Re: The Nomination Nobody Wants

Count me out if the Republican nominee is Romney.  That will be more of the same 
ole, same ole.  


Mike F. 



________________________________
From: Peter Chattaway <[email protected]>
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver <[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, May 16, 2011 3:09:36 PM
Subject: [DADL-OT] The Nomination Nobody Wants

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/the-nomination-nobody-wants/

by Ross Douthat
May 16, 2011, 1:42 pm

A few thoughts on the Republican field now that Mike Huckabee has opted out:

1) As pretty much everybody has argued, the obvious winner from Huckabee’s 
departure is Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty’s great strength is his ability to play both 
sides of the populist-establishment divide, but this “all things to all people” 
quality can be a weakness as well: When you’re everybody’s second choice, it’s 
easy to get squeezed out in the early going, because everybody’s too busy voting 
for their first choice to hand to you any victories. (This is part of what 
happened to Fred Thompson in the Romney-Huckabee-McCain brawl of 2008, and it’s 
also what happened to Lamar Alexander — like Pawlenty, a guy who seemed like an 
obvious unity candidate — in the Pat Buchanan-Bob Dole battle of 1996.) In a 
Huckabee-Romney rematch, or a Huckabee-Romney-Daniels struggle, Pawlenty would 
have been in constant danger of being outflanked from both sides at once — on 
social issues one week, and then on the good-government-moderate flank the next. 
But now he has an excellent shot at a clean victory in Iowa, he’s 
well-positioned to pick up a lot of Huckabee’s supporters across the south 
(where his main competition will be Newt Gingrich), and at the end of the day, 
he’ll still be moderate and safe and competent-seeming enough to woo voters in 
the Northeast and his native Midwest. Throw in the fact that both Romney and 
Gingrich infuriated conservative activists this weekend by defending the idea of 
an individual mandate in health care, and suddenly Pawlenty has perhaps the 
clearest path to the Republican nomination of any major contender. Unless …

2) … somebody else emerges to outflank him from the right in Iowa. This could be 
Michelle Bachmann, it could be Herman Cain, it could be Rick Santorum. (Right 
now, and pace Jon Chait, I’d put more money on Cain than Bachmann.) The Tea 
Party doesn’t seem poised to play the kind of dominant role in the Republican 
primaries that many observers expected a year ago, but there’s a lot of 
unfocused anti-establishment zeal floating around out there, and it’s easy to 
see one of the field’s more zealous figures finding a way to focus it around 
their candidacy. This figure isn’t going to be the G.O.P. nominee, but he or she 
could cost Pawlenty a victory in Iowa — and with it, his chance at the 
nomination.

3) This scenario is just one reason why Mitt Romney isn’t nearly as dead as some 
of the weekend’s commentary has suggested. Yes, his health care positioning has 
cost him the imprimatur of the movement-conservative establishment, and yes, in 
a sense having Huckabee in the race gave him a useful figure to define himself 
against. But while wonks and activists understand the essential overlap between 
Romneycare and Obamacare, the details are technical enough that Romney may have 
room to  blur the issue with primary voters — especially since the first words 
out of his mouth on the issue will always be, “I’m going to repeal Obamacare.” 
And Huckabee was one of the strongest potential contenders for the nomination, 
so while his absence deprives Romney of the chance at a winnable two-way race 
with his old nemesis, it also leaves a weaker field for him to compete with 
overall. As Rich Lowry says, Romney’s path to victory would probably end up 
looking a lot like John McCain’s in 2008 — outlasting the competition, and 
profiting from a broken field. But given the weakness of the competition, that 
isn’t an implausible scenario by any means! And the “Romney can’t win” narrative 
is beginning to overwhelm common sense, as this passage from a Politico story 
suggests:

    Another Iowa Republican was even blunter, suggesting that the Romney fig 
leaf for not being able to win the caucuses has been stripped away.

    “The biggest loser is Romney because he no longer has a foil in Iowa,” said 
the Republican. “All the Iowa polls sans Huckabee have him winning.”

So Romney was trailing in the Iowa polls with Huckabee in the race, he’s leading 
without Huckabee, and this makes him … the weekend’s biggest loser? Isn’t it 
just possible that Romney’s current polling lead in a state that he doesn’t need 
to win, and that nobody expects him to win, is a sign of his resilience? 
Especially since after Iowa, the primary schedule gives him New Hampshire, 
Nevada and Florida early on, all of which are places where a candidate with 
Romney’s profile should have the inside track at victory? Especially since 
moderate, business-friendly, technocratic Republicans have a long history of 
pulling out campaigns against their more populist and right-wing rivals? 
Especially since, so long as Mitch Daniels stays out of the race, there’s no 
obvious place for all the primary voters who went for McCain (and Giuliani, for 
that matter) last time to go?

Maybe Pawlenty has become a better bet than Romney at this point. But Mitt isn’t 
a long shot either.

4) That being said, I do think Daniels will get in, which will reduce Romney’s 
odds considerably. But at this point, the Indiana governor has every reason to 
wait another six months or so to declare his candidacy — because at the rate 
we’re going, all of his prospective rivals will have either bowed out or 
self-destructed by then. (In the same spirit, I still can’t see the scenario 
where Jon Huntsman wins the nomination — but his apparent decision to stick a 
foot in the water looks more and more prescient with every passing week.)

6) Finally, I am pleased to have been vindicated in my decision to write 
absolutely nothing about Donald Trump’s chances at being the Republican nominee 
for president in 2012.


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