This Gingrich surge will blow over

Moreover, most rank-and-file Republican voters just don’t care very much about the subtle differences between Romney and Cain and Perry and Gingrich and the rest. They pretty much like ’em all; after all, they’re all basically conservatives, and they’re all Republicans, aren’t they? The one that they’ll pick if they happen to get polled is therefore most likely going to be whichever one they’ve most recently heard something positive about, which in most cases probably boils down to whoever has been in heaviest rotation on Fox News recently. Two months ago that was Prince Herman. Now, it’s Newt. Current poll numbers, in other words, aren’t a good measure of firm decisions about who folks are going to support; they’re just placeholder answers for a question that the overwhelming bulk of Republicans haven’t really thought about much yet.

This doesn’t represent exceptionally irrational behavior on the part of GOP primary voters, either. After all, unless they live in Iowa or New Hampshire, voters won’t ever be choosing from this unwieldy ten candidate (or so) field, and the odds are good that for most Republicans, in most states, they’ll never have to make any choice since the nomination will be wrapped up before it gets to them. So why should they waste their time trying to figure out which one is the “real” conservative? Why go through the painful business of choosing sides? Picking a horse entails (as Democrats might recall from four years ago) finding things to dislike about a politician who you actually have nothing at all against, used to like, and will like again in the future. Not to mention potentially taking sides against your friends and neighbors, instead of agreeing with them about politics as you normally do (since most of us are surrounded much of the time by co-partisans). Much better to avoid the risk of cognitive dissonance and ignore the whole thing or treat it as entertainment until decision time comes. And with any luck, you can skip it and go straight to the part where you get to go back to disliking Barack Obama.