Why Mitt Should have Lost Iowa…

It all looked so good on paper.  For the Republicans, they were tired of getting hammered by superior electioneering by the Clinton and Obama campaigns.  They felt the nomination process wasn’t producing the right candidates to win in the general election.  So they changed the rules and re-engineered the process…

They went away from the “winner take all” delegate system and went to a proportioned one.  They felt that unpredictable independent states like New Hampshire carried too much say in the decision.  They wanted the campaign to go on longer, and involve more of their red meat states in the south like South Carolina and especially Florida. 

The way the Electoral College map lays out today, it’s almost impossible for a Republican to win without getting Florida and its large chuck of electoral votes.  They figured this new process would weed out the flavor of the week and produce the kind of true core Republican candidate that would pull in the southern conservatives and win against President Obama. 

The Democrats will always carry big delegate rich places like the Northeast and usually California.  The Republicans will always carry the rest of the west, lots of states, but not many electoral votes. 

Nobody really got this until Jimmy Carter won it all in 1976.  Yes he made some missteps and was a one-term president.  But the first time around he put together a “solid South” like hadn’t been seen in decades. 

The South drives everything now…

If Al Gore would have had Bill Clinton campaign for him in Tennessee, he would have been president.  States like South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida are vital to getting the required electoral votes. 

After the Carter win, conventional wisdom had it the best candidate to run for either party is a Southern governor, preferably from a bigger state like Florida or Texas. 

But this is more important for Republicans than Democrats… 

The Democrats can run a Northerner, or congressperson or senator a lot easier, because their strength comes from the liberal base in the Northeast.   They simply need someone who can win some key swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, and/or cherry pick a couple Southern plums like Florida.

For the GOP, a Southern Governor like Bush, Huckabee, or Perry is just what the doctor ordered…

You get a conservative, faith-based guy, who can run as having executive experience, yet still claim to be a Washington outsider, and they bring the electoral votes of an important swing state. 

But it didn’t play out as planned…

Huckabee took one look at President Obama’s billion-dollar war chest and decided that being a talk show host looked a lot more attractive.  The chosen one, Governor Rick Perry stumbled in debate after debate.  Meanwhile, steady, plodding Mitt kept raising cash and moving up, all according to his team’s plan. 

Republicans banked on this new system to draw out the process to vet the candidates better, lose the potential of a flavor of the week seizing momentum from an upset win in Iowa or New Hampshire, and get the southern states involved in the process. 

But they made a huge miscalculation…

They didn’t factor in how the Tea Party would distort the process and hijack the party.  And the Romney campaign compounded that mistake, by running away from Mitt’s moderate record, and trying to pander to the Tea Party extremists. 

And I believe that is what will cost him the election in November. 

Everyone in the Republican Party saw the gains the Tea Party made in the election of 2010, and started running scared.  They thought the Tea Party would bring tremendous clout to the presidential election. 

But no one did the critical thinking about the big picture…

Issues that can get a congressman or senator elected in one state — do not necessarily translate well into the national stage of all 50 states. 

If the Tea Party had stayed with the original vision of less governments and taxes, everything would have worked out fine.  They would have pulled the Republican Party back to its roots of fiscal responsibility, and could have had a landslide in 2012. 

But they started drinking their own bath water:  Emboldened by their successes in 2010, the fundamentalist factions of the movement got greedy…

Now the movement started becoming about rounding up immigrants, building big electric fences, telling rape and incest victims they wouldn’t have the option of abortion, and going into people’s bedrooms to see if they were having unmarried sex or sodomy.   They lost the plot completely… 

They went from a movement protesting the nanny state socialism of the democrats – to wanting to create a nanny state enforcer of their fundamentalist religious beliefs.

The Republican Party, and particularly moderates like Romney, should have run shrieking from the movement, and realized that it had the potential to destroy the party (and any candidate that didn’t keep a safe distance from them).  But instead they ran to them with open arms, thinking they were going to galvanize the Republican base, generate excitement, and provide a big turn out to defeat the president. 

Wrong.

A year ago, you could have bet the rent that Romney was going to waltz into the White House in a cakewalk.  He was a vetted candidate, had solid private sector experience, the executive experience of being a governor and saving the Olympics, and he was moderate enough to pull in many independents with his record and reputation. 

So what happened?

If you want to be charitable, you could say he lost his way.  If you want to be cynical, you could say his deserted his principles and core values for expediency.  In any event, he started revisionist history on his record and changed his positions to pander to the extremists.  It looked like the fastest way to undercut Bachmann, Perry Santorum, and Gingrich. 

Everything in the primary nomination process is momentum.  Especially early momentum - which gets you coverage - which gets you money - which gets you commercials for South Carolina and Florida.  

Romney was all set to seize that momentum.  It was a cinch we would crush in New Hampshire and Iowa didn’t matter.  But that’s where the Romney campaign made a stupid mistake… 

They looked at Iowa, saw the evangelical vote split so many ways, and saw an opening to sneak in and steal a win.  Now they got greedy.  They thought a surprise Iowa win would jumpstart their momentum even before New Hampshire.  Which it did.  But no one thought about the price that would have to be paid down the road.

Iowa is kind of like American Idol: the real winner (the one who actually sells the most records and has a real career) usually comes in second or third. 

In his haste to defang Newt, and negate Perry, Santorum and Bachmann – Mitt took the bait.  He made a big push in the last two weeks in Iowa, and continued a process he had started from the very first debate:  moving away from moderate positions and pandering to the extremists. 

Well the fundamentalists didn’t buy it, and the people who believed in Mitt wondered what happened to the guy they used to support.  This opened him up to all the wishy-washy and flip-flopping accusations.  And this certainly hasn’t inspired his core base, which was moderate conservatives and independents, who are exactly who he would need to beat President Obama in November. 

Now Romney doesn’t have that zealous base of excitement necessary to win a long national campaign.  Right now the biggest group in the party is the ARR – the Anti-Romney Republicans.  He is the first choice of 25 percent, but he’s the second, third or fourth choice of the other 75 percent.  He’s like the nice girl your parents want you to take to the prom, not the hot chick you really want to make out with afterward.

His pandering in a futile attempt to placate the tea party zealots caused him to take positions that play well in Iowa, but most definitely do not play well in the rest of the universe. 

Trying to out Santorum Santorum was crazy. Say what you will about Santorum, at least he is true to himself.  His campaign slogan could easily be, “Cause you can’t fake dorky.”  With a guy like him, his image isn’t a consultant-orchestrated campaign gimmick.  You look at him and you realize he actually went into the closet, looked at that argyle sweater vest and said, “That would look good!” 

Santorum made it clear he wants to overturn Roe V. Wade, is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, he equate being Gay with bestiality & pedophilia, and is even against contraception.    

Even most of the Bible-thumping Bubba’s in the South don’t go that far.  They’re still going to use a condom when they’re fornicating with farm animals, if only for sanitation reasons…

It would have served Mitt better to NOT win Iowa.  The campaign would have been much smarter to downplay Iowa, spin that New Hampshire was a much better barometer of what would be necessary to win in November, and that if he placed third or fourth, he would be consider it a win.  He probably would have come in second anyway, and the buzz coming out would still have been his surprising strong showing.  And he would still capture the momentum and continue to be the story once he won New Hampshire. 

More importantly, he would be viewed as a man of conviction, pulling some enthusiasm from his base, and better positioned for the general election in the fall.  

Those eight votes he picked up to win Iowa will cost him two to four million in the general election. 

And they’re going to come in swing states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania where a moderate with a strong economic record could have defeated the president.   

The majority of Americans do not want to remake the Supreme Court and overturn Roe V. Wade.  They don’t want search parties to round up illegal immigrants who have lived here for decades, have American born children, work a job and pay taxes. 

Most people have a Gay neighbor or relative and realize they can have committed loving relationships and make good foster and adoptive parents.  They don’t want to see them ostracized and discriminated against. 

And let me give you a news flash:  one of the biggest reasons President Obama won was because he promised to do something about the 40 million Americans who were without insurance. 

For most mainstream Americans, they find the Tea Party positions extreme, mean-spirited and hurtful.

