The New Neo

Yesterday I decided, New England being the small place it is, that I would go to one New Hampshire primary event.

I had a few basic criteria. The first was that it not be a breakfast meeting (not a morning person, moi). The second was that it feature more than one candidate, ex-candidate, or future candidate. That made it a no-brainer to go to the Exeter High School rally starring the unusual duo of Mitt Romney and Chris Cristie.

The place was packed, and it wasn’t just with the press or the Occupiers, although they both were there in locust-like droves (the press quieter than the Occupiers, although more numerous). In fact, there were so many regular folks there that even though I arrived way ahead of time, I ended up in an overflow room rather than the one featuring the main event. We outliers were assured that Mitt and Chris would come in to personally address our gym crowd of several hundred, and that their speeches would be piped in (the audio, not the video).

Thus I missed seeing Romney’s sons, who were present at the main event. But because I was one of the first people turned away, I had a front row stand (no chairs, no seat) immediately behind the ropes that the advance men set up to clear a little square footage where the speakers were going to stand on a wooden box (not all that different from the proverbial soapbox) and address our crowd.

The people around me seemed happy to be there but calm and willing to wait. A very civilized group; even the Occupiers were willing to bide their time, although they milled around a bit restlessly in the back of the room.

And then the stars came in. I was about three feet from Romney and Christie with a completely unobstructed view, and if I were better at working my cell phone camera I’d have gotten a ton of photos and video too. But unfortunately I am not, so the following two will have to do (and in the Romney one I unfortunately caught what was probably his single most unattractive moment):

From my perch just a few feet from each man as they spoke, I observed that they look like themselves only different. Christie, for example, (how shall I put this delicately?) is heavier than I’d previously thought, and I already knew he was heavy. But maybe anyone would look heavier next to the slender Romney.

It was Romney who was most surprising. It’s often been remarked (by me, for example, here) that Romney is a handsome man who looks pretty good for his age. But now that I’ve seen him up-close and personal I would like to correct that: he looks better than his photos, and much younger. Except for the graying temples, he could pass for a man nearly half his age.

Is it clean-living (Romney the Mormon does not smoke or drink of even ingest coffee)? I don’t know, but whatever it is if he could bottle it he would make another gazillion dollars to add to his first fortune. What’s more, in this particular venue both men eschewed jackets for more casual wear, and thus it was possible to see that Romney is in great shape—and not just great shape for a 64-year-old man, either; great shape for anyone, although of a type more suited to the occupations of outfielder or runner or even dancer than linebacker or first baseman.

But enough of the pulchritude. Although the physicality was one of the first things I noticed (call me shallow, call me frivolous), the other thing I saw in their most-standard of campaign speeches was that both men seemed genuinely relaxed and happy (not surprising for Christie; surprising to me for Romney) and Romney was very energized. How he does this—or how any of the candidates do it, for that matter—with such a punishing schedule is a mystery to me. He did not seem like a windup doll or automaton, but a flesh and blood human who meant what he said. Make of that what you will.

Christie was more hard-hitting, of course, giving the hecklers a taste of their own medicine. But perhaps the best line of the evening (for me at least) was when Ann Romney said that after their campaign for the presidency in 2008 she told Mitt that never again would she be part of a presidential run. And he reminded her that she’d said something similar about having another child after each pregnancy. So, here she was.

[NOTE: In the photos, the woman in the black boots, jeans, and red sweater is Kelly Ayotte, Republican senator from New Hampshire. The other legs with the black boots and black pants, and then the gray sweater above, belong to Ann Romney, who looked almost as good as her husband. Almost, but not quite.

Here’s some local coverage of the event, with more about the speeches themselves. It states that the crowd was approximately 1000, although I believe that may have been just in the main room. But the estimate of the number of press was 100. I’d say both estimates were low.]

The other day the following metaphor came to me about the Republican race and the antipathy to Romney’s candidacy:

In football (a sport about which I know next to nothing of the fine points), one thing I do know is that each side has two lines, defensive and offensive (we can ignore the special teams for now). The former goes into the game when the opponents have the ball, and the latter when the team itself has possession.

So, here’s the comparison (not a perfect one, I freely admit): Tea Partiers and many other conservatives are convinced that this is the moment for the Republican offensive line to be in there. Obama is incredibly weak, they think (he doesn’t have possession, as it were, even though he’s the incumbent), and they want their strongest conservative candidate in there to score, and score relatively easily.

So when they look at Romney they say, why’s the defense in there? And a weak one at that?

Those conservatives who support Romney despite their reservations about his conservatism think Obama will remain a formidable candidate: i.e., Obama’s still on offense. Romney may not be an ideological purist, but he can block Obama most effectively.

Moderates, of course, support him for other reasons.

There are so many articles floating around lately saying “Romney has the nomination all sewed up” that there’s hardly any need to link to them; if you do much reading about politics, you’ve already seen plenty (but, for the sake of example, here’s one and here’s another).

Some are from the left and some from the right, but the gist of them is that the fat lady is singing and Republicans may as well just close their eyes and think of England—or, in this case, America (and by the way, Queen Victoria got a bad rap on that one).

You won’t see me saying the same thing, however. Of course, if I were forced to bet money right now on the identity of the Republican nominee, I’d place it on Romney. He’s most likely—but hardly inevitable.

Iowa means little. It’s always been an atypical race, and New Hampshire isn’t far behind in its lack of representativeness, although in a very different way from Iowa (far fewer evangelicals, far less social conservatism, “maverick” qualities and small sample). But in the most recent data I can find from South Carolina, Gingrich leads Romney by a considerable amount. To a lesser extent, the same is true of Florida. Do they not matter?

But none of this is as persuasive in my mind as the simple fact that, if enough of the more conservative candidates were to drop out of the race and leave one strong “true conservative” candidate standing, the entire picture could change dramatically if this were done early enough. Romney’s support remains low in terms of percentage of the whole, and although it is likely that at least some of Gingrich’s and Santorum’s and Perry’s supporters (note that I omit Paul’s fanatically devoted followers) would go to Romney, my guess is that a greater number would go to the last non-Romney standing.

If may not happen that way, of course. For example, maybe no one will drop out except Bachmann, who’s already done so. Or maybe all their votes would go to Romney if they do.

But I don’t think the oft-repeated notion that because Romney has the most money he’ll be the inevitable vote-winner is correct. Money can help, but it can’t overcome much of the sort of antipathy many Republicans have towards Romney—and the most activist Republicans at that, who are most likely to take part in primaries.

This has nothing to do with my own personal preferences for nominee. As readers of this blog already know, I’m not averse to Romney or to his nomination, and at the moment he has a slight (emphasis on the slight) edge over the other candidates for me. But I’ve never seen him as the least bit inevitable, with his support levels holding steady in the 20s, and the degree of distrust for him so high.

[NOTE: I do not agree with Rush Limbaugh, however, that Obama and advisers would prefer Romney as candidate because they think he’s the weakest of the bunch. I believe that Obama is licking his chops at the entire field because all have significant weaknesses he could exploit.]