If the campaign is distilled to Mitt vs. Perry on April 3rd, it’s advantage Perry, who has a better and more consistent record from the conservative point of view. And conservatives know that this is their chance to be heard. The general election will focus on the quicksilver independents. Psychologically, the anyone-but-Mitt voters are more likely to give Perry a second chance than to change their minds and settle at long last for what they didn’t want in the first place.

A more interesting explanation is that, without external threats, the military Kemalist faction could no longer prove its vital relevance, even to itself. No more USSR, no heavily armed Iraq, Greece long since surpassed, Cyprus a fait accompli, Syria in turmoil, Iran occupied in the Gulf and not a problem anyway. The trend in the last twenty years has been relentlessly against the military as eternal protector of the republic from neighboring threats. Turkey’s other neighbors, Bulgaria, Georgia & Armenia would only produce smiles if cited as real threats. And if there is one thing besides defeat that an army cannot permit it is being laughed at. Apparently the Kurds cannot alone fill the gap.

With the neighborhood looking comparatively safe, commerce has flourished and the usual tensions have arisen along with questions of Turkey’s role in the world. The secular European avenue having been blocked, Islam is left as the driving force. This trend has developed no doubt because of the skill of the Islamic politicians who have avoided the usual rhetorical and political extremism. Perhaps they intend to lower the hammer once completely in charge but so far they have been moderate and gradual in their strategy. This prevented the army from acting decisively to retain its hold on power.

Now–with the resignation of the country’s top generals–the process of Islamification appears dependent solely on the Islamists themselves. The question now is whether Turkey can produce a sane, sustainable Islamic government within a democratic framework. Given Islam’s antidemocratic DNA, the country’s neighbors should pray that this unique venture succeeds.

Let’s try an analogy from computers. Computers store information needed for calculation in random access memory (RAM). This storage is blank until filled with appropriate information–equivalent to that part of the brain used for thinking. In contrast, read-only memory (ROM) is permanent and contains fixed, reusable data–equivalent to the brain’s instinctive behavior. This may explain Rahm Emanuel plunging a knife into a table while screaming “Dead!” after the name of each political opponent.

In politics, for each issue, ROM is typically used. The ideologue need not program this part of memory; he simply reads a slogan or recalls an image when prompted. This explains why people talk past one another on political issues, ROM vs. ROM.

The trick to getting a real discussion, RAM vs. RAM, is to avoid activating the ROM. For instance, keeping an argument specific to an individual instead of a class of people can sidestep the ROM trap. Talking to a liberal about aid to “the poor” will get nowhere–of course the war on poverty must be fought, although it’s now called aid to working families. But in discussing a particular person–preferably known to the liberal–we may hear from the liberal how more money won’t help him–he needs to work harder, quit spending on frivolities, already sponges off his mom, etc. Personalization invokes RAM to weigh the details.

So let’s make some assumptions: Anyone making a primary challenge would be (1) a successful pol, ideally a governor, who (2) needs national exposure and can (3) credibly run against Obama without damaging his future chances. Further, such a person can reason that (4) the challenge will fail, (5) Obama will lose in 2012, so (6) his Democrat 2012 primary challenger will be a front runner for 2016 against the Republican incumbent. Such a person benefits from the might-have-been/shoulda-won effect.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is a good fit for such a scenario. He provides a welcome alternative to Obama as a fresh yet solid choice in a world of governors touting their not-from-Washington accomplishments. Cuomo can run a high level campaign based on getting New York’s finances in shape and confidently handling various “disasters.” No need to beat up Obama and risk intraparty backlash. Having just been elected governor in 2010, he has no worries about the calendar. A primary test run is a low risk preliminary for 2016 and would remind Democrat fund-raisers that all is not lost in the post-Messiah world.

Romney may be making a similar calculation. Obama has governed so far left that any normal attempt to steer to the middle likely falls short. Romney can move left and try to shoulder Obama out of the vote rich middle. If in doing so the candidates begin to sound alike, well, Romney may think that the result favors him. And in the final sprint he has the edge in hair.