Romney could have run on his record of providing health care in Massachusetts and taken credit for being the inspiration for Obama-care.  He could have made a measured case for what he did and how the national program could be tweaked to work better.  But he let the extremists drive the debate, equate Obama-care to Romney-care, and started pledging to repeal it.  Now he talks like that guy who set up the health care system was some other guy. 

He used to have a humane position on immigration.  Now he can’t endorse electric fences and deporting millions of people fast enough. 

He could support the position that the federal law be civil unions for everyone same sex or opposite sex, and marriage is a religious ritual that can be decided by individual churches.  Instead he wants to amend the Constitution to classify marriage as only between a man and a woman.  This is less government? 

By the way, common sense, decency and human rights will cause this to happen eventually anyway.  Your great-grandchildren will be shocked to learn that there was a time that Gay, Lesbian and transgender people were once denied basic human rights, just as you were probably shocked to hear there used to be separate drinking fountains for colored people. 

The point is Romney the progressive governor from Massachusetts was perfectly positioned to win in 2012.  But this new edition of Romney the pseudo-neoconservative just looks fake.  He inspires no enthusiasm and he will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November. 

Yes he will get most of the Bubba votes in the South.  But he was going to get them anyway.  He didn’t have to track right to get their votes.  All he had to do was not be President Obama. 

President Obama didn’t win with white men.  He won with women, Blacks and Latins.  And he will win again this November with women, Blacks and Latins – because Romney’s new Tea Party positions on the issues will alienate all of them.

Now the blue-blooded Romney wasn’t likely to get much of the Black vote anyway.  Where he killed himself was women and Latins.  Taking the position to overturn Roe V. Wade will eviscerate him with millions of women.  And this new mean-spirited immigration policy even alienates legal immigrants, because it’s obviously so racist.  There are at least three or four crucial swing states where the Latin vote will make the difference.  Places in the South like Florida and the west like New Mexico. 

All of Romney shape shifting has the Obama campaign lots of new fodder to portray Mitt the flip-flopper, and delicious video clips of Newt calling him a liar, and Huntsman cutting him down to size.  (I’m sure David Plouffe is already preparing to serve reporters “pious baloney” sandwiches at his spin sessions after the debates between Romney and the president.) 

This election will be determined by the economic unrest of middle class.  For Romney, a blue-blooded wealthy aristocrat to try and portray himself as a populist reformer against Obama is bordering on the ludicrous.  It will take one debate moment like today that will define the stage…

Romney will trot out that line about being a private sector executive who’s simply taking a break to do his civic duty in public service to save us from career politicians and Washington insiders like Obama. 

President Obama needs to simply smile, shake his head, chuckle, and say, “Mitt your daddy’s been grooming you for the presidency since you were two years old.  The only reason you haven’t been a career politician for the last 20 years is because the American voters have rejected you.  I believe you’re a good man and you mean well, but Americans don’t need a Wall Street banker right now.  They need a champion for the middle class.”  

BOOM!  That’s the knockout round.  Everything else is formality and Obama wins, not by a squeaker and not by a landslide, but comfortably. 

Or at least that’s what I thought until the rumble this morning…

Now I’m not so certain Romney has the nomination sewn up.  The NBC Meet the press debate Sunday morning was the best yet.  It really highlighted the differences between the candidates and it started to get real. 

The Romney camp came in confident, even cocky.  Their guy was the defending champ and he has a double-digit lead.  This was simply the tune up fight against the journeyman opponent.  The champ was supposed to dispose of him easily, and then slide into training camp for the real fight, the heavyweight championship. 

Like they have all along, their strategy was simply to play not to lose:  Show up, don’t get drawn into anything, look pretty, and don’t say anything stupid.

Romney has been solid and steady every debate.  He never breaks out, but he’s always played safe, looked presidential, and ignored the fray to go after President Obama.  He’s been a solid, if somewhat uninspiring debater.  

But this morning, all of a sudden the champ took some strong shots to the body, and looked a little woozy against the ropes…

This was without a doubt, his worst performance.  The perfectly coifed and never ruffled blueblood looked all of a sudden beatable, just when the fight got tough. 

