A lot of people out there still seem to think Romney’s gonna be the GOP nominee. I increasingly don’t see it, not so much in terms of him and his rivals, but in terms of his game plan.
Maybe he can essentially skip Iowa (where he skipped the straw poll) and South Carolina, and still ride the momentum from winning New Hampshire, parlaying that win into a successful run for the nomination. But I don’t buy it. In the GOP, winning New Hampshire but not contending in Iowa or SC makes you a niche candidate, not a serious threat for the nomination.
IMHO, Romney really has to try to win one of those two states. My guess is that Iowa would be easier - even now, he’s still polling pretty well there, as he has all year. And ever since the Iowa caucuses became the leadoff event in the Presidential nomination process 35 years ago, candidates who win both Iowa and New Hampshire have always gone on to win their party’s nomination, usually quite easily.
But if he decides not to seriously compete in either Iowa or South Carolina, I think he might as well just fold his tent right now.
I’m not sure I agree that he has to win Iowa or SC. His best hope is probably for Bachmann to win in Iowa (with him very close), him to win in NH, and Perry to win in SC. This makes all of the results “territorial”, and moves the focus to the bigger states where he can rack up some delegates.
It also keeps a couple of more conservative candidates in the race to split some of that vote. Palin getting in would probably help too. His worst case might be for Perry to win in Iowa, Bachmann to drop out then, and Palin to decline to run.
I believe that all GOP contests prior to April 1 have to be proportional. He needs to survive until then and hope that the GOP establishment doesn’t rally behind Perry. Then win some of the big winner-take-all states (many of which are much less conservative than SC or even Iowa).
He knows he can’t win South Carolina, and I’d imagine he figures not really contesting in SC will hurt him less than going all out down there and then losing will. I agree with Jas09. If he wins New Hampshire, wins Nevada (which he did last time, partly because of the Mormon vote there), and does decently in Iowa, he can afford a bad showing in New Hampshire.
If Perry wins both Iowa and South Carolina, Romney’s in trouble, I think, especially because Perry is going to be able to pick up the money in a way that somebody like Bachmann won’t be able to. I could be wrong, but I see this thing ultimately coming down to a horse race between Perry and Romney, assuming of course that somebody like Paul Ryan or Chris Christie doesn’t jump in, which is looking less and less likely.
I agree Romney is hoping Iowa and South Carolina are split. I don’t know the calendar offhand - I do know Nevada is the other early one - but if he can win in New Hampshire and the others are split, the stage is set for a very long primary contest. It’s a gamble and it may call to mind Rudy Giuliani’s ‘delay, delay, delay, shit, I lost already’ strategy, but Romney is making these decisions way in advance. That may help him.
Two weeks ago, I would have bet that Romney already had the nomination. So would he. Romney really needs Bachmann to beat Perry in Iowa, win NH himself, and not waste his time in SC. That’s the hand he’s been dealt and the only way to play it. He cannot beat Perry one on one, he needs the far right vote to split and keep Bachmann alive as long as possible. A Perry win in Iowa ends it very quickly, he could absorb a narrow NH loss and proceed to mop the country with Romney from there forward but Romney cannot survive a Perry Iowa win.
IMHO Romney is done. Just looking at the polls, there doesn’t seem to very much hope. Sure, he’s leading or near the top in the polls, but you have to dig a little bit deeper. Right now, the top 4 in the polls are Romney, Perry, Bachman, and Paul. Essentially, it’s Romney vs. crazy with the crazies having a couple different types of craziness to choose from. Bachman voters aren’t switching to Romney if she drops out. They are switching to Perry. It’s Romney vs. the field, and the field is winning by far. Once the field condenses down to a single candidate, it is game over.
Looking at the rest of the field, maybe he is following the stratagy of “the less I say, the more likely people will vote for me”. This is just that many fewer times he has to dance around RomneyCare and not make ridiculous statements that endear him to the Tea Partiers, but nail his coffin shut for the general public.
Romney can’t win in SC; SC Republicans there are much more interested in the Religious Right candidates. His chances in SC are much worse even that his chances in Iowa. However, if Bachmann and Perry split Iowa and SC, and Romney carries NH and NV, he’s still in good position. That’s got to be his plan right now. Western Republicans are much less impressed by the Religious Right candidates, so Romney will have a better chance out West.
ETA: Just to say that it’s still a long time until anybody votes, and Perry is still fresh off his announcement. There is no way you can conclude “Romney is done” from the current polling situation.
Iowa’s Feb. 6, then New Hampshire Feb. 14, Nevada Feb 18, and South Carolina Feb. 28. Then March 6 is Super Tuesday. This year, though, all the races until the end of March are going to be proportional for the Republicans. The GOP told the states, if you have a winner take all race, it can’t be scheduled for before April, so things are probably going to be fluid for a while yet, with no one candidate likely locking up a lot of delegates.
The thing is, it’s quite a gamble to hope that IA and SC are split. (And given 2008, it’s also a gamble to hope that anyone besides Romney cares who wins NV.) If Perry wins Iowa, he’s all but won the nomination. If Bachmann beats Perry handily in Iowa, it’s likely that whatever led to that win will carry over to SC. The best chance for a split is if Bachmann wins Iowa narrowly enough that the difference was clearly a favorite-daughter phenomenon.
That’s a real needle for events to have to thread for Romney. Seems to me he’d be better advised to go in heavily in Iowa.
Perry has also barely gotten his toes wet in the race. The perception that he’s an unstoppable juggernaut seems to be based entirely on the fact that he entered the race recently and did pretty well. That’s no guarantee that he’s going to continue like this and certainly his positions on things like Medicare could turn off voters. Romney is having the same problem he always has: he has trouble getting people excited about his candidacy and he’s taken both sides on a bunch of issues. Perry could be a strong candidate but he’s benefitted in large degree from backup QB syndrome. Nobody’s voting until January and the Republicans have de-emphasized Super Tuesday somewhat, so the stage is set for a long contest. He is in a tougher position and he needs a lot of things to break perfectly to win, but he’s not on the verge of losing.
Actually, it’s based on a few other things: first, the media seem to be willing to give him a fairly easy ride; second, which of his fellow candidates for the GOP nomination is going to give him a hard time about his stances on Medicare and so forth? And third, he and Bachmann are (for now) fighting over the same voters, and basically by virtue of his gender, he’s given the benefit of the doubt as being the less crazy one - and given Bachmann being Bachmann, that’s going to be hard to reverse.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think that sentence just lost a battle with itself. To me, if you need a lot of things to break perfectly to not lose, then you are on the verge of losing until all of them have broken your way.
The free ride from the press won’t last forever, though. At some point the story of Perry-as-white-knight gets boring. The other day he pretty much had to disavow the book he wrote just two years ago. That doesn’t bode well- and anyway it might allow someone else to make an electability argument.
I think we’re in agreement that Romney is in a difficult position. But I don’t know that sitting out Iowa and SC is a mistake. He wasn’t going to win them anyway. If he exerted a bunch of effort and failed, then that becomes the story and it could hurt his chances in other states. If he sits them out, the losses are less painful. It’s not ideal and I’m not sure it’s going to work, but I don’t think he has much choice.
There’s several things different about 2008 and 2012. First, Romney is a known quantity. He ran in 2008, and has basically been running since then. I dare say that most voters have already made up their minds on him. Second, in 2008 the field was more similar. In that, a Guilliani supporter today might be a Mccain supporter tomorrow. So there was no real way to predict where the votes would fall as candidates dropped out. Plus, it was more likely that a voter would switch support.
Contrast that situation with today. Someone supporting Bachman today almost certainly will not switch their vote to Romney. Same with Perry and same with Paul. IMHO Romney’s got as much support as he can reasonably get.
I don’t see why a Perry voter couldn’t become a Romney voter if they determine that Perry is not a good candidate. McCain certainly picked up a good chunk of Huckabee supporters in 2008. A lot of people will fall back to the “default” candidate if they grow dissatisfied with their current favorite.
I think the most telling pattern is that every time a new candidate has appeared during this cycle they have gotten a huge bump, often to the top of the polls. Bachmann did it, Trump did it, Cain even had a mini-bump, and now Perry is on the top. Each of these candidates faded as the electorate saw more of them.
This might not happen to Perry, but it certainly could. His avowed desire to eliminate Medicare and SS (going so far as to call them unconstitutional) could cause very large problems in Florida, for example. He hasn’t even been in a debate yet.
I guess I’d say that the only candidate I’d rather be than Romney right now is Perry, and the margin isn’t that large. There is definite value in a GOP primary to being seen as the safest and most electable choice, not to mention having the most money (and probably the best potential to raise more).
There was no Huckabee light in 2008. Once it became Romney and McCain, there was no social conservative to choose from. Here’s the latest NH poll:
Romney 36
Bachman 10
Perry 18
Paul 14
Cain 3
Huntsman 3
Gingrich 2
I assume the remaining 14% are undecided. If you narrow the field down to Romney and Perry, I see Perry winning. It would be close, for sure, but it really shouldn’t be. If Romney can’t win NH by a sizable margin, he has no real chance elsewhere.
But Romney’s support has been consistent throughout this. It’s the crazy wing, as I called them, that is just swapping around support. Romney’s supporters aren’t going to the new flavor of the week.
To be certain Perry is by no means a shoo in. But IMHO the winner of the Perry/Bachman battle has an 85-90% chance of getting nominated.
I can think of several politicians who seem to have gotten lifetime passes. Bush got a free ride from his entry on the national scene in 1999 through…hell, I’m not sure it really ended. Sure, the pundit class eventually admitted his presidency really didn’t work out too well, but they don’t want to talk about it if they don’t have to. And McCain…they still say the old McCain they used to love is ‘back’ at the drop of a hat.