This is a massively devastating loss for Mitt Romney. The candidate that conventional wisdom says would be most competitive against President Obama in the general election just had his hat handed to him. But this past week to two weeks have changed my mind on that, the conventional wisdom. I now believe, if things stay as they are, and especially if the economy continues to improve, that no Republican candidate currently running will beat Obama in the general. Romney is fatally damaged by Bain Capital and his tax returns. President Obama may actually want to face Romney and depict him as the poster boy for the 1%, because he is.
And then you have Newt Gingrich, who favorability ratings nationwide as Palinesque, if not worse. They are at -32 last time I checked. That is not only toxic to Gingrich, it will bring the whole GOP down. I just saw Haley Barbour quoted on Twitter saying that he doesn’t want to have Gingrich as the nominee because he likes having a Republican Speaker of the House, meaning of course if Gingrich is the nominee, the Democrats will sweep the GOP out of majority control. And he is right. So Gingrich is not a general election threat.
But he is now a massive threat to Mitt Romney. Conservatives just can’t stomach the idea of Mitt Romney as their standard bearer. They can’t make the case for Romney with a straight face. I have spoken often of my radically conservative friend who has said to me on more than one occasion that if Mitt Romney is the nominee, not only will he lose to Obama, but that he would not vote for him.
Before this week, before Newtmentum II, you saw establishment types settling for Romney while conservatives where split between Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and Perry. Perry is gone. Santorum has collapsed and will probably drop out tomorrow, especially if he finishes 4th tonight in a state he should have been competitive in. Paul really is a nonfactor among radical social conservatives. That leaves Gingrich, who caught fire in the debates this week, and lit the fire in the radical conservative heart.
They now have their candidate.
Could Romney still win the nomination? Sure. But he better win Florida, and that is what we will watch in the coming week.
And if he is the nominee, do the conservatives come around to him and vote for him in the fall. Well, they did before with McCain in 2008, and with Dole in 1996. Two establishment and “less than conservative” (in the eyes of the radicals) nominees. And maybe they will again, but I feel it is different this time. Maybe their hatred of Obama will unite them, but I sense this time, after being forced to swallow McCain last time, they won’t unite.
Put yourselves in their shoes. Imagine it is 2004 and this was our array of candidates against Bush: Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, James Trafficant, and Joe Lieberman. And we are told by the “establishment” of the Democratic Party that we must support Joe Lieberman because he is the only one who can beat Bush. Lieberman being so vehemently pro-Iraq War is roughly analogous to Romney’s pro-Romneycare/Obamacare stance. Yeah, Kerry also voted for the war and was doing back flips in 2004 to distance himself, but we didn’t hate Kerry. We hated Lieberman. They hate Romney. I don’t think we would turn out in 2004 to support Lieberman. I don’t think they will turn out either.
They instead are turning to a disgraced bomb thrower, because at least he throws bombs. Kind of like our attraction to Howard Dean back in 2003-4, but in only in the sense that Dean was an anti-establishment fighter, the only one who was attacking Bush the way we would attack him. We probably knew then, in the back our minds, or at least in hindsight, that Dean wouldn’t beat Bush. But we wanted a fighter.
I suspect the radicals on the right know, if they are honest, that pigs will fly before this nation elects Newt Gingrich. But they want someone to denigrate Obama, to call him the Food Stamp President, to insult him.
The question that remains now is can the GOP Establishment kill off Gingrich the way the Dem Establishment killed Dean. I don’t know anymore.