SALON

Wednesday, Feb 29, 2012 6:40 PM UTC

The historically unique weakness of Mitt Romney

Once again, he’s poised to follow up on a breakthrough triumph with … a humbling defeat

By

Topics: War Room,

The historically unique weakness of Mitt RomneyMitt Romney (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder)

After Mitt Romney’s 3-point win in Michigan last night, I argued that he might be a week away from another existential campaign crisis. I’d like to take that one back: The next crisis could kick off this Saturday. That’s when Washington state Republicans will hold their caucuses, and the signs are already ominous for Romney.

In general, caucus environments, with their small, activist/ideologue-oriented voter pools, are problematic for Romney, whose biggest obstacle is suspicion from the party base. And cultural conservatives have made waves in Washington before; in 1988, when the religious right was still in its infancy, Pat Robertson crushed Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush in the caucuses — the only defeat Bush suffered on Super Tuesday that year. So it’s probably not surprising that the only recent poll in Washington, conducted by PPP and released a week ago, gives Rick Santorum a 38 to 27 percent lead over Romney.

Thus, it seems likely that Romney will follow-up his big, must-win triumph in Michigan with a loss (very possibly a lopsided one) that will remind the political world all over again how much the base of the Republican Party would rather someone else win the nomination. The news of another humbling setback for the front-runner could stall whatever momentum Romney carries into this weekend, and the timing would be made worse by what’s on tap for next week: Super Tuesday.

The playing field next Tuesday is tricky for Romney. He’ll win his home state of Massachusetts, Virginia (where his only opponent on the ballot is Ron Paul), Vermont and probably Idaho (based on the state’s large Mormon) population. But he could easily lose Ohio, where a poll this week put Santorum up by 11 and where he’ll face all of the challenges he faced in Michigan without any native state advantage. And he has to contend with serious ideological/cultural hurdles in Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma, where evangelical Christians — most of them Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, who tend to be particularly suspicious of Mormonism — will comprise overwhelming majorities of the GOP primary electorate. There’s also the caucus states of North Dakota and Alaska (another Robertson ’88 win), which pose the same problem for Romney that Washington does this weekend.

It’s a given that Romney will lose some contests next week, but the question is whether he’ll be able to make surprising inroads — maybe winning Ohio and a (non-Virginia) Southern state, or at least coming close somewhere in Dixie — or if his success will be confined to his four safe states, with ugly results everywhere else. Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics estimates that Romney will win the most delegates next week and emerge from the day about 130 ahead of Santorum, but still nowhere near the magic number needed for a first ballot nomination. In other words, the political conversation could be right back where it was in the run-up to Florida and in the run-up to Michigan, with Romney reeling from a painful setback and badly in need of a meaningful victory to quell the panic and alarmism.

The history of this campaign suggests Romney is almost destined to win when he absolutely must and that he probably is on his way to the nomination — if only because of the failure of any of his opponents to parlay their various moments in the spotlight into a permanent coalition of the GOP base and the party’s opinion-shaping class. But the road to a delegate majority is looking like it will be longer and more humbling for him than for any other modern nominee of either party.

Just consider the cases of Bill Clinton in 1992 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, the two previous major party nominees who faced crises most similar to the one Romney just endured in Michigan. Clinton was forced into a must-win contest in New York after a shocking loss to Jerry Brown in Connecticut, while Dukakis’ lopsided loss to Jesse Jackson in Michigan also made New York a must-win venue for him. But both Clinton and Dukakis had little trouble rallying the party and fending off their rivals; they both broke away and won their must-win tests by comfortable double-digit margins, and never looked back. Each race essentially ended on the spot.

But that doesn’t look like it will be Romney’s story. Actually, it already isn’t Romney’s story. Under the Dukakis/Clinton model, the GOP race should have been settled in Florida, when Romney first faced a do-or-die test; there should have been no second coming for Santorum after that, and Michigan shouldn’t have been a 3-point nail-biter for Romney. The party should have rallied around Romney and his remaining opponents should have finished as afterthoughts in the remaining contests. Instead, Santorum posted a three-state sweep of Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota and nearly caught Romney in Michigan.

Again, it’s still fair to call Romney the clear favorite to win the GOP nomination, and the convention deadlock scenario remains a remote possibility. But it looks like Romney will continue taking primary season hits for weeks, maybe even months, to come. Even by the standards of previous nominees who were severely roughed up by the primary process, this has been — and still is — a uniquely rough ride for Romney.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 26 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

War Room is our political news and commentary blog, with coverage and commentary throughout the day.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations