Are We Really Down To Only Two Candidates?

And one of them is not Rick Perry? This is depressing (from Morning Jolt):

Is it really down to Romney and Gingrich?

The latest from Gallup suggests so: "Newt Gingrich (62%) and Mitt Romney (54%) are the only two candidates Republicans say would be acceptable presidential nominees from their party, emphasizing the degree to which the GOP race has narrowed down to these two men at this juncture. A majority of Republicans say each of the other six candidates measured would not be acceptable nominees."

Our Katrina Trinko runs down the surprisingly high "unacceptable" scores: "The percentage who view Santorum and Paul as unacceptable nominees is 62 percent, Cain and Huntsman 58 percent, Bachmann 56 percent, Perry 52 percent, Romney 41 percent, and Gingrich 34 percent."

We are a very my-way-or-the-highway party right now, aren't we? There's "he's not my first or second choice" and then there's "unacceptable."

At Hot Air, Allahpundit tries to get his head around the notion of Newt as the consensus candidate:

Romney's the only candidate above 50 percent with both ideological wings of the party, but Gingrich is right on the brink -- and his advantage among conservatives and especially tea partiers is huge. (It's no outlier, I think: PPP reports today that Gingrich leads Romney among Iowa tea partiers 35/4(!).) Among those same tea partiers Perry is all the way back at fifth place in acceptability, behind Cain. And Ron Paul, who's always been treated by the media as a godfather of the tea-party movement, is buried at 27 percent, 12 points worse than he does with non-tea-partiers. Thus does a horrible possibility begin to dawn on the press: Could the most radically extreme extremist wingnuts of all actually be pretty darned pragmatic in choosing their nominee?

At National Journal, Josh Kraushaar looks at the poll and surveys the top advisers for Mr. Second Place, Romney: "The goal of Team Romney in the coming weeks: Spend big bucks to raise Gingrich's negatives, and hope he'll fade like the other candidates who enjoyed their time in the spotlight. It's becoming clear that Romney isn't able to win the Republican nomination, but can prevail if all his rivals self-destruct and he's left as the last candidate standing." 

I still think Perry's candidacy can rebound, but he's running out of time. Once the new year hits the primaries will start coming thick and fast and failure to do reasonably well in the early going will doom us to Newt or Mitt. And I don't think Newt will last long, even though his name isn't Romney. You just know there's all kinds of information out there waiting to come out that will hurt him with general election voters.