1) The Republican party will nominate Mitt Romney, and the election will be a closely contested competition between two men who are disliked by the most active parts of their respective parties.
2) The Republicans will nominate one of the crazy brigade, who will have a small set of very loud proponents but will scare moderate Republicans enough not to vote, and scare Democrats and independents enough that they will turn up to vote for Obama.
(There are other, less likely options. Huntsman is centralist enough to gets votes from unsatisfied independents, and I think Perry could win if he managed to get the nomination. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/how-can-... is a good summary of the current state of the Republican race)
3) Republican party wakes up and realizes they have an amazing opportunity to beat Obama if they nominate Ron Paul - who opposes SOPA http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3250330 but the Republican establishment would rather have 4 more years of corporatism under Obama than that.
I understand Paul has some support on HN, and I even understand why, but there is no way that he can win the election.
This isn't because of some conspiricy, but simply because what he believes isn't supported by enough people. Worse, many (most?) actively oppose at least some of his policies.
Not only will Democrats oppose him, but most Republicans don't believe he represents them (see recent comments from various Republicans about how they wouldn't vote for him)
(Personally, I think SOPA passing would be a minor price to pay compared to Paul becoming President (and I am totally opposed to SOPA - I just think its importance is much less than some of the things Paul would do))
Among many other things, his support for Israel is poor to non existent, and someone who doesn't support Israel has no chance of winning. Support for Israel is around 63% in the general public, and in the high 80's among Republicans.
His positions on a host of other things appear completely crazy to most people, and they'll never vote for him.
1) The Republican party will nominate Mitt Romney, and the election will be a closely contested competition between two men who are disliked by the most active parts of their respective parties.
2) The Republicans will nominate one of the crazy brigade, who will have a small set of very loud proponents but will scare moderate Republicans enough not to vote, and scare Democrats and independents enough that they will turn up to vote for Obama.
(There are other, less likely options. Huntsman is centralist enough to gets votes from unsatisfied independents, and I think Perry could win if he managed to get the nomination. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/how-can-... is a good summary of the current state of the Republican race)