The race for the Republican presidential nomination has certainly been anything but dull this year. Every time you turn around, it seems another name pops up as the alternative to Mitt Romney.

I treated this satirically last week, with a suggestion that the seven major Republican candidates band together and run as "Anybody But Romney, Incorporated," so if you're not in the mood for a sober analysis of the Republican field today, I suggest you read last Monday's column instead.

I've been viewing the Republican field so far as a national contest, taking into account their standings in national polls of Republican primary voters. But, as we all know, primaries are not national, they are state-by-state. Meaning we must transition from surveying national standings to looking at the state polls in the first primary states. Before we do this, a final wrapup (as things stand today -- although these have been so volatile that we'll doubtlessly mention them in the weeks to come if they radically change) of the national standings is in order.

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We're going to try something new here today. Well, before we get to that, we have to apologize for not warning readers last week that we were taking a break for Veterans' Day. Which brings up a related subject: there will be no Friday Talking Points next week, either (the day after Thanksgiving), as we plan to be lounging on the couch in a tryptophan haze. Consider yourselves warned, this time.

Back to today's column, though. We're going to try an experiment today, and try to tighten these columns up significantly. They started off as very simple columns which didn't run all that long, and now they've grown to monstrous proportions. So we'll be (mostly) doing away with this introductory bit here, and moving straight to the awards and the (hopefully, shorter) talking points. We'll see how it goes, and we'll see what readers think. Let us know in the comments, as always. Comments which start with: "You know, it's really annoying how you revel in the editorial 'we' during these columns..." will, as usual, be ignored (by us). We, to coin a phrase, will not be amused.

OK, enough silliness, let's get on with the show.

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Washington is all abuzz these days with talk of the deficit reduction committee (the so-called "supercommittee"). The deficit committee has a deadline which is now less than a week away to produce legislation to cut $1.2 trillion out of the next ten years of federal budgets. Pundits have been predicting they'll fail almost from when the committee was set up, during the last round of brinksmanship over the budget this past summer.

I have no idea whether they'll come up with anything next week or not. Betting on failure seems to be the popular thing to do, but the committee members have been showing some willingness to move closer to a solution in the past few days, so maybe they actually will get seven votes for some plan or another.

If the committee fails, though, there are supposed to be "triggers" pulled -- automatic cuts to both domestic spending and military budgets. But you know what? I am confident that these triggers will never be pulled. To put it another way, these automatic cuts are never going to happen. Oh, sure, there may be some noise about them, accompanied by handwringing and teeth-gnashing inside the Beltway, but I remain confident that the actual budget cuts will never take place.

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The big question for the Occupy protests has now become: What next? With the multiple evictions across the country, the Occupiers have been given an ultimatum of sorts by the powers-that-be: protest and rally all you want, but you can't "occupy" these places any longer by erecting tents and making them your residences.

Of course, this could wind up being a silver lining. Because a lot of the Occupations were getting bogged down in the minutiae of the occupation itself, which seemed to draw the focus away from why they were there in the first place. If the cops and the mayors aren't going to tolerate an encampment, then that (in a way) solves all the problems arising from that encampment itself. Which could free up the protesters to focus more on the larger movement, rather than the details of each individual protest.

There is no guarantee, though. This could still wind up very badly, if the Occupiers decide that occupying is more important than any other goal. Which could easily lead to even uglier confrontations between police and protesters than we've already seen. And if the protest devolves into just fighting cops, it is going to lose both support and legitimacy among the general public. The protesters may be OK with this, but it certainly would be a shame.

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[Sorry for the repeat column today, but I have been too busy to keep up with the fast-developing situation with Occupy Wall Street. So I felt anything I wrote about it today would have been inadequate. I will be addressing the subject in detail soon, but for now wanted to run a column from a few weeks ago, which has some generalized advice which still seems to be appropriate to offer up. Once again, this is kind of generic and has nothing to do with addressing recent developments, which I'll be doing soon.]

[Originally published 10/27/11]

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement seems to be at a crossroads. The path it chooses to take next may be the deciding moment for whether it declines into irrelevance or grows beyond its current boundaries into something larger.

As always, addressing the subject of what I prefer to call the "99 Percenters" movement should or shouldn't do next is fraught with emotion, because one of the strong messages emanating from lower Manhattan is "Don't tell us what to do -- we're doing fine on our own, thanks." Which is why I don't write about the subject all that often, as it can be a minefield for anyone who can't claim street cred of camping out overnight in the park. But several disturbing trends seem to be emerging, which if not addressed could doom the movement to irrelevancy. So I feel it's time to offer some unsolicited (and possibly unwanted) advice.

