Many conservative activists, while not especially enthusiastic about Romney or his establishment backers, are appalled by the odd turn of campaign rhetoric in the closing days of New Hampshire, with Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman taking aim at Romney’s record running the private equity firm Bain Capital. These people, who include radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, are apoplectic that anti-Romney Republicans are making common cause with anti-business Democrats. – Mitt Romney vs. the dead-enders

Watching Sean Hannity last night when Rick Perry stated that venture capitalism was good, but “vulture capitalism” was something else entirely, was a moment I will never forget.

It was followed up Frank Luntz saying they all will remember this moment, this week nine months from now, because this was when it all went wrong.

There are other possibilities.

Perhaps the over $7 million dollars, Karl Rove’s figures, of ads ready to air in South Carolina, will help one of the other candidates wrestle the nomination from Mitt Romney’s grip. Maybe the notion that no Republican has won both Iowa and New Hampshire then gone on to win the nomination will sustain them as an omen that Romney can’t possibly be the first.

Perhaps the faith leaders meeting before South Carolina will come up with a consensus candidate, with the news it’s not Newt inspiring him to get behind Rick Santorum.

Movement conservatives are flailing. Michelle Malkin had this to say about Romney sitting next to John McCain: “When they’re together, they look like they’re holding each other (and the rest of us) hostage.”

Erick Erickson isn’t quite sure what to do, with Dana Loesch sounding similarly confused.

All Sean Hannity could do was sputter when Rick Perry started channeling Democratic talking points against Romney. It doesn’t help that Perry and even Gingrich’s message on Romney where Bain is concerned is running head on into the House Republicans’ dogma.

However, there is another possibility, however outlandish to posit. Perhaps all this gnashing of conservative principles in the open and ugly hashing out between the candidates and conservative activists will end up inoculating Mitt Romney, because his story will be reeled out and talked to death so that by the time Democrats rev it up to full ugliness in the fall everyone will not only be numb to it, but turned off because they’ve heard it all before.

Looking at Mitt Romney last night and hearing his perfectly canned and immaculately intoned speech, I don’t get the sense he is someone who is going to be defeated, certainly not by the current crowd of lackluster conservative performers.

As much as I disagree with their entire philosophy, there is also something that seems very healthy about what we’re watching. No one is holding back, as the most robotic candidate and perfectly cast person for the role of Republican nominee just keeps on winning and attracting begrudging supporters, which has stopped no one from escalating the rhetoric. In fact, the more Romney looks like the nominee the more shrill conservatives get.

We have never witnessed from Republicans such an open airing of discontent, though the Tea Party rise before 2010 foreshadowed something was coming when the GOP establishment was fully engaged in picking a presidential nominee.

There is an element of dynamic creative destruction going on, the political edition, as right wing conservatives start attacking venture capitalism and trumpeting some middle way with workers in mind, a weirdly born notion of conservative populism, while the fat cats take their comeuppance and are forced to digest that the days of how they rose won’t cut it with conservative activists and it’s time to shift, though no one is sure where this is all leading.

Republicans are going through their own Occupy moment and it’s from within.

Ron Paul is a part of all this too, but at the center of the combustion is Willard Mitt Romney, the man who is the epitome of everything representing Republicanism and the embodiment of what Rush Limbaugh has been telling his listeners for over 20 years they could have and be too if only they vote Republican.

Republicans have created this vulture capitalist monster, Mitt Romney, a part of the sickness deep within our economy, and they either make peace with him in order to win or churn this conflict through to a conclusion that just might bring about a transformative moment. A moment that began percolating when Ron Paul and the Tea Party started to gain traction during the Bush-Cheney administration and ended up turning state houses over to the right in record numbers in 2010.

Now that money as speech has been unleashed against Newt through the Citizens United decision, the possibility of a new Republican 21st century reformer against “crony capitalism” and hidden money has the possibility of rising, though it’s unlikely to be today.

Ron Paul certainly sees that, which is why he likely won’t choose to leave the Republican Party and will bequeath what he’s begun to his son, now in the Senate, because not even he is convinced the revolution he wants to lead can succeed now. Or maybe not?

It’s been a crazy circus, with mediocre candidates and acting out on all levels for Republicans for months, a year before it has begun to wind down and resolve. However, the audiences for the debates have been large, while the country watches politics as a modern soap opera, the most addictive form of entertainment to ever come out of Hollywood.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side there is lethargy, deep discontent and uncertainty about what the party even stands for anymore. There is none of the open, honest and potentially renovating energy we’re seeing on the Republican side.

I’m not sure crazy and mediocre equals vibrant, so there’s a long way to go for Republicans, but it has been an open process, the polar opposite of what we’ve seen from Democrats who are obviously afraid to challenge what’s been put in place, revealing an undeserved reverence for power that seems quaint.

The status quo, which is seen in Barack Obama as Romney’s bookend, is not going to cut it it for much longer. At least conservatives are attacking their establishment, while Democrats continue to be largely satisfied with the corporate and Wall Street status quo machine. This might hold them together long enough to reelect Barack Obama, which could finally bring about what needs to happen on the left. A come to Jesus moment about the fights that need to be made so that the party that F.D.R. and L.B.J. helped build in the hearts and minds of Americans doesn’t go up in a puff of personality.

Unlike on the Democratic side, where the same old canned political rah-rah will rise up, just like the establishment is doing on the Republican side for Romney, there is something strangely alive and even exciting happening inside the conservative movement. Even with the mixture of amateurs, crackpots and committed “dead-enders,” the transparency of the fight for ideas is laudable, even if you disagree with what they’re saying and proposing for this country, which I do, while on the Democratic side it looks dry and dead and resigned.

The best thing that could happen to conservatism is Romney winning the nomination but losing to Obama.

If Pres. Obama does win reelection, still likely, I’m not sure the Democratic Party will survive as it has been conceived, because no one will be able to say what it actually means to be a Democrat because Barack Obama doesn’t seem to know himself. The best thing for progressivism could be for Obama to lose, the bookend to Romney not prevailing. Then perhaps Democratic activists can say he lost because the establishment lost their way on policy by allowing someone to rise up and lead them who didn’t make the case or the fight for Democratic ideas, preferring conservatism and compromise as the guide, which is why so many people are leaving the Democratic Party.

I guess what I’m ultimately saying is that the winner of the November elections could really end up being the long-term loser on principle, because the activists in whatever party that wins will have to start all over again, mounting a challenge to the establishment of their party in order to represent anything worth following in an era where Americans don’t trust Republicans or Democrats anymore.

A political renaissance is at hand and November won’t bring the end of anything or a final win for either lumbering, aging and stifling political party. They’ve both lost the privilege of having our loyalty and nothing can change that fact right now.