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These theories are mine, and belong to me, and I own them, and what they are. Too.

1) Theory No. 1: Willard Romney has no intention of naming a vice-president before he is inaugurated next January.

I think it's the same principle that is being applied in the case of his tax returns. He has no intention of sharing his vice-presidential choice, which he's already made, with You People. I mean, what do you want? For almost seven years, he's condescended to hang around with You People, eating your corn dogs and pushing your grocery carts and pretending he doesn't have enough fk-you money, because that's the way you get appointed CEO of America, and don't think he doesn't have better ideas on how that process can be improved, laddybucks. He's given you all the personal financial information You People deserve to have. Do you honestly think he's going to share with you his high-level personnel decisions? Really, now. What do you think you are? Stockholders or something?

He'll hire who he wants to hire when he wants to hire them. If he has to have a vice-president — and don't think he doesn't have better ideas about that, either — he's going to do this in the way that all business consultants do it. A conference room. A fruit plate. Some bottled water. Hushed tones from his side of the table, and a symphony of muted sycophancy from the other. And you'll take the candidate he picks, when he picks the candidate. Of course, there will be other considerations. For example, can he write off Tim Pawlenty as a dependent at this point? Is there as substantial a deduction for the care and feeding of Chris Christie as there is for Rafalca? These are questions beyond your ken, you people, so don't bother trying to answer them.

2) Theory No. 2: There is no Republican establishment.

Prove me wrong. Show me who it is. It certainly isn't obvious anagram Reince Priebus, who's the party's national chairman, but whose only real function at this point appears to be yelling at Harry Reid on television, and making sure that Nikki Haley gets her speech finished in time for everyone to make last call at Mons Venus. John McCain and Huckleberry Graham occasionally act like they think it's them, but they only have the power to concoct well-publicized "compromises" that everyone else in the party — and, indeed, that every human being with a functioning cerebral cortex — knows will be reneged upon the first time somebody else in the party yells about them. Where's the Republican with the power to tell Romney that he's getting killed on those tax returns, or the Republican voters in Missouri that it probably wasn't the best idea in the world to run a Jeebus-sodden whackadoo who compares student loans to Stage Three cancer, and who once hung out with militia groups? There is nobody who can simply tell everyone else to shut the fck up a minute so I can think. The Democrats have their own intramural squabbling, but nobody really doubts where the actual clout resides. If you want to see why the idea of "faction" gave the vapors to Mr. Madison and the rest of them, look at the GOP.

The religious wing of the party is completely on its own hook. The fiscal conservatives get wilder and wilder as Tea Party economics builds its own unaccountable constituency. Everybody's got independent money so nobody's under anyone else's control — except Romney, whose personal fortune nonetheless has not kept him from being under everyone's control. This has made the Republicans unable to cooperate in the act of governing even if they wanted to, and there's a strong element in the party that simply doesn't want to, and it's not under control, either. It has made a hash out of the candidacy of Willard Romney. Look at the DefCon 2 outrage that occurred this week when a Romney spokesman suggested that what he'd done in Massachusetts regarding health-care did not necessarily involve the sacrifice of babies on the altar of Margaret Sanger, or whatever. (I'll have more on this in an upcoming issue of the mag.) The flying monkeys must be appeased, too. The Republican party has power centers, but no center of power. That may turn out to be enough but, for now, ain't nobody here can play this game.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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