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Presidential campaign politics, the so-called 'horse race', is all about momentum and expectations. Today, as a revived and re-funded Santorum campaign springs ahead after essentially running the table with three strong wins, President Obama's recent surge in the polls is the least of Romney's worries. As we speak, his campaign is furiously scrambling to tamp down expectations while struggling to regain lost momentum. Beltway Media 'analysts', the two-bit touts waving their picks, variously predicted one or two out of three for Romney, with close seconds in those contests he didn't win. Instead, for all his SuperPac millions advantage, the Romney campaign awoke to the harsh reality of the numbers and hard results: Three losses, one third-place finish. Romney is beginning to take on water. The 'presumptive nominee' is not so presumptive anymore; 'inevitability' is looking less inevitable by the hour.
Internally, the Romney campaign itself might be close to fracturing. They do not give the impression of being nimble when off-script. Where is the Karl Rove, 'Ragin' Cajun, or Steve Schmidt of the Romney campaign; who is running the show; who speaks with one voice for the candidate? So far, we've seen a candidate with chronic foot-in-mouth disease when unscripted, which is at least a couple of times daily, and a bunch of proxies — old overweight white guys of the Republican Establishment, like John Sununu and Chris Christie — playing armchair quarterback and competing for advice. On the eve of Romney's ugly loss to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, Beltway types breathlessly announced the Romney campaign was sending in one of their principal proxies, John Sununu, to campaign for Romney. And I'm thinking, 'what the hell good is that gonna do? A long-retired, crabby New Hampshire governor these southern yahoos probably never heard of' ... Just as I thought.
The New York Times headline was just as dismal, painting a picture of a campaign on the brink — of crisis and disarray: "A Bad Night, And a Prolonged Race For Romney — Mitt Romney is not a strong enough candidate that he can afford more nights as bad as Tuesday." The Huffington Post was blunter, splashing the portrait of a near-fatally flawed candidate: "Romney Suffers Major Blow ... Loses Two States He Won in 2008 ... Loses Every County in Missouri ... Finishes Third in Minnesota." Just to illustrate how much trouble Mitt Romney — the so-called "presumptive nominee" — is in: He was expected to win Colorado, where he was ahead by 10 points in the polls and finished a well-beaten second, five points behind Rick Santorum.
Adding to the Romney campaign's woes is their Ron Paul problem, which the campaign thought they had brought under control and were managing with the "strategic alliance" between the two camps. Suddenly, it's unclear how much Paul's help keeping "the GOP electorate fractured" will redound to Romney's favor, as he finished second, ahead by double digits of a fading Mitt in Minnesota. Largely irrelevant is the Romney rationale that "accommodating [Paul] and his supporters could help unify Republican voters in the general election against President Obama." For today, the Romney campaign has more pressing concerns than looking ahead to the general election against President Obama — namely, staying alive.
Newt Gingrich, until yesterday Romney's main competitor, has emerged as the southern regional candidate, much as Romney is still an eastern 'Establishment' candidate; Romney's Florida win with barely 46% of the vote and a depressed turnout owes mainly to the votes of northern transplants. With 4 wins to Romney's 3 —in retrospect, neighboring New Hampshire where Romney garnered barely 39% of the vote, could well be the 'canary in the mine' early warning of Mitt's fatal flaws — and Gingrich's strong solo win in the ultra-conservative southern state of South Carolina, Rick Santorum is cast as the only candidate so far with broad appeal across regions.
By contrast, Mitt Romney, who is swimming in money and Republican Establishment support, lacks the one ingredient necessary to win: voter appeal beyond the loser's 45% to 47% baseline figure. Of the three contests won by Romney, only in Nevada did he barely break the 50% ceiling, with 50.1% of the vote. And this with a depressed Republican turnout of some 6,000 fewer voters than came out in 2008. Had Newt Gingrich campaigned more vigorously in the state, he may well have denied Romney even this Pyrrhic victory. More humiliating still, for Romney, was the Trump endorsement followed by the Donald taking credit for Romney's lukewarm win in Nevada.
All told, this portends more serious trouble for Romney ahead. As Super Tuesday approaches with a plucky Newt Gingrich set to make his stand with the strong showing he hopes will propel him all the way to Tampa, the dynamics of these southern primaries gain added weight and importance. Rick Santorum, the lean, mean candidate flying under the radar to deal crippling blows to his better funded competitors, particularly Mitt Romney, is no longer an asterisk in the Beltway Media's pro-Romney narrative, driven by fake "journalists" like Mark Halperin and John Harris. Only two days ago, the Idiot Punditocracy were proclaiming yesterday to be Rick Santorum's "last stand," pompously predicting with the supercilious rectitude of the Clueless Pundit that Santorum had to pick up at least one win, two if he was lucky, to keep his hopes and campaign alive. Oops.
Oh, what a difference a day makes. Especially in politics. Now, the greatest threat to Mitt Romney is the very real prospect that his stunted momentum and weak showing in the West and Midwest will manifest in equally weak third and fourth place finishes in the South, as Gingrich and Santorum duke it out for the top two spots and Ron Paul, well, he keeps hanging around. The weakness shown by Romney, the gaping holes in his SuperPac armor, coupled with the increasingly realistic prospect of wholesale rejection of him by southern Republican voters — putting meat on the bones of that old cliché, 'they're just not that into Mitt' — could be enough to deep-six his campaign.
Speaking of strategic alliances, the early feelers between the Santorum and Gingrich camps to arrest Mitt's "inevitability" may be back on track. We're way past the "inevitable Mitt" now, and this alliance would have real rewards rather than the scraps tossed in Ron Paul's direction by the Romney campaign. A Santorum-Gingrich alliance, like the one between Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in 1980, could be for the top two spots on the ticket: President and Vice President.
As George H. W. Bush might say: Mitt Romney is in "deep dooh-dooh."
Indeed, as this provocative heading asks the historical question, exactly 40 years after Senator George McGovern, the "true liberal" in the Democratic race, wrested the Party's nomination from "Establishment" candidate Ed Muskie, the ghost of McGovern looms large and threatening on Mitt Romney's path to the nomination. As does the specter of Ed Muskie from neighboring Vermont who, like Romney, stumbled in New Hampshire after some dirty tricks by the Manchester Union-Leader. Muskie in 1972, like Romney in 2012, won New Hampshire as expected, but not decisively — and therein lies the rub.
This year, the arch-conservative Union-Leader may well have the last laugh, as its endorsement of Newt Gingrich was scoffed at by the Idiot Punditocracy. The early dismissal of Gingrich by the Beltway Media clouded Romney's obvious weaknesses as the Idiot Punditocracy bestowed on him, with nauseating regularity, the mantle of inevitable "presumptive nominee." As the pundits were 'ooh-ing' and 'aah-ing' at the formidable evil power of Mitt's SuperPacs' carpet bombing demolition of his political opposition, mainly Newt though they are now seriously rethinking the premise, this blog wrote, following Romney's unspectacular Florida romp:
By the way, Jonathan Alter is one of the few genuine historian-journalists whom I respect and whose opinion carries weight here. But we have areas of disagreement. The difference is, one cannot dismiss what Jonathan says out of hand, as is the case with most of the clowns and pundit poseurs, and not a few sacred cows, making the rounds at MSNBC.Despite Rachel's somewhat faint praise, most astute political observers (and let's be clear, they're few and far between) would come away with the impression that Mr. 1% was launching forgettable spitballs at President Obama. If this kind of strained, hollow, rich man's version of political character is their standard-bearer, the Republican Party/Establishment is in deep trouble. There's something about Mr. Molten Core that really, really rubs people the wrong way. He lacks not only a core but even that fake conviction. And the harder he tries the worse he sounds. This guy still hasn't cracked 50% of the Republican primary vote, in a state that was supposed to favor him, with literally unlimited funds to carpet-bomb Newt. Yet Mittens' geographic appeal was limited mostly to the urban/suburban rich carpetbagging Florida counties. Newt cleaned up the Tea Party vote and the "southern" panhandle.
I do not agree with Jonathan Alter that Newt prolonging this campaign will help Romney by virtue of contrast with Mittens as the "Massachusetts liberal." Inevitably, Romney's faults will expose a rift in the Republican Party with the base — more Republicans, 6 in 10, still want someone else! — that may be beyond healing. Even more important, the negative firepower needed to pulverize Newt will very likely splatter Romney and further depress his soft, unenthusiastic support. What goes around, comes around, and Mittens will sustain a lot of damage from Newt.
Newt Gingrich, who is his own campaign manager and has always distinguished himself as a top-flight political strategist, may well be the best of all in this Republican race. Think of him as the player-manager who can strategize while on the field. A nimble strategic thinker, although he stumbled in the last debate, Gingrich quickly recovered with a weird but effective 'concession-acceptance' speech, and has since boxed Romney in by furiously assailing the SuperPacs, calling him a liar, and drawing him out on a religious discussion, in which Newt and Santorum position themselves always to the right of Romney, while reminding Christian Right voters of Romney's Mormonism. Far and away the most interesting candidate on the Republican side, Newt Gingrich has an evil, Machiavellian brilliance that reminds us he was the proto-mudslinger, the Founding Father of this modern era of dirty politics of personal destruction.
But Newt remains a southern candidate. The parallels between this year's Republican race and the 1972 Democratic contest are inexact in strict comparisons but broadly similar in the way in which the race shaped up for the party out of power. First in 2012 as in 1972, there is a sitting president with many advantages including the power of incumbency. The downside for Richard Nixon in 1972 was an unpopular war, a shaky but recovering economy, and as yet to metastasize, a hint of scandal. President Obama is sitting on the worst economy since 1932, which he rescued from depression, but the electorate isn't taken to making 'nuanced' decisions. Everything else is subservient to the economy. And as we have seen with the Komen Foundation's cave-in, social conservative 'wedge issues' may redound to the President's favor this year — one more reason Santorum or Gingrich are well cast to play the role of George McGovern.
