Four contests in the last week have done little to resolve the Republican presidential nominating contest.
As long expected, Mitt Romney followed up his Florida victory by comfortably winning the Nevada caucuses, registering (if narrowly) his first majority showing. Turnout was low, the process was marred by errors, and Romney’s margin was undoubtedly padded by the unusually large level of participation by Mitt’s fellow Mormons (about a fourth of the caucus turnout, giving Romney near-unanimous support). But it gave Romney the right to boast of victory in three very different states (New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada), and continued the bad news for Newt Gingrich, who couldn’t even hold onto an apparent Donald Trump endorsement for a few hours.
But then came the three February 7 events: a non-binding (and arguably meaningless) primary in Missouri, and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. And all three were won by Rick Santorum, who had all but been forgotten by national media during the Romney-Gingrich slugfest in Florida and Nevada. The sting to Romney was enhanced by comparisons to his performance in 2008, when he won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses decisively. Gingrich was not on the ballot in Missouri, and finished a poor third in Colorado and a poor fourth (behind Santorum, Romney, and second-place finisher Ron Paul) in Minnesota.
The Santorum Sweep was a product of other candidates ignoring Missouri, and then an effective grassroots campaign in the other two states. Low turnout also helped accentuate Santorum’s bedrock support among social conservatives (the same constituency that gained him his Iowa win). For all the hype about his big night, his candidacy remains a largely Midwestern phenomenon, and he’s yet to show strength in the southern states where he’s suspected of being a Big Government Conservative, and Gingrich has served as the anti-Romney conservative threat.
The contest now hits a lull until February 28, when Michigan and Arizona hold primaries. Michigan is Romney’s native state, and Arizona has a relatively large LDS population, so he is favored in both despite yesterday’s setbacks. Then comes Super Tuesday (March 6), with its assortment of relatively expensive primaries (Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts) and a bunch of widely scattered caucuses (where Ron Paul is expected to make a strong appearance). Everything about this landscape favors the vastly better-financed Romney, unless his opponents manage to split up the states and beat him piecemeal.
More to the immediate point, the lull will provide Santorum’s opponents with a fine opportunity to take him down several notches with negative ads focusing on his Washington “insider” background and the occasional heresies in his record that trouble conservatives. Meanwhile, Santorum’s status as an international symbol of right-wing bigotry (mostly based on the vast Google-based campaign to taunt him for anti-gay sentiments, but also extending to his very extreme positions on abortion and contraception) will hound him in the broader media environment. It’s not clear he will be able to emulate Gingrich’s success in converting “persecution” by the “liberal media” into primary votes, but the inevitable mockery he will receive is very likely to drive down his general-election trial heat numbers.
Democrats, of course, are richly enjoying Romney’s difficulty in nailing down the nomination, particularly now that it is beginning to affect his own general-election numbers. As it happens, Mitt’s problems are coinciding with a modest increase in the president’s job approval ratings and gradually improved economic indicators. Last week’s surprisingly positive jobs report drew a lot of attention across the political spectrum.
But Obama’s general election standing remains questionable. During the last week, there was a major brouhaha over the Catholic Bishops’ intense reaction to an administration decision to require contraceptive services coverage for employee health plans sponsored by religiously affiliated hospitals and charities (direct church employees were exempted via a “conscience” exception). Several prominent Catholic Democrats expressed fears the decision would be disastrous politically, but then polling showed Catholic voters largely unmoved or supportive of Obama, even as the administration signaled it wanted to compromise.
In what appears likely to be a very close general election, the variables remain unstable. It’s clear Obama needs to win back moderate voters estranged by factors ranging from the general condition of the economy to conservative-media-fed narratives of his alleged hyper-liberalism. How to do that, while setting out realistic goals for a second term and exploiting a Republican nominating contest being constantly driven to the Right, is the obvious challenge for Team Obama.
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