“The divider of the Republican Party is its front-runner, Mitt Romney,” said Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal last week, suggesting Mitt’s failure to set the base of the party on fire has sundered the party in twain. Perhaps. But if the house is divided between the establishment (Romney) and the conservative base (his multiple opposites), that base has also been sundered, by a field of candidates even more lacking than Romney, who have risen, flared briefly, and failed.

If the establishment has failed to rally the conservative base, the base has failed to cohere or define itself, much less produce a coherent or plausible candidate. The base is the problem, more so than Romney. Step back now, and try to see why: