The GOP primary shows the power of the selfish crowd
on January 11th, 2012 at 12:22 pmRomney is currently ahead and is likely to be the candidate in the general election, despite pretty anemic support. He’s only winning because that anemic support is still stronger than that of any other individual candidate – if this were a two- or even three-person race, he would almost certainly be losing quite a few states and maybe the nomination.
If the remaining candidates were to agree that all but one of them would drop out and support the one who was left, the odds are pretty good that that candidate would at least threaten Romney’s lock. But they won’t, of course, because each of them thinks they should be that last man standing. Because of their selfishness, they are effectively guaranteeing Romney’s eventual nomination.
And, weirdly, that is the best-case scenario for the GOP in November. While each candidate has serious flaws, Romney’s are arguably the hardest for the Obama campaign to exploit. The GOP, which in recent years has become the party of selfishness (ahem, “enlightened self-interest”), is showing that collective selfishness can sometimes result in effective decision-making. I’m curious to see whether this lesson affects their future performance.