Newt took a meat cleaver to him and Huntsman came back like a rapier.  And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.  Romney is supposed to be the 800-pound gorilla in New Hampshire and carry it by a landslide.  But right now everyone is dropping except Huntsman…

In the daily tracking polls, Mitt has lost eight points in the last few days.  And this morning’s debate will accelerate that. 

So how does it play out?

All bets are off.  Ron Paul feels (rightly so), that he is still the only guy talking about the real issue of balancing the budget, stopping all the war mongering and nation building, acting in accord with the Constitution, and getting us back on the gold standard.  His band of evangelical loyalists will continue to send him buckets of money and hold out hope.  So he’ll stay in until he is mathematically eliminated. 

But he will be eliminated.  The truth is, if Republicans lived by the principles they espouse, they would have rallied around Ron Paul long ago.  But Paul is an idealist and honestly believes he can win on the issues.  He refuses to do spin, and his ill-fitting suits and 20-year-old ties don’t play in today’s media driven campaigns. He’s unelectable, but he just might be setting the stage for his son Rand, who could be very electable.

As far as Perry, he’s skipped NH and pinned everything on South Carolina.  He said on the debate Saturday night that he would go back into Iraq today.  (And NBC should be ashamed for not calling him on this in the Sunday debate.)  South Carolina has a huge retired military population.  I would think Perry’s eagerness to jump back into war could cost him his last chance there. 

Santorum was the flavor of the week after Iowa, but he’ll be the shortest tenured front-runner yet.  His uptick in daily tracking polls stopped immediately after his one dreadful day of campaign mishaps in New Hampshire.  Like I said, what plays well in the cornfields doesn’t carry forward well across the country.  The question is if he pulled in enough money after Iowa to make a play in South Carolina. 

And then there’s Newt.  He seems intent to repeat his penchant for self-destruction.  He is hands down, the best presidential debater we’ve seen in at least 100 years, and he’s made the most of it.  But Romney’s Super-Pac eviscerated him in Iowa, and now it’s personal for him.  And when you cross him, he’s meaner than a junkyard dog.    

Now his hate for Romney is clouding his judgment.  He went after him in New Hampshire with full-page ads contrasting the pair of them – with Newt as the real Southern conservative and Romney as the Massachusetts moderate.  Which is kind of a questionable strategy, since in New Hampshire, they actually like Massachusetts moderates!   

But South Carolina is a whole different ballgame… 

They most definitely like Southern conservatives there.  And Newt will be going after Mitt with a hatchet.  And Romney will give as good as he gets.  He’s shown no trepidation to go negative in a big way.  The South Caroline contest will be a heavyweight battle of the Super-Pacs, and set a new low in the history of American politics.  Both Newt and Mitt will come out bloodied and battered. 

Could Jon Huntsman be the last man standing?

Even if Romney wins New Hampshire - which he still should - if he drops below 38 or 37 percent, and Huntsman vaults up to a strong second place showing, Huntsman will leave with the media coverage and momentum.  That could be enough to get him enough money quickly to stage an upset in South Carolina. 

Huntsman didn’t play in Iowa and he hasn’t pandered to the Tea Party.  He’s intelligent, experienced, and a governor from a conservative state.  He’s stayed true to his principles, has impeccable character, and he’s peaking at the right time.  He was the clear winner of Sunday’s debate and got the biggest applause lines of the night, certain to be YouTube hits and steady rotation on the cable news channels.  He’s served as ambassador for President Obama with professionalism and spoke respectfully of him.  The president would be loath to attack him in an election. 

The Republican establishment could rally around Huntsman as the last anti-Romney.  They might come to the conclusion that Jon Huntsman is actually the toughest candidate for the president to beat.  (Which is what I believe.) 

Or has the Republican establishment already decided that Perry is still the chosen anti-Romney?  It seemed very suspicious when he jumped back into the race 12 hours after leaving it.  Makes you wonder if he wasn’t promised about $5 million in Super-Pac money for ads to beat Romney in South Carolina. 

Or does Newt’s hatchet job in South Carolina vault him back into contention?  Newt is still a folk hero to many in the party.  If he pulls out a win or close second there, he could conceivably hang around long enough to do enough debates to garner enough delegates. 

One thing is certain.  It’s going to be fascinating…

-RG