Why the bloody GOP primary won’t help Obama in the fall

A few more “bad nights” like Super Tuesday and Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential nominee. With his haul from yesterday, according to AP, Romney now has 415 delegates, Rick Santorum 176, Newt Gingrich 105, and Ron Paul 47 out of the 1,144 needed for the GOP nomination.

To be the frontrunner, you need to kill the frontrunner. And like a poor marksman—or at least an underfunded one—Santorum keeps missing the target. First Michigan, now Ohio. Online betting market Intrade gives Romney a 90% chance of being the GOP nominee. Of course, no one has a mathematical lock on the nomination yet. The fight will continue.

The common pundit wisdom is that the combative primary season is hurting the GOP’s chances of beating President Obama in the fall. But as a believer in the Feiler Faster Thesis, I think all the current unpleasantness will seem like distant history by September. Unless the economy surges—though just the opposite may be more likely if gas and Greece don’t cooperate—we’re looking at a very close race.

Yesterday, I examined three forecasting models. Yahoo!’s model has Obama at 303 electoral votes with key swing states pretty much a dead heat. Yale’s Fair Model has Obama at 49% of the popular vote, the Hibbs Bread and Peace model at 48%. Like I said, it’s going to be this close.

The counter argument: GOPers feel about Romney like Democrats did about John Kerry in 2004. Meh. And just as intense Democratic dislike of George W. Bush wasn’t enough to make Kerry president, intense Republican repugnance toward Obama won’t be enough to get Romney first past the finish line. The GOP is just too divided.

Read More at The American By James Pethokoukis, The American