Mitt will win the nomination.
There will be more alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans in this election than ever before.
Republican libertarians will go independent.
However, the far right, conservative, evangelicals will run on a different ticket. Santorum will get the ride on this ticket. Santorum’s ticket will deal, relatively speaking, more damage to Mitt than other tickets will deal to the Obama ticket.
President Obama will win.
The Mitt group will blame the far right group and visa versa. Republicans will not be able to heal the divide and a new ‘conservative’ party will take the evangelicals and working class out of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party will disappear as a major political party. For many years the Democrats will dominate the political scene (as they did for decades).
I think there will always be far right groups, evangelicals, libertarians and conservatives. However, eventually the conservatives will unite with a more socially moderate, fiscally conservative agenda much like the conservative groups in Europe.
The US is young and assuming we do not throw a teenage temper tantrum and blow up the world with nukes we will mature just as Europe has done over hundreds more years than we have been around. One day we will learn that Europe was much more mature culturally than we have been and are much further down the road trying to figure out how to address basic human needs and responsibilities.
Our biggest problem is the perfectly normal problem that every teenager has – narcissism and arrogance. As long as we out grow it, it will not become pathological.