The Left, in this scenario, will grudgingly accept Romney as a common sense means of removing their now burdensome historic choice.

The Right in Romney’s view will have no choice but to follow him, happy to at least end the Barackian nightmare.

However, the Tea Party will likely reject as obsolete any “move to the middle” strategy. 2008 is a bygone age! They’ll demand a true conservative. So, can Romney shoulder first the Right then the Left on his run up the middle?

The second tactic was demonstrated in the Scott Brown Senate race–seems like such old news now, doesn’t it? I mean contributions of money. As a politico once said, money is the mother’s milk of politics. The sum given need not be great. Five dollars times a million of the fed up given to our candidate can overwhelm the opponent. The beauty of small contributions is their sudden growth, something like the appearance of a flash mob, that leaves the political elite dumbfounded. It just doesn’t fit their paradigm. You can almost see their heads explode in confusion. As before, they cannot apply their normal malevolent strategies to an amorphous cloud, in this case a cloud of grassroots money.

His detractors saw the specter of socialism and wondered what they could do. Many realized that they had been asleep politically and that serious danger now threatened as a result. The usual apathy and defeatism were no longer options. Shame, fear, anger and patriotism welled up. In search of something to do many attended tea parties rallies and unexpectedly discovered that they had millions of allies. They were not alone and helpless after all. The question remained: how exactly do we stop the political opposition?

The answer proved to be standard politics. Millions of messages were sent to Republicans in the House and Senate as well as in the state legislatures. This push stiffened the party officeholders to stand against the Democrat agenda, preventing Obama and Co. from shielding themselves with bipartisanship, strategy they probably had relied upon. The lines were drawn.

With a taste of power, often for the first time, the tea partiers increased the pressure, enjoying the success of their candidates and initiatives. They could literally send a small contribution to a candidate one day and read the next that hundreds of thousands, or even millions, had flowed in overnight. The public’s consciousness had truly been raised.

Aware of the dangers averted and those still to come, the constitutional conservatives represent a movement just coherent enough to be effective while remaining amorphous to standard counterattacks. Obama has spent and regulated so much that a simple return to normality represents a vibrant counter program. A return to constitutional government is the program.

Using a unique opportunity, Obama has created an awakening. For that we can be thankful.

But Obama’s missed opportunity is no doubt his failure to be a racial uniter. His promise to heal the racial divide, a vital theme in his 2008 campaign might have been bolstered for instance by the obvious step of criticizing the more radical elements of the race hustling business. The classic antecedent is Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment in 1992. This would have reassured non-blacks at little cost to Obama and provided breathing room for his policy initiatives. The shrinking number of guilty whites would have been grateful and the rest would have enjoyed the respite from the race question that only a black president could supply.

Instead Obama moved in the other direction, exacerbating racial tension to no constructive end. His clumsy comments culminating in the beer summit devalued the office while raising troubling questions about his commitment to racial harmony. And his Justice Department’s shameful refusal to complete the prosecution of black thugs who intimidated white voters further revealed his abandonment of high flown campaign promises.

Even after squandering a unique opportunity, Obama’s personal popularity could nevertheless rebound to a degree should he correct course on the race question. This may be more attractive to him considering the probably heavy Democrat Congressional losses in the upcoming election. Unfortunately for him the number of guilty whites seems sharply reduced and the race card deck has suffered long term devaluation from his own actions.

Given that the rightmost candidate and officeholder needs little attention, and the lefties are hopeless, let’s consider the RINO as the object of our political work. He who must be herded forcibly in the right direction. Combining myriad shouts of support when he thunders right and threats when he veers left, we keep after him relentlessly in the manner of an ancient hunt. For even the largest RINO is ultimately a game animal. And his destination is the cliff of retirement. By then, an election or two after the dawn of the hunt, suitable replacements should be available.

By such means we keep seats away from the opponent, use the RINO to the maximum extent, and plan for sunny feast days.