As this year’s Super Tuesday is now done with, the merry cavalcade that is the Republican presidential primary carries on apace, with innumerable debates, glad-handing and flesh-pressing predicted until the first primaries in January. Just as predictably, the Republican race is in the middle of another transitional point, where two challengers rise and fall around Mitt Romney,who hovers steadfastly at around 23 percent in the polls.

The one crashing and burning with a fiery trail of vagaries, contradictions and implausibilities is Herman Cain,one time CEO of the Godfathers Pizza chain, now token minority candidate.He is also, we learn, accused of sexual harassment, explaining his rapid displacementfrom the good books of voters(and women voters in particular).The one rising to his zenith is former Leader of the House Newt Gingrich,at whom commentators looked askanceearlier this summer when his campaign staff left him in droves, after he took a break from the campaign trail to holiday in the Aegean Sea.

Other than that inconvenience, Mr Gingrich hasn’t had much to worry about in the debates. He has so far been content to play the pundit at his podium and hoping to sell a few more books inplace of actually getting the presidency.No doubt he will be just as flash-in-the pan as every other challenger, leaving Romney to limp to victory as the Republican nominee next year.

This latest development underscores just how much anybody-but-Romney sentiment exists within the Republican Party. Over the past year they’ve tried just about anyone, with Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Texas’ Governor Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now friend Gingrich each at one time or another tipped to claim the accolade.At least, so they themselves have claimed; the reality is that no one really expects that it won’t be Romney who ends up squaring off against President Obama this time next November. It is just so emblematic of the Republican identity crisis that the man whose campaign was thought to have imploded on a yacht off the coast of Rhodes should once again be seriously considered for the nomination.

And an identity crisis really is the best word for it. Most Republicans know they don’t want Romney – his seemingly endless self-contradictions over policy are reason enough, but cited too are the Massachusetts ‘socialist’ healthcare system that he oversaw when governor there, as well as the negligible job growth in the state under his tenure.It might be because he’s perceived as generally unlikable and unsympathetic to the woeful economic state of millionsof his countrymen. It might even be(and here the conspiring voices quietensomewhat) because he’s Mormon.

The hunt has been on for the anti-Romney for a good long time now, but the perfect candidate has either been well hidden or bullishly resistant to entering the race. Each of those who have come and gone represent facets of Republican-ness. Virulent social conservatives such as Bachmann and ex-Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum are hopeless on fiscal and foreign policy. The folksy and bombastic Cainand Perry have both crumpled under scrutiny over their past conduct andtheir present grasp of the issues that remain most important to the American people. Jon Huntsman is tainted by his past association to the Obama administrationin his capacity as US Ambassador to China – and there again, the Mormon thing raises its supposedly contentious head. Ron Paul appeals either to the very old or (strangely)to the very young, but fails to win the confidences of the Republicans’ key demographic – the boardrooms of corporations trading on Wall Street – for campaign donations.

What Republican primary voters don’t seem to realise is that, as demonstrated by the results of elections acrossthe country last week, their values no longer accord with those of the GOP. Across the country, so-called Republicans have been fighting back against their local and state governments’ attempts to restrict their voting rights,diminish their unions and legislate for their uteruses. Once upon a time,the Republican Party supported job growth and giving the American people an opportunity to realise the AmericanDream for themselves. Today’s Republicans supposedly hark back to the‘simpler times’ of the fifties and sixties.They have nothing in common with those of Ike Eisenhower’s ilk, and even Ronald Reagan would baulk at some oftheir most blatant gerrymandering and filibustering.

Conservatives of America should understand that the Republican presidential candidates, almost to a man,regard the voters as suckers for a well done campaign ad and a vinyl-wrapped RV. It is to be admitted that it is hard in today’s America (today’s anywhere,for that matter) to find a politician who represents their voters without any thought to lobbyists and campaign donations. You can bet though, that the Republican presidential nominee, whoever they are, will follow the money and not the convictions of their voters.