How They Became Contenders

Howard Kurtz has a lengthy piece on the media's response to the chaos in the Republican primary. There are a couple of quoteworthy paragraphs in it.

First, the confusion of the media:

And I think Salon's Walter Shapiro put his experienced finger on it: "There is the irresistible human temptation to impose rationality on chaos."

That's it! Journalists are ticked off because the Republican race is defying our attempts to wrap it into a nice, neat narrative. This is what we do for a living. And if we can't say what's going on, who needs us? You could get just as good a take from your Uncle Harry.

Or your HolyCoast.com.

Then there's this on how the various candidates became contenders:

Time's Michael Scherer boils it down for those of us with MTV attention spans:

" Mitt Romney: He would not be a contender without being much richer than everyone else.

" Rudy Giuliani: He would not be a contender without having led New York in the weeks after September 11, 2001, a fact that still defines him six years later.

" John McCain: He would not be a contender without having forgiven George W. Bush after the 2000 election and stood by him in 2004.

" Mike Huckabee: He would not be a contender without having spent more than a decade learning how to move a crowd to salvation in Jesus Christ.

" Fred Thompson: He would not be a contender without having played one in the movies."

There's probably a lot of truth in that. You can read all of Kurtz' analysis here.