FOUR years ago this week, I boldly predicted that Mitt Romney would inevitably be his party’s nominee.

It was admittedly not really the boldest of predictions. But at the time the press corps was obsessed with the revolving door of non-Romney “front-runners,” and many intelligent people were still convinced that Romney’s ideological deviations would cost him the nomination in the end.

They did not, and you could predict as much by using a very simple method: All of the other candidates were impossible to imagine as the party’s nominee, so by process of elimination, Romney it simply had to be.

2016 is very different: The G.O.P. candidates are stronger overall, there’s no one with Romney’s hammerlock on money and endorsements, and Donald Trump and Ben Carson have more staying power than Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain.

But you can still play a version of the elimination game this time around.

Play it with me. No major party has ever nominated a figure like Trump or Carson, and I don’t believe that the 2016 G.O.P. will be the first. Rand Paul’s libertarian moment came and went, Carly Fiorina seems like she’s running for a cabinet slot, John Kasich is too moderate (and ornery about it), Chris Christie has never recovered from the traffic cones. Scott Walker and Rick Perry are gone. Ted Cruz has the base’s love, but far too many leading party actors hate him. Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee are boxed out by Carson and Cruz; Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki are boxed out by voter indifference.