What then?

Will Romney’s support swell as everyone moves to the last man standing? Will Ron Paul get it as the next ‘Not Mitt’ in line?

Firstly, let me say that I am not convinced his bubble will burst. I think he might actually hold on long enough to win Iowa and then all bets are off. Especially if, as seems more and more likely, Romney comes in third in Iowa, with Newt and Ron Paul jockeying for first and second.

But, in the spirit of ‘what if,’ let me put forward a suggestion.

Rick Perry.

What! you exclaim. You mean the Texas nitwit who start flaming out the minute he opened his mouth? The man whose command of the spoken word makes Dubya look like Demosthenes? As John McEnroe was wont to say, you cannot be serious!

But here’s how I see it.

Gingrich explodes/implodes. The anti-Mitt vote (which appears to be close to 60% of the GOP electorate) has no where to go. Mitt moves into first place in Iowa, but with ‘undecided’ polling at between 40-60% in the Hawkeye State.

Ron Paul is simply too far outside the GOP mainstream in certain issues to round up more than a few percentage points from Newt’s demise.

Rick Perry, I propose, would get the lion’s share of the undecided voters just because he has the money to flood the airwaves and mailboxes with paid media, making him the last, semi-acceptable, ‘not Mitt’ that anyone hears from before the caucus.

Of course, his challenge in this scenario is whether these now rudderless voters will actually turn up at the caucus locations, but you could easily seem him doubling his current poll numbers and winding up in either first or second place (probably second, behind Ron Paul) and goes to South Carolina (Mitt cleans up in New Hampshire under this scenario, but gets no bounce because everyone expects him to clean up in New Hampshire) with the national story being, ‘Perry Comeback’ and ‘Perry Beats Expectations.’

Ta-da.