Tag: Romney

Romney’s Graceful Exit

Word on the street is that Mitt Romney will be departing the GOP race today in a speech at CPAC. It would make sense for him to do so—he’s earned a lot of respect with conservatives, he’s young and he still has plenty of opportunity to have a bright political future. What he doesn’t have is an opportunity to get the nomination this year.

I think that if Romney remains the consistent conservative that he claims to be, he’ll get another shot at the nomination sometime down the line. A gracious exit and a promise to work with conservatives on making the GOP a party of conservative principles would do him well.

We’ll see what happens at CPAC later today.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey is liveblogging Romney’s speech at CPAC, so if anything breaks, he’ll be the first to have it.

UPDATE: “Out of love for America, I must stand aside.”

Romney is pure class, and from what I hear he’s giving a wonderful speech on why conservative values are important for the future of this country. This has to be a difficult moment for him, but he’s handling it with the sort of grace and principle that will ensure he will have a future in politics should he want it.

Secretary of the Treasury Romney? Vice President Romney? McCain needs the conservative support, and when it comes to fiscal matters Romney would be a strong choice.

UPDATE: The full text of Romney’s CPAC speech is available here.

Live From Super Tuesday

I’m at my local caucus site, and GOP turnout is high–even I’m surprised at how many people are here. No clue as to which candidates are ahead, but Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the most presence here tonight. No overt support for McCain that I’ve seen yet. If my connection works, I’ll have more as things develop.

UPDATE: The precinct was packed! I’ve never seen turnout like this. The votes are being counted now. Results when they come in.

UPDATE: Looks like Romney is cleaning up. Romney 48, McCain 15, Paul 6, Huckabee 6.

UPDATE: Romney may have done well in my precinct, but nationally he’s getting creamed. He’s said that he will fight on, but it seems quite unlikely that he’ll have a path to the nomination after tonight.

The Caucus was absolutely packed. There were 75 people in my small precinct, and the auditorium with the general assembly was filled, and an equal number of people were waiting outside. American democracy is alive and well. The demographics were all over the place—young voters and old voters, men and women alike.

UPDATE: Ed Morrisey liveblogged the caucus…

As a side note, did Bill Richardson suddenly grow a beard or is it his twin from the mirror universe?

For the record, I voted for McCain. I’ll explain that later.

UPDATE: The Democratic race is as close as everyone thought it would be. I have a feeling that this could be leading to a brokered convention—which has to have Howard Dean screaming a “YEARGH!” of pain at the moment.

UPDATE: Minnesota has been called for Romney. Obama has also won convincingly against Clinton, with Obama taking 66% and Clinton 33% with 51% of the vote in. That’s a much bigger spread than I would have guessed.

UPDATE: 10:52PM CST: It’s looking more and more like Clinton will win California—but the results aren’t in yet. It’s also looking like McCain will win both Missouri (narrowly) and California (by a large margin). For once this election cycle, the pundits seem to be on track. McCain has a convincing lead with the Republicans, and Clinton is narrowly ahead of Obama.

McCain has a lot of work ahead of him in reassuring skittish conservatives. Appearing at CPAC is a good idea—but what McCain needs to do is be honest about points of disagreement and be prepared to talk about a shared conservative agenda. That means being much more reassuring about the sort of judicial appointments he’d make and standing strongly for an enforcement-first border policy. McCain needs the help of conservatives to win, and he’s got a lot of ground to cover.

Super Mega Ultra Tuesday Predictions

Today is Super Tuesday, when 24 states vote in Republican and Democratic primaries. It’s the Super Bowl of the primary season, and normally the winner on Super Tuesday is the one who sweeps the nomination.

Except for this year.

On the Democratic side, I’m predicting a race in which both Hillary and Obama come out with enough strength to keep this contest going. The dynamics of the race are such that neither Obama nor Clinton have enough dominance to decide the contest one way or another. They both have entrenched bases of political support. They both have plenty of funds. They both aren’t going anywhere. Which means that the Democratic race will go one for some time after Super Tuesday, and states that have been virtual afterthoughts in normal election cycles may suddenly become crucially important. Not only that, but the Democratic “superdelegates” who are supposed to prevent another replay of the 1968 fiasco could end up tipping the scales to Clinton since those superdelegates are part of the old Democratic machine. That would cause a great deal of rancor within the Democratic Party.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are a deeply divided party right now, and Super Tuesday is only going to make things worse. Clinton will sweep the big states like New York and California. Obama will do well in the smaller states. At the end of the day, neither one will be out, and the Democrats will be fighting this one out for a while longer. I don’t think that the race will have a clear winner until April, and perhaps not even then.

On the other side, the race is clear. John McCain has the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney is positioning himself as the conservative alternative to McCain, but by the time you’re running based on what you’re not rather than what you offer yourself, the race has already been lost. Romney will carry a few states, but McCain will have a major sweep tonight. The reason why is simple: people want to back a winner. Romney hasn’t closed the deal, which means that even if he benefits from conservative backlash to McCain he just doesn’t have the support necessary to carry him over the top. McCain now has the bandwagon effect going for him, and the sheer momentum of that is enough to put Romney out. He can run beyond today, but unless he comes very close to McCain it would be just throwing more money after bad.

At the end of tonight when the dust settles, it will be a knock-out fight between Hillary and Obama on the Democratic side while John McCain will be a virtual lock for the GOP nomination. While McCain goes to CPAC and starts rallying his base, the Democrats will be involved in a bitter feud that may not end for a long while.

UPDATE: Open Left has an interesting piece on how Democratic “superdelegates” could up deciding the Democratic nomination. If that analysis proves correct, the Democratic race could get very contentious indeed.

McCain Wins In Florida

CNN has official called John McCain the winner in the Florida primary, beating out Mitt Romney and giving himself a clear shot at the nomination. At this point, I think McCain will be the Republican nominee.

This marks the likely end of the Giuliani campaign, and already there are rumors that Giuliani will drop out and endorse McCain. That seems likely. Giuliani’s whole strategy was to wait out the early contests and pick up all his momentum in Florida. It was a risky strategy, and it appears to have backfired against him. Giuliani is a great leader, and I don’t think this is the end of his political career, but he didn’t show the kind of oratorical brilliance that I’ve seen from him on several occasions.

Mitt Romney’s strong executive experience doesn’t seem to have helped him in Florida. Romney has been a stalwart conservative in this race, but ultimately I don’t think he has enough momentum out of Super Tuesday to make it all the way. He’s certainly not out of the race, but he has a great deal of ground to gain in very little time.

Sen. John McCain is an American hero, a man of great personal integrity and someone who has always stood strongly on the side of his country. He often rubs conservatives the wrong way, and his “maverick” image causes much consternation—however, when it comes right down to it a man who agrees with us 80% of the time is better than a woman who represents the worst of American politics and a man whose great rhetoric is but a cover for a fundamental lack of real-world experience. We may have our issues with John McCain, but when it comes down to the basic principles of the party: fiscal conservatism, a strong national defense and strengthening the family, McCain has his heart in the right place.

Conservatives should make their voices heard, and they should continue to push Sen. McCain towards the mainstream of the party as they have on issues like immigration. However, if McCain gets the nomination—and it seems altogether likely that he will—conservatives cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. John McCain will cut wasteful spending in Washington, defend our troops in Iraq and our war against radical Islamist terrorism and will continue to be a strong voice for respecting human life, born and unborn. He may not be perfect, but he can lead, and we need true leadership in Washington more than anything else.

Behind Romney’s Michigan Victory

Byron York takes a look at why Mitt Romney won Michigan last night:

When rival John McCain said — probably correctly — that some of the state’s lost automotive jobs wouldn’t come back, Romney answered, “Baloney.” He also promised the auto industry $20 billion in federal investment, along with relief from mileage standards and burdensome employee health-care costs. Looked at from the voter’s perspective, one candidate, McCain, offered Michiganders little understanding — the Michigan equivalent of McCain’s opposition to ethanol subsidies in Iowa — while the other, Romney, promised to throw them a life preserver. The guy with the life preserver won.

The other big factor at play was that turnout was low with Democrats and independents—the people who gave McCain his victory in 2000. McCain needed a certain percentage of the independent vote to turn out last night, and they simply did not. Conservatives chose Romney by a large margin, and McCain didn’t have enough independents and crossover Democrats to make up for his losses there. (There’s also no evidence that that radical left’s plan to “throw” the elections by voting for Romney had any impact on the race—McCain still won crossover voters by significant margins.)

The problem is that while Romney’s campaign now has some steam, what does that mean for him down the road? Is Romney likely to pick up more support in South Carolina, where it looks like the race is between Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson? Will Romney do better on Super Tuesday? It’s hard to say, and the polls are useless as a predictor.

The two definite losers last night were pollsters and John McCain.

Once again, we also see how inaccurate political polling has been this year. The race was supposed to be close, and instead Romney got a convincing 9-point win rather than a squeaker. None of the polls in any of the states have been particularly accurate, it it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting any better in the future. Polling just doesn’t work—people distrust pollsters (especially Republicans), they increasingly use cellular phones rather than landlines, and polls tend to reflect conventional wisdom rather than real political trends. Even political futures markets have been doing poorly. How pollsters can change methodologies and tactics is a question for the future—what matters now is that polls don’t mean much of anything in predicting outcomes in this race.

John McCain also blew an opportunity to remain the frontrunner. His “straight talk” came off as pessimism, which is not politically popular. Even if McCain is right on the substance—big manufacturing is no longer the engine of employment than it was, thanks to competition and technological change, putting it so negatively was guaranteed to hurt him in Michigan. Yes, being a “straight talker” has it’s benefits: but only if you’re willing to give people some hope for the future. Had McCain said something about “taking Michigan into the 21st Century” or the like, he might have done better. McCain’s time as frontrunner may now be a thing of the past.

Looking ahead, the race is still a 5-way tie. It’s quite possible we could have 5 major contests with 5 different winners if Thompson wins South Carolina and Giuliani wins Florida. If so, it’s impossible to predict what the race will look like. Giuliani’s late-state strategy may have been a brilliant political tactic, or it may have been campaign suicide. We probably won’t know until Super Tuesday. This race is incredibly volatile on both sides—a real throwback to the days when party conventions matter. Not only could there be a brokered convention this year, it’s not inconceivable for both conventions to be brokered.

This race isn’t over on either side, and unless there’s a major upset in the dynamics of both, it may not be over after Super Tuesday either.

Michigan Preview

Today is the Michigan primary, a race that’s been overshadowed by New Hampshire and South Carolina, but one that could have some effect on the dynamics of the race. On the Democratic side, the only candidate who counts that’s on the ballot is Hillary Clinton. Because Michigan didn’t follow DNC rules, their delegates may not be seated at the convention. The only shock would be if Democrats voted “Uncommitted” over Hillary. There are no write-ins allowed.

On the Republican side, things are more interesting. McCain and Romney are neck and neck. If I had to guess, I’d say McCain will benefit from Democratic cross-over votes and narrowly defeat Romney. If Romney wins, he remains in the game. If Romney takes second again, he’s basically out of the race. This is Romney’s last chance to remain viable, and even if he wins he’s lost so much ground elsewhere that it’s only a matter of time for him.

It all will come down to the number of cross-over and independent voters, a fact not lost on Team Romney. Turnout will be low due to weather, which may help Romney and Huckabee. However, McCain won Michigan in 2000. He still has strong appeal there. I don’t think it will be a McCain blowout, but I think Mitt Romney’s days are numbered. I’m predicting a narrow McCain win.

NR Endorses Romney

National Review has formally endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican race for the 2008 nomination:

Like any Republican, he would have an uphill climb next fall. But he would be able to offer a persuasive outsider’s critique of Washington. His conservative accomplishments as governor showed that he can work with, and resist, a Democratic legislature. He knows that not every feature of the health-care plan he enacted in Massachusetts should be replicated nationally, but he can also speak with more authority than any of the other Republican candidates about this pressing issue. He would also have credibility on the economy, given his success as a businessman and a manager of the Olympics.

Romney has some impressive achievements under his belt, but the big question is even if he’s the most reliably conservative candidate (which is debatable), can he actually win in the general election? The essential problem that Mitt Romney has is that he’s too packaged to really connect with the electorate. The victories he’s had have come from spending a lot of money to get his message out, but the rise of Mike Huckabee proves that he hasn’t done nearly a good enough job of closing the deal with Republicans no less the American electorate.

National Review‘s endorsement is a big win for Romney at a time he urgently needs one. However, if he doesn’t beat Huckabee in Iowa and loses New Hampshire, he’s out of the race. He hasn’t built the nationwide campaign and instead has pursued then then-wise strategy of building momentum from the early contests. If that strategy fails, it’s going to be increasingly hard to find a Plan B.

All in all, the GOP could do much worse than Romney, but he needs to show he can connect and he needs to demonstrate a sincere commitment to conservative principles, both on economic and social issues. His heart is in the right place—at least for now—but it remains to be seen whether he’ll stick to his principles should he be elected.

Romney’s Faith In America Speech

I happened to catch most of Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech and was quite impressed by it. Apparently, others have had the same reaction. (NRO’s The Corner has plenty of other reactions.)

Romney could have easily hurt himself with this speech, but at the very least he’s no worse off than he was before—and now that he’s delivered a speech that shows real passion, I have a feeling it will give him a decent boost. Perhaps not enough to keep Huckabee from winning in Iowa, but enough to keep him in the race.

His rhetoric was excellent, and I also appreciated his metaphor of the loss of Europe’s Christian heritage and the rise of radical Islam. However, the part that really got to me was the end:

Recall the early days of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, during the fall of 1774. With Boston occupied by British troops, there were rumors of imminent hostilities and fears of an impending war. In this time of peril, someone suggested that they pray. But there were objections. “They were too divided in religious sentiments,” what with Episcopalians and Quakers, Anabaptists and Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics.

Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot.

And so together they prayed, and together they fought, and together, by the grace of God … they founded this great nation.

I have to admit, in terms of American political rhetoric, I think that part of Romney’s speech was the best of 2007 by a long shot. It was delivered with real passion and conviction, and the message was strong: religious convictions do matter, but they matter in terms of the common principles we all share. There will be those whose theological differences with the Latter-Day Saints will never allow them to support a Mormon for public office—and while I find that attitude perilously close to requiring a religious test for office, there is nothing in the Constitution which prevents individual voters from exercising their individual consciences in picking a Presidential candidate. However, for those wondering just how Romney’s faith will or will not influence his job as a President got their answer.

Romney did exclude atheists and agnostics from his speech, which was a notable and lamentable omission. Still, they’re not the audience that Romney is going for at this point in the race. He’ll have to recognize those groups later and more fully explain how they fit into his vision of America, but that is a task for another day. This was a speech that was directly primarily at Evangelical Christians, and Romney spoke convincingly to his intended audience in language they could understand and appreciate.

In the end, I don’t think Romney will get the nomination, and if he loses Iowa I think he’ll be sunk. Still, today’s speech was a masterwork of American rhetoric, a great speech about our shared values as a society, and it was delivered very well. This was Romney at his best, and he looked and sounded like someone who could do justice to the Office of President. It may not be enough to win the race, but it’s still a speech that will be remembered as one of the best political addresses of the year and perhaps one of the better ones of our times.

Romney’s Key Moment

Jonah Goldberg has a good column on tomorrow’s speech by Mitt Romney on “the Mormon issue.” Romney will speak from the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas and the speech is widely viewed as being the same sort of speech that President Kennedy gave during the 1960 campaign to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in which he explained why his Catholicism should not be a political issue.

The problem for Romney is that he wants his faith to be relevant. He’s basically trying to do two things at once: convince people that being a Mormon isn’t a political issue, but that because he’s a Mormon he’s a man of conservative values. Those two goals are in tension with each other, as Goldberg points out:

Still, Romney is marching into a theological head wind the other candidates aren’t. It’s not his or any other Mormon’s policy positions that are at stake. Some of the most effective conservatives in Washington are Mormons. What rankles is the widespread characterization — mis-characterization in their eyes — of Mormonism as merely another “denomination” of Christianity. Phrases like “a stronghold of Satan’s” (applied to Utah) and “false prophecy” (applied to the “cult” ) get bandied about in some circles. Others are coldly analytical; a Mormon president, they correctly adduce, would only aid the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ remarkable success at proselytizing in the U.S. and around the world.

How can Romney address this concern? It’s not like he could — or should — say he’s no Mormon role model. And talking theology at all is only likely to exacerbate his problem with the voters who care about it, and those are the voters he needs.

Some people believe that Mormonism is incompatible with Christianity—Romney isn’t going to win them over. Others think that Mormonism isn’t particularly relevant to a person’s ability to hold the office of President so long as that candidate isn’t going to use the Oval Office for evangelization. (I’m in the latter category.) The problem with Romney’s speech is that it doesn’t help either. Those who reject Mormonism as a “cult” aren’t going to vote for Romney. Those who want to look beyond Romney’s Mormonism are going to have to confront it head-on. Either way, Romney’s “opening the door” to attacks against his religion and politicizing his faith.

Could Romney pull it off? If he delivers a truly great speech, it could revitalize his campaign. But it’s a major risk, especially with Huckabee doing so well with the evangelical vote. Romney’s campaign is in serious trouble: he needed the momentum from Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan to carry him into the later contests. Now with Huckabee surging, he might not even get that. He doesn’t have the strength nationally to compete without the boost of winning Iowa, and with the expectations game he’s set from himself, to not win Iowa convincingly could be a death blow to his campaign.

