POLITICS APRIL 5, 2012
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The end is near for Rick Santorum. That doesn’t mean, though, that it’s time for Mitt Romney to start celebrating. Yes, Romney won Wisconsin Tuesday night, and has a near-lock on the eventual nomination. But claims that he is beginning to seal the deal with party conservatives are premature. A look at Wisconsin exit polls shows that he is still struggling among right-wing voters. That has clear implications for the type of general election campaign Romney can run—and the kind of vice-presidential candidate he’ll eventually have to pick.
What did we learn from the Wisconsin primary? The first exit poll reports seemed to project a 7-point margin for Romney, and an impressive showing among very right-wing voters. “Evangelicals, tea party supporters, those supporting ‘traditional values’ and people calling themselves ‘very conservative’ went Romney’s way, exit polls showed,” CNN’s Peter Hamby reported in an early analysis. The final exits, though, told a different story, one more consistent with Romney’s narrow margin of victory of only 4 points: Santorum enjoyed his accustomed win among evangelicals, and there was a tie between the two candidates among “very conservative” voters. Santorum also won among the more than half of primary voters who say they attend church weekly, and among rural voters. Yes, Romney made strides among all the traditionally pro-Santorum demographic groups, and won some, but breakthrough is too strong a word.
Romney had better hope Santorum is out of the race or out of money by May, when almost every state voting has demographics significantly less favorable to the frontrunner than Wisconsin’s. The issue isn’t whether Romney will win the nomination—proportional allocation of delegates in the most troublesome May states, along with a decisive group of pro-Romney primaries in June, ensure that he will. But his continuing struggle among the most conservative segments of the GOP may mean he has to spend far more time courting them than he’d prefer.
There are other signs of conservative intransigence on the horizon. Some analysts noted that 28 percent of Wisconsin primary voters thought Rick Santorum was “too conservative.” Less mentioned was that 23 percent said he was “not conservative enough.” It’s unclear exactly how much overlap that group had with the 44 percent of Wisconsin voters who said the same thing of Romney. But it is obvious that much of the GOP base believes the field of primary candidates was never conservative enough to begin with—a belief encouraged by Mitt Romney’s super PACs, which tried to counteract the skepticism towards their candidate by mounting relentless attacks on the conservative credentials of Santorum (and earlier, on Newt Gingrich). In state after state, Romney was winning votes from hardcore conservatives, not because he had persuaded them of his conservative credentials, but because he had persuaded them to train their ideological ire against the competition. Stoking the grievances of the party in this way may have been an instrumentally useful tactic to gain the nomination, but it has also made it that much more difficult to unify and energize the base behind his general election campaign.
In any case, the long-awaited pivot to a general election message, already complicated by his communication director’s “Etch-a-Sketch” gaffe, could be delayed considerably. Once the primaries finally end, conservatives may shift from resisting Mitt by voting for Santorum to making shrill demands on Romney-as-nominee.
And the current conservative focus on Romney’s most vulnerable issue, health care, may not help either. Ironically, if the Supreme Court does overturn the Affordable Care Act this summer—either partially or completely—the problem for Romney could grow worse, as his much-repeated commitment to the “Repeal” part of the GOP “Repeal-and-Replace” message loses value. He’ll have to reassure conservatives once again that he wouldn’t “replace” ObamaCare with any sort of ObamaCare Lite, just as swing voters might want him to endorse national measures to, say, outlaw preexisting condition exclusions.
But the most important conservative demand on Romney will likely involve his running-mate. He might try to thread the needle by choosing someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan, who are already on his “team,” but very popular among hardcore conservatives. But if he feels the need for greater tactical flexibility, he may not find much cooperation.
Sarah Palin’s suggestion this week that Allen West, the truly far-right congressman from Florida, would make Mitt a fine running-mate sounds ludicrous—but it may also signal a tough bargaining position by leaders of the right. After all, in similar circumstances in 2008, John McCain gave them Palin herself. This year, with conservatives feeling more optimistic than they did four years ago, and more in control of the party, they’ll hardly want to settle for less.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic, a blogger for The Washington Monthly, and managing editor of The Democratic Strategist.
10 comments
Romney's choice may well hinge on how his prospects are looking before the convention. If they're not good, he may well roll the dice as McCain did...though presumably in a much less sloppy way. Many pundits write off Gov. Susan Martinez of New Mexico on the grounds that like Palin she'd be too inexperienced when it comes to national politics. But the problem with Palin wasn't lack of experience; it was lack of intelligence, lack of thoughtfulness, lack of knowledge, lack of discipline, etc. In sum, she's a jerk. Now, maybe Martinez would not be a good choice for all sorts of good reasons, not least that she's said she's ruled out running for VP this time around. But a former prosecutor who's a woman and a Hispanic and is from a swing state checks a lot of boxes for Romney.
- Thunderroad
April 5, 2012 at 2:17am
Short of being an outright protestant white supremicist, how is it possible for a person with enough intelligence to actually find a polling place to actually find Santorum insufficiently conservative? My head hurts when I read stuff like this. I understand the bell curve has tails, and someone has to live on them, but it doesn't have to have tails that long.