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In a surprise move today, the seven major Republican candidates for president (who are not named "Mitt Romney") decided to merge their campaigns, and run as a single corporate "person" they are now calling "Anybody But Romney, Incorporated."

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum held a joint press conference to announce the formation of "ABR, Inc." This move is unprecedented in the history of presidential campaigns, but all seven candidates spoke of it as the natural reaction by Republicans to avoid nominating Mitt Romney, who is just not trusted by roughly three-fourths of the Republican electorate. By joining forces, the field of non-Romney candidates said, they can assure Republican voters that Romney will not be their party's standard-bearer next year.

While the concept of a corporation running for the highest office in the land seems to be unconstitutional on its face, the group stated that the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case has opened the door for such a move. "If corporations are persons," said Herman Cain in the press conference, "then why shouldn't they run for president? It just makes sense."

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There will be no Friday Talking Points column today.

Happy Veterans' Day to all, and have yourselves a good weekend.

-- Chris Weigant

Herman Cain is, if he can be believed, convinced that a conspiracy from the Left is responsible for the accusations of sexual harassment against him. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous.

In Cain's eyes (and in Cain's supporters' eyes), a grand conspiracy of the Left and those faithful minions of the Left, the Liberal Media, are undermining him because he is a strong black conservative. The Left can't stand strong black conservatives, this thinking goes, and so must do everything in its power to attack and destroy his chances of becoming president.

As I said, this is just patently ridiculous, because of one simple fact: the Left would dearly love to see Cain as the Republican nominee next year. Beating Cain would be a lot easier for President Obama than beating Romney. Polls have consistently shown the truth of this -- Obama polls much much better against Cain than against Romney. This was true before the sexual harassment charges were made, by the way. So why would the Left want Cain gone? Why would the Left choose a harder route to keeping the White House? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

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Every so often, I am so impressed by a comment to one of my columns that I offer to just turn my column over to the author, and let them have my soapbox. This doesn't happen often, usually around once per year.

I've written a few columns so far about the Occupy Wall Street protest, and what I like to call the 99 Percenter movement. But when I threw the subject open to my own blog's commenters as to what the next phase of the movement will (or should) be, I got one very interesting comment in response. So I asked the author to expand her comment slightly, and rewrite it as a column.

The author, when contacted, described herself thusly: "I am a longtime Netroots political junkie, avid reader of multiple 'left wing' or 'progressive' blogs and information sites, and I am following the OWS movement with great interest and deep satisfaction. Like many OWS sympathizers, my day job consumes my primary energy, but I am with the protesters in spirit. I've visited Occupy DC in McPherson Square where I've donated supplies, and I will continue to donate to the movement. I will participate in OWS when I can in actions nearer to home."

She has chosen to identify herself by her screen name "Paula." In the communitarian spirit of letting everyone have their say, I'm turning today's column over to her.

-- Chris Weigant

Occupy Wall Street is Not the Tea Party of the Left

I've read literally hundreds of articles and posts about Occupy Wall Street, and one recurrent idea is that OWS is or should become the "Tea Party of the Left." I think that's a misreading of both the movement's origins and its evolving aspirations.

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I just read an extraordinary article at (are you sitting down) RedState, written by Erick Erickson -- one of the right-wingiest writers at one of the right-wingiest websites around.

I couldn't help myself -- the title of the article drew me in: "Mitt Romney as the Nominee: Conservatism Dies and Barack Obama Wins."

The author's basic premise is that Romney is a flip-flopper who can't be trusted by conservatives. He'll win the Republican nomination, and then go on to lose to Obama next year. The article (and the hundreds of comments) make fascinating reading.

It bears pointing out: this is not some liberal fantasy written on a left-wing blog. This is exactly the opposite.

It does raise an interesting question, though: if Romney is the nominee, will the Republican base be so disappointed that they either (1.) stay home next November, or (2.) flirt with the third-party route? Or will their desire to unseat Obama overcome such disappointment if Romney is the candidate?

Personally, I'm not sure what to think about this scenario. But I am considering the source -- if conservatives are already grumbling about Mitt being nominated, what's going to happen next year if this plays out?

Call this an "open thread" for discussion (this is a euphemistic way to say "I am too busy digging in libraries today to write a full column, sorry").

What do you think?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant