So What Now? Santorum? Roy Moore? You-Know-Who?

As I write this it's now 4:30 Central time, and as far as I can tell Herman Cain still hasn't released anything to walk back his CNN interview from last night beyond a single non-helpful tweet that he is "100% pro-life. End of story." Which certainly is not the end of the story, since he's said that many times but nevertheless gave a 100% pro-choice answer on CNN (Benjy Sarlin has the details). As of now -- almost a full day after the gaffe! -- we really have no idea what's going on. Is Cain simply pro-choice, and hasn't understood that the position of being personally against abortion but also against government involvement is a pro-choice position? Is he pro-choice, knows exactly what it means, but hoped that no one would notice? Is he operationally pro-life, and just misspoke in the interview (perhaps because he's really pro-choice, but politically pro-life)? Is there some other explanation that he's going to try to float?

Of course, if his was a real presidential campaign this would have been cleaned up last night, one way or another. Actually, if it was a real presidential campaign, the candidate would be able to make it through a softball interview without embarrassing himself, his supporters, and his entire party (Sullivan nails it there). But anyway, they would have cleaned it up last night. But it's not a real presidential campaign, and everyone except perhaps the rubes and a handful of gullible pundits know it

(Someone should really compile a list of pundits who bought the Cain, Trump, and Bachmann surges. Rick Perry, you say? I'll stand by that one, and I don't think I said anything different about him when he was up in the polls than I did last winter).

Either way, I think there's an excellent chance that Cain's poll numbers are about to plummet. For one thing, I suspect he'll quietly disappear from Fox News coverage for a while.

The question is what comes next. Of course, one possibility is that we're about to get to the final stages; there's always the chance that there will be an avalanche of endorsements for Romney followed by doting coverage from Fox and the talk shows, and public opinion follows. No sign of that yet, though. I don't think it's realistic to expect that sort of thing for Perry at this point; he's going to have to earn it by generating some good news for a while.

If none of that happens, however, I suspect the most likely outcome is that Perry's numbers rebound, at least to some extent; I more or less agree with Jonathan Chait's analysis. A second possibility is that Mitt Romney will get a surge, just from voters wanting to get it over with. Hey, it could happen! But if Republican electorates remain stubbornly unwilling to take the lead on Mitt, and if it's not Perry...I don't know. Santorum? Another round of Bachmann? Even more improbably, Newt? It's harder to imagine a Huntsman or Paul surge. On the other hand, if everyone's numbers stay in the doldrums and "undecided" surges, I wouldn't put it past all those reporters who have taken the pledge and done so well so far to start to backtrack, and despite themselves start wondering whether all those Ron Paul wins in straw polls and online self-selected surveys are really revealing a secret Paul surge.

Hey, remembering that most of that doesn't really matter much...I have no idea which of them is the most likely, although as I said I'd put my money on a Perry rebound if I had to.

My rooting interest? That's easy: the Sage of Wasilla, bitter that Cain lied to her about abortion, decides to save the day by jumping in. Or half jumping in. Or at least doing another non-candidate Iowa bus tour. Or at least claiming she's about to do another non-candidate Iowa bus tour. Because nothing would be a better diversion as we wait for all of this to sort itself out.