A distinct difference is that the perceived 'strong bench' on the Democratic side took the plunge in 1972, notably Hubert Humphrey, 'Scoop' Jackson, and Ed Muskie. Even George Wallace, the southern segregationist candidate was a force to contend with in the South. His foray into a northern college had the look of a revivalist Nazi rally: Alabama troopers in brown uniforms flanked their governor as he spat into a white handkerchief and the jeers of "SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL!" from the student audience rained down, drowning out his speech. Today, the same kinds of college students are drawn to a racist Texan candidate linked to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, with a demagogic agenda to destroy all government in the cause of 'liberty'. Considering the neo-Confederate 'don't tread on me' appeal of Ron Paul, George Wallace's message was not dissimilar. As the world turns.
Even though the strong Republican bench — Mike Hucabee, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie — stayed out of the 2012 contest, perhaps hoping not to repeat a do-over of the 1972 Democratic primary battles, those who declared and remain in the race are fairly reasonable stand-ins for an off-Broadway production of 1972. Which is, essentially, as the Times resident genius-nerd (see link above) predicts, a long drawn-out contest for the nomination. Rick Santorum's profile fits more closely with George McGovern's — the 'real deal', the 'genuine article', or as Santorum likes to put it, "the only true conservative in the race." George McGovern, by way of contrast, ran as the most liberal major party candidate in American history.
Both Santorum and Gingrich could lay claim to the McGovern mantle of political purity and authenticity. At this point, Santorum is the most likely candidate. He stuck to his social conservative guns and was pummeled by the more libertarian voters in New Hampshire. But he needs a strategy. Running a so-called "low-burn" campaign and living off the land won't get him over the top in the long haul. Newt Gingrich has more possibilities. Despite his utterly fraudulent and ludicrous claims to the 'Reagan legacy' Newt is enough of a salesman to have convinced a sizable portion of the right wing Republican electorate that he is a genuine conservative — definitions will vary, depending on which state you're in — to make them forget his past woman troubles. In fact, the southern states are a perfect fit for Newt. Not only is the right wing electorate in the South ultra libidinous, but they love forgiving their pastor-candidates their falls from grace, the better to forget their own leading red states porn consumption, among other more carnal pursuits. Rick Santorum, an earnest Catholic ascetic with extremist theological views, will have a harder time connecting with southern arousal.
All of this spells big trouble for Mr. 1% in a long fight for the nomination. The venal negativity of the SuperPacs coupled with Newt, President Obama's best friend, playing the victim card so well because it taps into his redemption narrative with the voters, has had the result of spiking Romney's negatives with the voters. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has the President leading Romney in a head-to-head contest, 51% to 45%. But most important, perhaps, are the likability internals within the poll data:
The more the public hears of Mitt Romney, the less people like him, by 52% to 24%. Not only that, but by a wide margin (findings that are not ever reported by the Beltway Media) the public disapproves by 54% to 36% of what the Republican candidates are saying. As for which candidates "best understand" your problems and values, all the candidates rated abysmally: On 'problems — Newt (26%), Romney (30%), Paul (11%), Santorum (20%); on 'values' — Newt (21%), Romney (23%), Paul (18%), Santorum (23%). Newt springs from the pack on experience — Newt (43%), Romney (31%), Paul (10%), Santorum (4%). But on electability, the only glimmer for Romney and the GOP Establishment; he leads Newt 56% to 22%, with Paul and Santorum trailing far behind. So it's a mixed bag reflecting confusion and general lack of enthusiasm in the Republican electorate — none too encouraging for Republican prospects in 2012.By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney on Saturday night in Nevada, are about 3 to 1 negative.
Perhaps the most damage done was to the Republican (I hate this Beltway buzzword, but there it is) "brand" in 2012. There is only one thing Republican voters can agree on, and that is to defeat President Obama. But even this is called into question, especially among women voters, given the Republican Party's extremist rightward tilt. And as noted above, "[e]ven more important, the negative firepower needed to pulverize Newt will very likely splatter Romney and further depress his soft, unenthusiastic support. What goes around, comes around, and Mittens will sustain a lot of damage from Newt."
In the process of destroying his opposition with the power of unlimited SuperPac money, Romney may be felled by the same sword he used to strike down his rivals. It seems we may be fast approaching a saturation point of no return at which the effectiveness of the SuperPacs is not only diminished but takes down its own candidate in a scorched earth last-person-standing (or not) campaign. Moments after resigning the presidency in disgrace, Richard Nixon warned: "Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."
And he knew whereof he spoke. This race is still Romney's to lose. But it's no longer such a sure thing that he won't.
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