Romney may not have much of a choice but to reassure skittish conservatives that his Mormonism isn’t an issue but his faith should be—but if he doesn’t deliver it could spell the end of his campaign. The eyes of the nation will be on him tomorrow, and this will be the greatest test of his campaign. Pull it off, and he could stay in the race and has a shot at the nomination. If he fails, he could end up losing it all. In a race that’s so far up in the air, a moment of consequence like this could have major impacts on the shape of the race.

The YouTube GOP Debate

I managed to catch the CNN/YouTube debate tonight, and it certainly was different from most others. The problem was that the questions that weren’t planted tended to be questions based more on Republican stereotypes rather than on substantive issues. Yes, it’s somewhat interesting to know whether a candidate believes in the Bible or not—but is it the sort of question that should come up at a national debate?

The Good

I think this debate was “won” by Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Huckabee came off as the candidate I’d most like to have a beer with some time, and John McCain came off as the elder statesman. McCain put Ron Paul in his place (which is always a good thing for a Republican to do), and he spoke with great moral authority on torture against Romney’s non-answer. Huckabee’s answer that Jesus was too smart to run for public office was a great line. Huckabee came off as very natural and very personable. McCain came off as a man of integrity and honor.

Mitt Romney was also confident and poised. He confidently failed to give a clear answer with great poise. Both he and Giuliani hurt themselves by fighting over abortion—neither one of them are strong on that issue, and both hurt themselves there. Romney’s a very poised candidate, and he has an impressive business background. His honesty on the abortion issue was questioning. It’s nice to have a candidate willing to come out and admit his mistakes.

There were some decent questions that wouldn’t normally be asked in a Presidential debate. As a space exploration fan, I liked the question about the candidate’s vision for space exploration. NASA consumes a very small amount of the federal budget, and the candidates missed the opportunity to talk about private space exploration. Huckabee’s answer wasn’t bad, but it could have been better.

Fred Thompson was very poised and gave very responsive answers. He didn’t knock it out of the park, but he showed the best mastery of the issues. The problem is that he needs to do better—it’s a crowded field and he needs to stand out more. He’s got the substance, but he needs more flash. He has some great ads out that would have done much better than the attack ad he used.

The Bad

First of all, I think Rudy hurt himself with his exchange with Romney. He’s the front-runner (at least nationally), so he doesn’t need to go on the offensive. Hitting Romney below the belt won’t help him, and made him look like a bully. Overall, his answers weren’t a strong as they could be. Rudy needs to get a boost, and this wasn’t it. While he’s still ahead nationally, he’s vulnerable.

The same applies to Fred Thompson’s attack ad. While all the others talked about themselves, Thompson’s offensive seemed out of place. Not only that, but Romney came back with a very human answer that helped him. Huckabee also had a good response. The other campaigns are calling the video an act of “desperation”—and while I don’t think that’s the case, it wasn’t the right call. I’m in Fred’s corner, but even I don’t think that running an attack ad at that point helped him at all.

Ron Paul is a nut. When given a question that basically asked him whether he believes in a bizarre conspiracy theory, he basically said “yes.” I’ll give him some credit for eschewing an independent run, but he’s still the sort of paleoconservative on national defense issues that we don’t need now.

Rudy also hurt himself with his Second Amendment answer. This was not the right crowd to split hairs on regulating guns. This was not a good night for Rudy, and it may hurt him.

This was a solid and substantive debate (at least on the part of the candidates, if not CNN), and it could end up changing the dynamics of the race. Rudy and Romney, the two frontrunners, engaged in a fight that ended up making them both look bad. Mike Huckabee demonstrated once again why he’s gaining the most traction—he was confident and had a decent command of the issues. Fred Thompson did nothing to take him out of the race. John McCain’s campaign was on life support only a few months ago, but he’s not out of the race by any chance, and many may be willing to take a new look at him after tonight.

The biggest loser: CNN. Having a Clinton campaign advisor not only be allowed to ask a question, but then to follow up live demonstrated incredibly poor judgment. At the very least CNN could have Googled the people they were having speak. Either they were trying to bias the debate or they were simply asleep at the wheel—either way it reflects badly on them.

This race is still entirely up in the air, and even with weeks left until the Iowa Caucuses the rankings could change dramatically. Fortunately, the Republican Party has a solid group of candidates to pick from. The problem is that eventually the field must be narrowed to one—and who that may be is anyone’s guess.