Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept.

It is rare to the point of Almost Never that NYT columnist Ross Douthat writes something not annoying, so when he says something we find intelligent and worth quoting, we want to be nice and share. Likewise, the so-called candidates* for the Republican nomination are so down-the-rabbit-hole deranged and delusional we normally prefer not to give them any more attention in the Upper Blogosphere, but we can make this one exception. We’re not sure he’ll turn out to be correct, but he says it well. Regarding “The Inevitable Nominee,” Douthat writes:

. . . when you have eliminated the impossible, as Sherlock Holmes told Watson, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This rule holds for presidential contests as well as for whodunits: Romney is improbable, but his rivals are impossible, and so he will be the nominee.

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* The exception is Jon Huntsmann, former governor of Utah and ambassador to China, who is polling around one or two percent. He alone among the G.O.P. candidates has refused to sign Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform “Taxpayer Protection” pledge (not to raise taxes).