POLITICS MARCH 14, 2012
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The conventional wisdom as polls opened in Alabama and Mississippi was that Santorum would likely be the big loser by failing to beat Romney or snuff Gingrich. That scenario made sense: Santorum was not only flagging in the polls, but had a decided financial disadvantage in these two states. (His super PAC trailed Team Romney in media buys by a seven-to-one ratio in Alabama and a five-to-one margin in Mississippi; it also had fewer ads than Gingrich ‘s super PAC). But now Gingrich is toast, whether he immediately accepts it or not, and Romney has failed to seal the deal. It seems the long-awaited two-candidate race has finally arrived.
To be sure, Romney has probably won a majority of the night’s delegates (thanks to proportional systems in Alabama and Mississippi, and likely victories in the late-night caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa). But as on Super Tuesday, Mitt’s big problem was his failure to meet rising expectations. He managed to finish third in both Mississippi and Alabama, despite his advantages in money and endorsements—and his apparent momentum (leading several late polls in both states, and appearing to win Mississippi even tonight in early exit polls).
Romney’s night isn’t quite so discouraging if you look at demographics. Romney did relatively well among evangelical voters (who made up 80 percent of Mississippi voters and 74 percent of Alabama’s), and very well in terms of voters’ estimates of his superior electability (50 percent in Alabama and 49 percent in Mississippi said he was most likely to beat Obama). As in virtually every state so far, Mitt won in urban-suburban strongholds, carrying Jackson, Gulfport, and Biloxi in Mississippi and Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile in Alabama.
But Santorum outpaced both his rivals in rural parts of these states, carrying the pineywoods regions of North Alabama and Mississippi, while Gingrich did relatively well, as expected, in rural black belt counties—just not well enough. And Santorum very narrowly led Newt among “very conservative” and evangelical voters in both states, which helped put him over the top. In a distant fourth place, Ron Paul performed in the single digits in both states.
All in all, the results were within a few percentage points of virtually every projection. But the variations—giving Santorum two wins where he wasn’t supposed to excel, Gingrich two losses in his “base,” and Romney a pair of third-place finishes—provided a big feast for spinmeisters, particularly those hungering and thirsting for an extended contest.
The path ahead includes caucuses in Missouri next Saturday, where Santorum built high expectations with his virtually unopposed win in a non-binding “beauty contest” primary on Feb. 7, and in Puerto Rico on Sunday, where Romney should clean up. But the big high-publicity contest will be next Tuesday in the Illinois primary, where the argument that Romney is weak in Midwestern “Rust Belt” states will be put to one more test. If he survives until then, Louisiana on March 24 could provide Santorum with another belt of Southern comfort.
But the parallel battle, which has been raging since Romney’s victories in Florida and Nevada back in January (if not earlier), will be among Republican elites. By this point, GOP opinion leaders are either frantic to bring the contest to a close to let the “inevitable” and “electable” Romney marshal resources for November—or want to give Santorum one last chance to prove that the palpable anti-Romney sentiment of conservative activists can lift him to an unlikely nomination or convention bid.
Romney has now lost four opportunities (after wins in New Hampshire, Florida/Nevada, Michigan, and Ohio) to nail down the nomination, a record that should at some point begin to make his elite backers really take stock of his attractiveness as a candidate. And, having won the long-standing contest to become the “conservative alternative to Romney,” Santorum has his own decision to make: whether to double down on his culture-war-heavy, ideological true-believer message or begin trying to convince elites he can actually beat Obama.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic, a blogger for The Washington Monthly, and managing editor of The Democratic Strategist.
13 comments
Half the nation is trying fervently to decide who they want to see beat the guy that's dedicated to digging us out of Depression 2.0, making sure sick people get to see doctors, and ending our wars of choice: either the plastic android who stands for nothing, or the modern day Savonarola whose primary focus appears to be other people's genitalia and what they do with them. Has my country gone batshit? What the f is going on here?
- Tristan
March 14, 2012 at 9:11am
Tristan, almost half your/my/our country has been nuts for years. It's only during election years that we really notice it.
