Let me add once more point here, money-wise. I have seen estimates as high as $500 million required to be raised by a candidate who must go all the way to November. I think that is high. My estimates are lower by about 15%.
So 425 million dollars is to be spent to have any chance of competing to win. The DNC can toss some of that into Hillary’s pile in September. The GOP can’t do that for the GOP nominee.
A reasonable estimate of Romney’s fund raising/spending to date would be about $85 million. That means 340 million to go, just to get into the arena and compete.
New Hampshire early voting started some time ago so we cannot say “not a vote has been cast” yet, but regardless we don’t know what is going to happen other than one particular truth. That is:
Fred Thompson is not going to be President of the United States driving a bus across America while Hillary and her staff of experts are in a leased and repainted B757 hitting every target locale in the nation.
Your “we need to nominate Slick Willard because he can pay for his own campaign” analysis is absurd.