.

Gail: Really gloomy for your side, but it certainly works for me.