Will the Republiban stay with Mittens or bring in the brokers?

[Ken Burch]

6. I'm not proposing that they dump Romney...just pondering the question of whether they might

As I see it, it might come down to the question of damage control...the question of how badly the nominee can do in the fall without doing major harm to the rest of the slate.

At this point, I think what they have to work out is not so much the question of whether Romney can win if he's nominated(that's iffy at best, and I think they get that)but whether they can nominate him and still hold the House(and at least hold their current ground in the Senate...a GOP takeover of the Senate may be getting out of reach now with so many teabaggers getting Senate noms).

In 1996, for example, they probably knew going into that convention that Dole was a doomed in November, but that he would probably at least run well enough to preserve their grip on Congress, whereas dumping him would at least put the House in serious danger. They will have to guess, now as to whether Romney or somebody else will drag the party deepest into the depths at the Congressional and Senatorial level. If they don't even have the votes to get symbolic repeals of the ACA passed over and over again, they'll be in a bad way.