GOP 2008: Doesn't Anyone Here Want To Win This Thing

I'm beginning to think that the only viable contenders to win the Republican nomination are Fred Thompson or a soon-to-be-revived Sonny Bono, or whatever other actor they can dig up. Because the current crop of candidates are really a bunch of losers, and they've collectively had a terrible week, by any objective rendering. Here's the report from the front-runners.

• Front-runner Rudy Giuliani came close to ending his candidacy this week by announcing his support for public funding of abortion, which I'm not even sure I support. Conservatives in South Carolina will have a slightly more extreme opinion than I. The National Review is already all over him.

• John McCain is still reeling from his career-ending stroll through Baghdad, with another member of his core constituency, the media, calling him out:

It's disgraceful for a man seeking highest office, I think, to talk utter rubbish. And that is utter rubbish. It's electoral propaganda. It is simply not true. No one in his right mind who has been to Baghdad believes that story.

Now, McCain and some other senators were there on Sunday, and they claimed, "Oh, we walked around for a whole hour…and we drove in from the airport. Gosh, aren't we great, we drove in from the airport." Excuse me, Mr. McCain, you drove in in a large convoy of heavily armed vehicles. The last one had a sign on it saying "Keep back 100 yards. Deadly force authorized." Every single car that they approached or passed pulled over and stopped, because that's the way it is. When one of those security details goes by, every ordinary person gets the hell out of the way, in case they get shot.

It's getting so bleak for McCain that reporters are credibly talking about his dropping out. Of course, they wrote that about John Kerry too before he won the nomination. But McCain's difficulties, especially his enduring support for a failed occupation in Iraq through willful lying, are going to be near-impossible to transcend.

• And Mitt Romney, this week's "juggernaut" due to his fundraising numbers (which include a $2 million-plus personal loan to himself), has hurt himself with his statement that he's "a lifelong hunter," when "lifelong" apparently means twice in his entire life, 45 years apart. I guess by this standard, I am a "lifelong gun enthusiast" because my dad took me to a shooting range when I was 11. This seems like a minor point, but once you get that mojo as a serial fabricator on you, it's hard to get off, particularly where the media is concerned. Just ask Al Gore.

I really think that the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination at this point is "VACANT."