The 2016 GOP field is an even crazier mess than anyone predicted

When a party has been out of the White House for eight (or more) years, energy builds up, like steam in a pressure cooker. You want so badly not just to be in charge again, but to begin the work of undoing all that happened while your enemies held government's reins. Ideally, your presidential primary would go something like it did for the Democrats in 1992 and 2008: a spirited campaign in which a candidate of charisma and political skill rises above the rest, then goes on to engineer a sweeping victory in the fall. Then everyone can get jobs in the administration, the legislation your party has been patiently crafting for years can move quickly through Congress, and you can begin to remake the country more to your liking.

That's how it's supposed to work. But if you're a Republican, does that look like what's going to happen in 2016?

This is a good time to ask, because with the entry of Ohio governor John Kasich into the race, the GOP field is just about complete (former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore is still talking about jumping in, apparently on the theory that there are a lot of votes that can be taken away from George Pataki). With 16 candidates, none of whom are exactly lighting the country on fire, this is one hot mess.

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That would be true even if it were not for Donald Trump, who is sucking up all the media attention with his hilarious antics, and who leads in the polls. And if at least a couple of the other candidates were stronger, Trump wouldn't be so big a deal.

But when you look at the polls, it's remarkable how poorly so many of them seem to be performing, even some who were expected to be compelling candidates or who looked great on paper. That's obviously a function of the fact that there are just so many of them, but you would expect a few to rise above the others. Jeb Bush — the establishment's representative, $100 million man, and the one who started with the most name recognition — scores only 14 percent support in the HuffPost Pollster average. Scott Walker was supposed to be all things to all conservatives, but he hasn't proved to be a dynamo on the trail; he's at 8 percent. Marco Rubio, the exciting young senator who not long ago was touted at the savior of the GOP, comes in at a whopping 6.4 percent. Rand Paul, whom everyone used to call the most "interesting" candidate in the race, pulls only 6.9 percent. Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus four years ago; he's at 1.9 percent. Mike Huckabee won it four years before that; he's at 5.4 percent. Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal — one former rising star after another is wallowing in the electoral mire.

Of course, eventually the race will shake out — many of the low-scoring candidates will drop out, and support will coalesce around a much smaller number of contenders. But at this stage in previous elections, candidates like Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were already showing the skills that would take them to the White House. Is there a single Republican not named Trump who isn't performing worse than his or her supporters would have hoped?

Perhaps it's unkind to blame an individual candidate for not being able to do anything about the complex dynamics of a 16-person race, particularly when The Donald gets so much of the attention. And the Iowa caucuses are still six months away. But apart from their evident ability to raise a lot of money, the candidates have yet to give Republicans much reason to be optimistic about next fall.

Nor have we gotten much of the soul-searching debate to define the future of the party that we were promised. That too is something that ought to happen at the end of a long period out of the White House — the party examines its strengths and weaknesses, then charts a course to correct the latter so it can win a presidential majority. The central challenge they face isn't much of a mystery: They're an increasingly conservative party representing a portion of the country, older white voters, that's dwindling as a proportion of the population. Everyone knows it, but nobody has come up with a solution, at least not one that can both win over the primary electorate and carry into the general election.

So more and more candidates have entered the race, producing a cacophonous jumble out of which no one voice seems able to rise. Just imagine how many Republicans will run four years from now if they lose.