- IowaBeauty
April 5, 2012 at 8:24am
Romney is bright, and has shown ability to learn and grow. The GOP needs to throw off its current fever of insane "sunbat" ultra conservatism (at the expense of jettisoning the worst extremists) and return to being a party of responsible, sensible conservatism, as represented by people such as Huntsman or Gary Johnson. I would be surprised, but Romney could astonish everyone by picking someone like Huntsman/Johnson; sacrificing this election, but positioning himself well to be the head of a resurgent, "we shook off of malarial episode of fever," and "we are ready to act as grown ups again" Republican party next time around. Neither Nixon, nor Reagan won the first time they tried, either.
- skahn
April 5, 2012 at 10:03am
Candidate Romney needs to do something truly bold. He should ask Governor Romney to join him on the ticket. Candidate Romney may be severely conservative, but Governor Romney will be able to court independants with his long track record of being pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-mandated health care, etc etc etc. Romney/Romney 2012. Tell me that wouldn't look cool on a bumper sticker. Just a reminder, somebody on here owes me a bottle of single malt if it's Rubio. Of course it's looking less and less like Rubio every day, so I'm thinking I'll be asking for a mailing address for where to send the scotch come August.
- Tristan
April 5, 2012 at 10:15am
i hold to the idea that VP picks only hurt and seldom help, at least decisively (outside of Johnson in 60).
- blackton
April 5, 2012 at 10:47am
Iowa, I think it's simply perspective. While you or I might be thinking of Santorum's Jansenist Catholicism or his peculiar notion that education=snobbery, someone else might be thinking of his pork-barrel career in Washington when he was in the Senate or his position on voting rights restoration. Also may I say that the photo of the Mittster above is a perfect capturing of that moment in the sci-fi movie when the audience find out for the first time that some of the people are not real human beings but aliens or alien-controlled messengers. The program clicks in, the eyes light up with a strange glow, and "Mitt" advances slow but surely toward the victim.
- ironyroad
April 5, 2012 at 11:07am
I'll take issue with Kilgore's suggestion that Romney would be hurt by the overturning of Obamacare. It would clearly be a boon, in two ways: one, it would relieve Romney of having to continually explain his contradictions (and would even validate Romney's assertion that mandates are okay at the state but not the federal level), and two, it would hurt Obama (especially after Obama's incautious SCOTUS comments). As for VP, I'm thunderroad's camp. Susana Martinez is his best choice--particularly now that women seem to have turned against him in response to conservative attacks on contraception and abortion rights. She is actually deeply experienced compared to Palin, who had only a mayoral stint in her pre-governor background. Martinez has an accomplished record as a district attorney. Rubio's still an excellent choice...but not quite as excellent.
- polcereal
April 5, 2012 at 11:53am
I said this four years ago on these threads, and I'll say it again now: the GOP Presidential nominee is going to have to pick a true-believer VP nominee. This is a pattern that goes back to George H.W. Bush, whom the Republican base did not trust. Which is why he had to choose someone like Quayle, whose wife was a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical, and made George the First more palatable to the base. The same thing was true four years ago with McCain, whom, once again, the GOP base did not trust. Which is why he had to choose someone like Palin, who is Pentecostal (though she quit her Pentecostal church the year she ran for governor), which, in turn, made John McC more acceptable to the Party's mass of right-wing voters. And now there is Romney, whom, yet again, the base does not trust. Which means he must choose an evangelical VP nominee like, for instance, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee would be a comparatively safe choice for Romney, in that Mike H has been able to shape his national image in a way that allows him to downplay his evangelical street cred, and come off as a regular guy. And unlike McCain, Mitt is not a risk taker. If he's anything, he's a man who plays it safe. So safe, that it seems highly likely that his VP nominee is going to be someone who is seen as a true-believer, but not an extremist, not a man or woman with any serious or potentially serious baggage at all. We all know that Palin wasn't sufficiently vetted by the McCain campaign. Don't look for that to happen again this year. Mitt's team is going to vet his VP nominee so thoroughly, it will be as if that nominee were given a long and very public colonoscopy. One more thing: in the past three decades, there were two GOP Presidential nominees who were seen as true-believers themselves: Reagan and George junior. That's why each of them were free to choose the VP nominees they chose, nominees who were not perceived as true-believers: George senior and Cheney.
- BenNevis
April 5, 2012 at 12:39pm
Mr. Mitt has said recently that it will be a while or maybe it will be a long while, before he states his views on how the government can be scaled back. The same can be said of any choice for a running mate until the "deal is sealed". A self proclaimed Washington outsider, his choice may be a lobbyist former politician. The campaign isn't having an easy time with women. Maybe the bar is too high. Choosing a woman might work. A vice presidential nominee from some part of the country in which there is no Romney residence could also enhance the fortunes of the campaign. It's gonna be Mitt's choice but he will get by with some help from his friends.
- Doug12
April 5, 2012 at 2:58pm
Blackton: "Only hurt and seldom help..." Perhaps Romney can become his own Vice-Presidential candidate as well. If he is a pod person, and infinitely malleable and mutable, are there not enough Romneys to go around, with perhaps enough spares to form a cabinet? Visualize! A cabinet meeting of Romneys! All alike! All different! Squint your eyes a little!
- skahn
April 6, 2012 at 1:05pm