“At the same time, you have to be struck by how Romney played in the South relative to other areas. Recall how he gave up in South Carolina after concluding that he just wasn’t going to gain traction there.”
“Something has to account for why he was able to do much better in some parts of the country than others”
Something that never gets mentioned is that the south prefers masculine men, regardless of what else they are.
Romney was born male, he has married and reproduced, but no one will confuse him with being masculine.
The football star gun lover (Thompson), the Army Ranger (Hunter), the POW (McCain), the outdoor loving hunter (Huckabee), the tough as nails New York prosecutor (Giuliani), I can see all of these guys wanting to share an Alaska getaway of Scotch, cigars, and fresh game together, but I can’t see them wanting to include the granola boy/man, and southerners have a sensitivity to these same things.
That never occurred to me, but it is a great point.
Thanks for the post.
I’ll drink to that!
Romney ran ads, put out robo-calls with the popular Sen. DeMint’s voice, did a lot of on the ground work in S. Carolina. He didn’t give up on S. Carolina at all. He just siphoned enough votes from Huckabee and Thompson to run Thompson out of the race and really get the McCain train rolling. It’s like saying Guilianni focused only on Florida (Guilianni spent 2 million in NH . . . he just lost).