- DC Spence
March 14, 2012 at 9:17am
great to see Paul finish in the toilet, hopefully we are soon at the end of his quixotic campaigns, I am sure his son will run in 4 years but as the guy has none of his father's charisma we are done with that lot of loonies. Last night was great, Romney talked about the end of Santorum's desperate campaign and now have to explain how he came in 3rd. Gingrich had another of his egoistic rants about how he is right about everything because some writer at the WSJ agreed with him. I hope we have a deadlocked convention.
- blackton
March 14, 2012 at 9:19am
hey Tristan, I left the US in 1998 when Clinton was on top and everything was great, now when I come back to the states I feel like I am in the twilight zone. I kind of got the Republican insanity of the Clinton years, it was based on his shortcomings, and there were plenty of smart Republicans running the show there but now the Republicans are just nuts.
- blackton
March 14, 2012 at 9:23am
Blackie my friend, if Obama loses I may be asking you if you have room for a guy and his daughter in that hacienda of yours. Or can at least point us in the direction of a decent place for an ex-pat to settle. Canada is just too cold.
- Tristan
March 14, 2012 at 10:03am
Tristan, give the Republicans a few years in charge and global warming should make Canada plenty comfortable.
- cspencef
March 14, 2012 at 10:35am
Tristan, Why wait for November or the end of Mayan Calendar? I'd suggest sunny, sandy San Pancho. I've an acquaintance who just opened a cajun restaurant there. Mostly just so he has an excuse to fish and sit on the beach all day. I'll be buying a one way ticket to Belize if the GOP get the nomination. I figure if we're going to officially become a banana republic, I ought to at least live in one with sandy beaches, good food and nice people.
- singlspeed
March 14, 2012 at 10:36am
Tristan reasonably asks Has my country gone batshit? Along with noting (as an organic gardener) that batshit is known as a fine fertilizer (more decorously labeled as "guano"), you are doing bats a considerable disservice. Bats have excellent qualities. They eat mosquitoes. They can fly in the dark without hitting buildings. Well, they have been known to become infected with rabies. Let's try, Has my entire country gone rabid? Unfortunately, it's probably too late, and too massive an undertaking to begin a national sequence of anti-rabies shots. After all, we did not come down with swine flu, did we? Or has Circe already done her number on us? Oink. Oink.
- skahn
March 14, 2012 at 1:29pm
Blackie, don't say it! "There were plenty of smart Republicans running the show" during the Clinton years suggests (albeit inadvertently) that you think Newt Gingrich is/was smart. And you know whose idea of a smart person he is, don't you? PS -- I assume you were thinking of people like Bob Dole and Colin Powell and not the Georgia Gasbag.
- wildboy
March 14, 2012 at 1:34pm
If the unthinkable happens, I propose to move TNR and all the subscribers to a nice banana republic with bananas, beaches, sunshine and bats. skahn can bring his chickens. I hope the Mexicans aren't as bigoted toward immigrants as SOME AMERICANS have been lately otherwise they'll shoot us trying to sneak across the border or deport us to Alabama.
- Sophia
March 14, 2012 at 2:59pm
Sophia, La gallina cacareo, picteado, rayado en el gallinero. Luego se puso un huevo. I am quickly trying (with the help of Google) to teach my chickens Spanish. My accent is awful, however. I hope a friend, a legal immigrant from Peru, working as an industrial engineer at Boeing, who may visit us soon, will teach the chickens to puck and cluck with a Spanish accent. Parenthentically, I have unreliably heard that Mexicans are quite hostile toward "illegal immigrants" who sneak across their Southern borders seeking work and/or transit onward to the USA from locations such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, etc. La hipocresía es, probablemente, el mismo en cualquier idioma.
- skahn
March 14, 2012 at 6:30pm
Rick Santorum is probably the only candidate ever for president who could authentically claim "My chief weapons are fear, surprise, and a ruthless devotion to the Pope!"
- ironyroad
March 14, 2012 at 7:11pm
Cardinal Fang for President, then?
- lump516
March 15, 2012 at 5:01pm