GOP Nomination Contest Over With Romney Winning in New Hampshire

by Michelle Goldberg Jan 10, 2012 9:36 PM EST

Mitt’s convincing glide toward victory effectively ends the competition for the Republican nomination. The question now is how the Tea Party handles being shut out of the primary.

There is no more contest for the Republican nomination. The truth is, there hasn’t been for a while now, though pundits have been loath to admit it. Mitt Romney is gliding to victory despite the fact that he is widely disliked by the grassroots of the party that is about to nominate him, because conservatives have failed rather spectacularly to come up with a credible alternative.

GOP Candidates Storm New Hampshire

Romney 2012 — Mitt Romney at a primary-night rally in Manchester, N.H. Behind him are his sons Tagg and Craig and his wife, Ann. (Elise Amendola / AP Photo)

It’s as if Democrats had been forced to nominate Joe Lieberman in 2004 because the only other candidates were Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader.

The Tea Party is too fragmented to mount a reasonable challenge to a frontrunner who epitomizes the Republican establishment.

Going forward, the story is going to be how the right reacts to being shut out of a primary it expected to dominate. In 2010, after all, everyone thought the Tea Party was going to be a decisive force in the Republican presidential nomination. Now it’s too fragmented to mount a reasonable challenge to a frontrunner who epitomizes the Republican establishment.

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Michelle Goldberg is a senior contributing writer for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, winner of the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. Goldberg’s work has appeared in Glamour, Rolling Stone, The Nation, New York magazine, The Guardian, and The New Republic. Her next book is about the world-traveling adventuress, actress, and yoga evangelist Indra Devi.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

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