RALEIGH – If present trends continue, Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee to contest President Barack Obama’s reelection next year.

That’s not to say the former Massachusetts governor and business consultant has been setting GOP hearts aflutter. There’s little sense that he is about to lead a Romney Revolution to victory over a feckless Democratic incumbent, as another former Republican governor led the Reagan revolution to victory over the lugubrious Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Instead, the whole enterprise feels more like a Romney Rotation – a spinning in place, an exchange of a potentially big-spending, bailout-prone Republican for a big-spending, bailout-prone Democrat, Obama, who himself succeeded a big-spending, bailout-prone Republican, Bush.

Does that mean I’m joining the Occupy Wall Street protesters in their denunciation of the interchangeable crony capitalism of the two political parties? Not at all. For one thing, the OWS folks aren’t really against crony capitalism. They’re just for putting their own cronies at the front of the handout line in the short run, and for ditching capitalism in the long run.

On a host of issues – government spending and taxes, education reform, trade and monetary policy, free speech – the rhetoric of the Romney campaign is substantially different from that of the Obama or Bush administrations. More generally, there remain sharp, significant differences between the Democratic and Republican brands in American politics. You have to go back decades to find truly prominent and powerful conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans.

But many conservatives aren’t yet comfortable with Romney. He may often – though not always – say the Right things. Skeptical conservatives buy his message, for the most part. They just don’t buy him as an effective messenger for it, given his reputation for flip-flopping, his cagy and cautious delivery, and his continued defense of his foolish health-care legislation in Massachusetts.

“Many” is not the same as “all,” however, or even “the vast majority.” If you look past blog posts and TV commentators and examine the only hard data available at present, public-opinion polls in early primary and caucus states, you will find that quite a few self-identified conservative Republicans are okay with Romney as their nominee.

Okay, that is. Not enthusiastic.

Furthermore, while many movement conservatives have deep reservations about Romney’s commitment to core principles such as fiscal restraint, market-based education and health care reforms, and an end to crony capitalism, many GOP primary voters don’t share their reservations. Nearly 60 percent of those voters see Romney as a conservative, according to a recent Associated Press poll.

As I look at the primary calendar, I see little prospect of the other Republicans in the race halting Romney’s nomination. GOP voters like Herman Cain, for example, but in the end I suspect many will conclude that his lack of government experience and propensity for gaffes will make him a weak competitor to Obama for the votes of independents. They’ll reconsider their initial support, and Cain’s numbers in Iowa and South Carolina will begin to drop in the coming weeks.

Republicans liked Rick Perry in theory but not Rick Perry in practice. Ron Paul has nailed down his share of the Republican electoral base. It’s a single-digit base. None of the other candidates has the money, message, or momentum required to make a race of it.

Romney need not win the initial contest, the Iowa caucus on January 3. He just need to place high. Assuming he then wins New Hampshire a week later, I think he’ll be in a strong position to win South Carolina (January 21), Florida (January 31), and Nevada (February 4), sapping his rivals of enough energy to carry the race further into February and March.

One of the animating beliefs of conservatism is realism. Here’s what I wrote in January 2008:

The conservative movement constitutes an alliance of those who accept unchangeable facts rather than trying to wish fantasy into reality, remake human nature, or avoid economic tradeoffs. Traditionalists embrace timeless morals, even when they deny one immediate gratification. Libertarians embrace the sovereignty of consumer demand and the sometimes-disorienting effects of technological change, even when the result isn’t to one’s personal liking. And hawks embrace the reality that America lives in a dangerous neighborhood, one full of bullies, pirates, and fanatics who respond to gestures of good will with contempt, larceny, and brutality.

So, conservatives, embrace the political reality of 2008: Either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is likely to be your next president.

So, conservatives, here’s the political reality of late 2011: Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.