AT THE cavernous Omni Sheraton in Washington, digesting Mitt Romney's speech here to the Values Voters' Summit. He was respectfully listened to, and got a fair amount of laughs, cheers and applause. Nothing like Herman Cain on Friday afternoon, of course, who is clearly the conference darling, but a lot better than I had expected despite the fact that his speech was pretty flat. He ticked a lot of boxes, and vowed if elected to get Roe v Wade struck down by appointing only conservative judges to the Supreme Court. The next presidential term is likely to see a couple of resignations from the bench, so that is entirely possible. But he mostly talked about the economy which is obviously his strong suit.

Mr Romney was never going to hit it out of the ground here, but of course he didn't need to; this is not his crowd. But what I suspect is going on is that the party's base, which really doesn't like him very much, is gradually coming to see that they will end up holding their noses and having him after exhausting all the alternatives. That process is already well underway. First there was the Michele Bachmann boomlet, quickly extinguished after a couple of gaffes. Then the Rick Perry craze; his ratings are now plunging again following his lamentable debate performances topped, also on Friday, by a speech of spectacular woodenness delivered by a candidate who looked oddly uncomfortable on the platform for so seasoned a politician.

Then there was Chris Christie, and the bubble that inflated for a few days before collapsing once the man who always said he wasn't going to run confirmed that he wasn't going to run. The latest infatuation of the anyone-but-Romney crowd is Herman Cain, who delivered a speech of power, wit and warmth that had them standing in their seats and queuing out the lobby to buy his book and shake his hand afterwards. A number of polls, our own YouGov one included, now have him leading Mr Romney, just as Mr Perry once did.

But will it last? I tend to doubt it. The idea of turning the government over to a man with no experience of government at all is attractive to a certain kind of small-government fundamentalist, but, surely, not without its risks. Once Mr Cain comes under the close scrutiny that has proved so difficult for Mrs Bachmann and Mr Perry, the Cain bubble too will probably burst. In the end, dull but serviceable Mr Romney still looks like the Republicans' best bet.

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