JONATHAN COHN MARCH 6, 2012
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It looks like Mitt Romney may have escaped Ohio with the narrowest of victories. Just before midnight on Tuesday, with most precincts around the state reporting, he was ahead by 6,000 votes. But does such a slim win really count as a victory?
Even before Tuesday, we knew that Romney would get more delegates from Ohio, because Santorum’s campaign organization hadn’t gotten enough signatures in all of the state’s congressional districts. The state mattered because it was a bellwether. In particular, it was a chance for Romney to show he could vanquish Santorum once and for all. It doesn’t look to me like that happened.
In fact, the results in Ohio looked strikingly like the results from past contests. Romney won in and around the big cities, among wealthier and more educated voters. Santorum prevailed in rural areas, among voters with less money and less schooling. Going forward, Romney has all the advantages he had before: More money, better organization, and an increasingly large lead in pledged delegates.
But Romney is not expanding his base of support and he’s not winning over the doubters. In fact, you can make a pretty good case that, in Ohio, the anti-Romney vote was still bigger than the Romney vote. (In a related development, Santorum advisers are now explicitly appealing to supporters of Newt Gingrich, in the hopes of winning those votes.)
Yes, Romney remains the favorite to win the nomination. But he hasn’t won it yet. The next two weeks could be particularly brutal, as Romney must slog through caucuses in Kansas and Missouri, plus primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. The Illinois primary, on March 20, looks a bit more favorable, but right after that comes Louisiana.
Republican optimists point out, over and over again, that the long, difficult primary of 2008 ended up strengthening Barack Obama. That is true. But 2008 strengthened Obama because he was running against a formidable foe in Hillary Clinton – and because it sharpened his political skills without forcing him to take more extreme ideological positions. As many of us have noted, that is not happening right now.
Just consider an episode that, perhaps because Rush Limbaugh was dominating the headlines, got surprisingly little attention. It happened during a town hall in Youngstown, on Monday, when a college student asked Romney what he would do about rising tuition costs. In response, Romney said
It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that. Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.
But, as David Firestone of the New York Times observed, Romney said nothing about student loans or Pell Grants, or Obama's new initiatives to push down tuition with government leverage.
That’s the face of modern Republican austerity. Don’t talk about the value of higher education to the country’s economic future, and don’t bother to think about ways to make it more accessible to strapped families. Tell students not to take on more debt than they can afford, wish them well, and move on.
Romney’s answer apparently went over fine with that particular crowd – and, perhaps, that’s why Romney said it. He was doing his best to appeal to the Republican base, which has remained so elusive and remains so opposed to government programs of any type. But that’s no way to win a general election. Most Americans support government programs that help young people pay for college.
The longer this race goes on, the more desperate Romney becomes to protect his right flank, the more he will position himself outside the mainstream. And you can make the case– indeed, I have made the case – that Romney has already committed himself to radically conservative positions on taxes and spending that will alienate swing voters in the general election.
Anything can happen between now and November – anything. But it’s hard to look at Ohio and discern a strong general election candidate emerging from it.
follow me on twitter @CitizenCohn
9 comments
A lot of my fellow posters will say, "Don't jinx us! Icksnay on the overconfidence" but Obama is so going to win the GE it's hardly worth talking about the Republican primary anymore. Yes, Romney will be the nominee, and no, it doesn't make any difference. The interesting story this round is the Congressional races. Can the Dems reassume control of the House? I still rather doubt it, but I'm starting to think as I didn't before that it is within the realm of possibility. And what about the Senate? Seems like the Repubs should make gains with fewer incumbents in the hotseat, but is that gonna hold up I the event? I'm for calling a moratorium on any more verbiage on these GOP presidential stiffs and more reportage on the races that are going to make a difference.
- AaronW
March 7, 2012 at 7:35am
I ask a again, as I have so often in these pages, what sort of country with aspirations to world leadership can be so stupid as to NOT provide for the advanced education of it's coming generation of adults? A stupid one, to be sure, but how in hell did we get to be so stupid?
- IowaBeauty
March 7, 2012 at 7:39am
Iowa Not "we." Some of us.
- Nusholtz
March 7, 2012 at 8:48am
I would like to see Obama contrast Romney's approach to education funding with that of Abraham Lincoln.
- kluhman
March 7, 2012 at 9:50am
Nusholtz, Yes, of course, some of us. But collectively, it is a we, and we are being pretty dumb about education. If you have the flu, not every cell in your body is infected, but you still have the flu as an organism. On this topic, this country has the flu.
- IowaBeauty
March 7, 2012 at 9:53am
I think AaronW is correct; the battles at the Congressional level are crucial but that also goes for state governments. Some of the really meshugah laws and ideas are emerging at the State level and also, this is where people suffer: locally, individually; as communities. We the People may have the flu but I think, in certain parts of the country, it's more like terminal pneumonia. That may be literally true by the way, as huge cuts affect people's lives in the most literal sense.
- Sophia
March 7, 2012 at 1:22pm
Wow, Jonathan's find is great: "Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education...hopefully you’ll find that." Another example of tin-eared politics. What's not even mentioned is that Obama's administration has been putting together a plan of action to actively force colleges to keep costs from rising so much. If Romney offers this kind of condescending bromide in a debate, Obama will completely destroy him. Ironically, I think part of Romney's message is right. Too many students are willing to take on huge debt burdens for supposedly better colleges. Yet there are a lot of high-quality, lower-cost colleges (non-flagship publics) and even a number of good community college systems that could dramatically lower college loans. Of course, Romney didn't make this case at all, and didn't really address the reasons behind rising tuition. I think he really has no conception that even a few hundred dollars for books every semester can be a big burden on many students.
- polcereal
March 7, 2012 at 3:11pm
polcereal, I was going to counter something in your first paragraph, but you brought it up in your second. Romney has a good point about going to a college you can afford. With some few exceptions for particular curriculums at certain institutions, you'll only get out of the education only what you put into it; as for the exceptions, it is always the added prestige. I went to a private college and racked up a ton of debt because I didn't know better. I had a great college experience, but I'm pretty sure I could have done just as well for myself at a community college, or going there for two years and switching to a public college or university to get the full degree, and thus come out with less than half the debt.
But yeah, his answer definitely gives the impression of having a tin ear, and at worst, trying to mask his opinion that "if your daddy ain't rich and you can't afford college then too bad" with nice sounding pablum. Either way, I would certainly expect his government to stop making student loans altogether, privatize that market again. And maybe even through in a few extra give-aways than before, as an apology for the lost income of all those sweetheart subsidized loans that have been making big banks fat at tax payers' expense for decades.
- GSpinks
March 7, 2012 at 5:57pm
I tossed up applying to the Ivies but bagged it for lack of funds. Instead I went to a state liberal arts college in my home state that happened to make it into "The Public Ivies." No regrets. After I graduated I made bricks by hand, worked on fishing boats in Alaska, parked cars, mowed grass on a golf course, and hung out with homeless ex-cons as a drug-study guinea pig, all of which experiences have been quite valuable to me and none of which would have been possible had I graduated with $100K in debt. Best-case scenario is I would have gone to med school four years sooner than I did, but given that I had to work through my post-grad, hitchhiking slacker phase to determine I was up for a traditional profession, it's far more likely if I'd done the Ivy thing (assuming I could have gotten in, which is by no means sure), I'd have wound up some embittered troll at some dismal non-profit or other, secretly seething over the fact that my over-fastidious lefty moral sense had kept me from selling out for the big bucks in law and finance that all my classmates had gone chasing after.
- AaronW
March 7, 2012 at 10:01pm