While the political world seems to be consumed with the news that (gasp!) a presidential debate just got cancelled, my eye was instead caught today by a sheerly speculative (and absolutely wonktastic) article, written by the incomparable Greg Sargent over at the Washington Post. He posits a very interesting "nightmare scenario" for Republicans, come convention-time:

Specifically: What if Santorum wins the bulk of contested primaries and caucuses and leads in national opinion polls -- but Mitt Romney wins the nomination? If that happens, the general election could get a whole lot tougher for him.

Sargent then goes on to explain that the Republican rules for actually winning convention delegates are arcane and Byzantine, and navigating those rules requires a good "ground game" or political organization behind the candidate. On this measure, Romney obviously has Santorum beat six ways to Sunday.

Which could lead to Santorum winning more votes, but Romney winning more delegates. If I'm not mistaken, the Republican Party doesn't even have the luxury of party "superdelegates" at their convention, which were instituted by the Democrats for this very reason: to avoid such obvious problems. Sargent finishes up with the Republican Party in the extremely awkward position of, essentially, fighting both sides of the 2000 Bush/Gore election dispute, within their own party:

It's not impossible -- though it's very unlikely -- that the popularity contest could leave Santorum as the clear, unambiguous winner, while Romney becomes the clear, unambiguous nominee. Imagine Santorum finishing with a five point edge or more in votes -- even as Romney gets crowned the GOP candidate for president.

If that happens, it's hard to see rank-and-file Republicans accepting the outcome as legitimate, even if the Republican partisan press tries hard to sell it. And it's even harder to see Romney kicking off the fall campaign successfully if half his party believes he stole the nomination.

Hoo boy. Talk about the feathers flying. This would be even wilder than the "brokered convention" some pundits have begun speculating about.

As Sargent points out, though, this is a very unlikely outcome. All the Republican contests are not going to be proportional events, meaning the later ones may count more as the winner is awarded all the state's delegates. It's a pretty farfetched thing to even speculate about, truth be told.

But it sure would be interesting to watch that convention on television, wouldn't it?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant