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.]
