Posted on 11/21/2011 3:03:39 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
From the W moment he launched his presidential campaign on a windy New Hampshire morning in June, Willard Mitt Romney has been the acknowledged front-runner in the Republican race.
He has raised more money, earned more support from his party's establishment, hired more paid staff and secured more endorsements than any of the seven other "major" GOP candidates.
There is but one nagging thing keeping Romney from being dubbed the "inevitable" GOP nominee in 2012 - a solid 75 per cent of the voters in his party simply cannot stand the guy.
"He is cold gravy," said Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University of America. "He has gone through the process once and generated some excitement, but now the excitement is gone."
Schneck made that observation on June 2, the day Romney formally announced his candidacy.
The former Massachusetts governor's problem is not that the analysis was accurate then, but that it's still accurate now, just six weeks out from the Iowa caucuses.
In the last 10 national polls taken of GOP voters, Romney has nudged above 25 per cent only once - underscoring his continuing lack of upside potential.
In any other year, in any other campaign, a candidate so persistently unappealing to his party's base would be marked for defeat.
But this isn't any other year, and Romney has had the good fortune of being measured against the likes of Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain - presidential campaign amateurs all.
The challenge facing Romney is how to win without actually being wanted.
At this point, it is clear there may never be a Romney surge, at least not in the same way there was a Perry, Cain and Bachmann surge.
He has not earned the trust of Republican social conservatives, who view his Mormon faith with skepticism and tagged him as a flip flopper years ago for changing his views on abortion and gay rights.
Even on big economic issues like deficit reduction and taxes, Romney is seen as the most slippery of GOP candidates, the one lacking an ideological core.
The lone issue where Romney has actually been resolute - in his defence of his individual health-care mandate in Massachusetts - is the one that most offends Tea Party sensibilities.
"I believe we did the right thing for our state at the time," Romney says.
Admirable? Sure. But it's also a sign Romney has mostly given up trying to win over the Republican right.
While he recently opened a campaign office in Iowa - where conservatives hold sway over moderates in the state's presidential caucuses - Romney skipped a weekend all-candidates forum hosted by a family-values group.
Romney's path to the GOP nomination depends on him prevailing in a war of attrition with his rivals.
First, the former governor is counting on winning the Jan. 10 primaries in New Hampshire, where he is well known and most polls show he has a double-digit lead.
He hopes to emerge from the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina, another social conservative hotbed, strong enough to capture other early-voting states like Florida and Michigan, where he has shown strength.
After that, Romney is betting the GOP field is winnowed down enough that he can outmuscle his remaining opponents with a superior organization and fatter bank account.
It's a smart strategy, but not a foolproof one.
For one thing, the sudden rise of Newt Gingrich - more serious on policy than pretenders like Cain and Perry - is problematic.
A shock poll last week by Magellan Strategies, a Republican firm, showed Gingrich in a statistical tie with Romney in New Hampshire. The poll may be an outlier, but it reinforced Republicans doubts about Romney.
Even so, despite Romney's limited upside potential among Republicans, polls also consistently show he is the most likely candidate to make Barack Obama a one term president.
That prospect alone is enough for some staunch conservatives who - all things being equal - would normally balk at having Romney as their nominee.
"Instead of sitting on our thumbs, wishing Ronald Reagan were around, or chasing the latest mechanical rabbit flashed by the media, conservatives ought to start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama," columnist Ann Coulter wrote last week.
"It's fun to be a purist, but let's put that on hold until Obama and his abominable health-care plan are gone, please."
That 25% represents the “moderate” wing of the Republican party. Not just the “county club” elites, but a fair percentage of main street Republicans, who want lower taxes, strong nationl defense, and are scared by the left-sing crazies in the Democrat party, but also don’t want someone they view as a “right-wing extremist”. People around here would call them RINOs. I call them Rotary Club Republicans.
[start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama]
Yep, Saundra the Mormon uber alles approach. I will never rally around Mitt, I will actively oppose him even if he is elected.
But the GOP establishment expects we'll get hungry enough to choke it down.
That’s true, but it’s odd that other Republicans haven’t called him on this technique (being the “invisible candidate”), except of course that GOP Central has made up its mind that he’s their boy.
The others are just entertainment.
Sadly, outside of GOP Central, we seem to have offered mostly candidates who really are just entertainment, since people seem to be looking for cute personalities who say the right buzz words rather than somebody with ideas, knowledge and a track record that we can evaluate. I don’t care if candidates can burst into tears while discussing themselves (Bill Clinton was pretty good with the tear machine, too), but unfortunately it seems that the rest of the voters find that just too charming for words and somehow consider it proof that the weeper would make a good president.
This could be the year that the republicans scramble to scrap the GOP nomination process for something different. (After the fact, unfortunately)..
If you believe in polls, Ron Paul could easily win Iowa, Romney wins New Hampshire, and there goes any shot for Perry, Cain, or Gingrich. Yes it is early, but Paul's numbers are moving up and up. What the hell is wrong with us?
The race is now between the two most logical candidates for the Republican nomination—Gingrich and Romney. Gingrich is the experienced politician with vision and street smarts to take Obama down. Romney is a smart guy, a good manager, and he has the money to take on Obama. The others just don’t count. Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Santorum—they’re all done. They should drop out so that Republicans can focus on the two finalists. We need a clear winner soon so we are united going into next summer. Obama has to be defeated. One of these two guys can do it. Neither of them is perfect but they’re far better than the incompetent fraud who’s now occupying the White House.
Romney has avoided many of the debates??? What planet have you been living on?? He’s been in all of them and he’s kept his cool and his focus in every one. I’m no fan of Romney, but let’s stick to the facts here. As far as the most recent thing in Iowa? That tearjerk soap opera with everyone blubbering and feeling sorry for themselves? He was smart to pass it up. Isn’t it bad enough that Boehner is always weeping? Do we have to have the future president crying buckets, too? They ought to be crying about the condition of the country. Disgusting!
Romney has avoided some of the multi-candidate events and manages to stay out of the public eye most of the time. He keeps his cool at the “debates” because he gets softball questions, more time than the other candidates so he can blather in generalities at great length (and this was actually proved by an independent analysis of the time each candidate was given over the course of the debates), and makes no gaffes because he says absolutely nothing of substance.
I agree about these stupid publicity events the candidates are fond of doing, however; Bill Clinton could turn on the tear machine with the best of them, but that didn’t make him a moral person. Proclaiming that Herman Cain burst into tears and therefore he’s qualified to be president is ridiculous.
But letting Romney cruise by, unconfronted by anyone and playing on what is definitely not a level playing field (it’s all slanted to his advantage), sure doesn’t give any indication of his qualifications, either. He actually does have a track record, and it’s a bad one, but nobody in the press or anywhere else confronts him on it.
The “inside Paul” talk is that this is his LAST shot. He’s 75. All the Paul guys that have supported him are spreading out across the country (especially colleges) canvassing, hitting up straw polls, working the internet, handing out flyers. He’s getting lots of cash as well.
This is their last hurrah. Paul may actually win Iowa by a couple of points. If so, all bets are off.
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