Category Archives: Republicans

It All Comes Down To Tonight

Put out the dog.  Get a sitter for the kids.  Heat up the popcorn, and ice down the beer.  Tonight’s CNN debate – the 20th of the campaign season – is slated to start in less than an hour.  And it may be the biggest one so far.  The debate comes less than a week before primaries in Arizona and Michigan, and polls in both states indicate close races between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.  One week after that, it’s March 6 – Super Tuesday – when Newt Gingrich hopes to resurrect (once again!) his campaign with a strong performance in the southern tier of states holding primaries that day. Ron Paul, meanwhile, continues his strategy of picking up delegates, piecemeal, as he continues his slow (very, very slow) slog toward the convention.

So what do the candidates have to do?  For Mitt and Rick, this is a high stakes event. Despite his surge in the polls since his three-state victories in early February, Santorum has yet to prove that he can win in a high turnout state. His best chance to do so may be Michigan, where he is running neck-and-neck with Mitt, and where his brand of economic populism may play well.  He is undoubtedly going to be pressed on some of his more strident comments that have been resurrected in recent days (Is that you….Satan?) I don’t expect him to back away from his socially conservative views, particularly since several social issues, including Obama’s effort to find a compromise with religious organizations on funding for contraception, are sure to be raised tonight but he may seek to repackage them in a softer, kinder manner.

Mitt, meanwhile, released a more detailed tax plan today, the first step in a strategy designed to return the campaign toward the economic issues where he feels more comfortable, and which he sees as his strength. (It’s also an effort to trump the President’s own corporate tax plan, which he released earlier today.) Romney is slated to give a major economic speech later this week, and I expect him to preview that in tonight’s debate.  Because immigration is such a big issue in Arizona, I also think Mitt will reiterate his hard line on illegal immigration, which may set up a reprise of the Mitt-hiring-illegals snafu we saw raised in an earlier debate.  I expect him to try to throw Rick’s Senate record back against him, particularly key votes on spending bills, in an effort to present him as another Washingtonian who couldn’t rein in spending.  Look for Mitt to try to do to Rick what he did to Newt in Florida – bear down with a steady barrage of criticisms citing Rick’s Senate record.

Keep in mind that Newt Gingrich, having already written off Arizona and Michigan, is gearing tonight’s performance to Super Tuesday.  That means making the case to Tea party conservatives and evangelicals that he, and not Santorum, best represents their views. He needs to regain his policy mojo as the man with comprehensive, yet simple, solutions to the nation’s problems.  In recent days he been pinning his comeback on energy policy, and I expect him to stress that quite a bit during the debate.  Which Newt will we see tonight?  The media-baiting, elite-hating, policy-stating, stage-dominating Newt who clearly won most of the early debates, or the I’m-not-bold, I’m-just-old Newt who fizzled in the Florida debate?  This may be his last chance to use the debates to reignite his campaign.  Indeed, it may be the last time we see him in a debate, period, pending the Super Tuesday results.

Finally, Ron Paul, who has seen a bit of the luster of his candidacy wear off after disappointing caucus performances, is hoping a strong performance will help build a bit of momentum heading into Super Tuesday.

CNN’s John King, who inadvertently ignited Newt’s campaign in the debate prior to South Carolina by asking about Gingrich’s ex-wife, will be moderating tonight’s event.  We can only hope that similar Newtonian moment takes place.  Even without that, this promises to be a no-holds-barred event. The one question I do have is how many people are still tuning into these debates.  It’s been almost a month since the last one, so I suspect the viewing audience will be large, but I can’t be certain.

No matter. Sit back and enjoy.  I’ll be back on live blogging in a bit.  As always, I invited you to join in view the comments sections.

Let the Games Begin!

Why This Republican Race Has Been Different

It was about a month ago, just after the New Hampshire primary, that New York Times columnist Nate Silver estimated that Mitt Romney had a 98% chance of winning the 2012 Republican nomination. Today, in light of national polls showing Romney trailing Rick Santorum, and with Santorum also leading Romney in the latter’s “home” state of Michigan heading into the Feb. 28 primary there, I suspect no one would give Romney such favorable odds. (It is questionable whether Romney deserved those odds a month ago, but that is another story.)  To be sure, one might be tempted to dismiss Silver’s estimate on the grounds that he’s no political (as opposed to statistical) expert, but in truth most of my political science colleagues who do specialize in presidential elections were quite bullish on Romney’s prospects even before he won in New Hampshire, although none to my knowledge were so confident as to put the odds quite that high.  (In Silver’s defense, he openly acknowledged that his estimate was based on a very small sample size, and thus was subject to a good deal of [unspecified] uncertainty.)

Today, of course, it would be equally foolish to claim that Romney has no chance to win the nomination – indeed, he is probably still the frontrunner.  However, it is clear that those forecasting a rather easy road to the nomination for Romney were overly optimistic. Instead, analysts are now bracing for a rather extended nomination fight and some are even considering the possibility – however remote – of a brokered convention.

At this point I should probably acknowledge what you already know – that I never bought into the Romney inevitability narrative.  Nor, for that matter, am I as surprised as others that Newt Gingrich is still in the race, and that he may yet be the stronger candidate than Santorum.  Before you anoint me the Pundit King, however, note that I never believed Santorum would also still be in this race.  (Truth be told, I’m not sure he is in the race, but that’s for another post.)  Moreover, as my students will no doubt remind me, I thought Rick Perry was likely a stronger candidate than Mitt.  How’s that for forecasting expertise?

In some respects, of course, all nominating contests are sui generis.  But many pundits are arguing that this nominating race has been exceptionally volatile with Republican voters “shredding the rule book.”  During past Republican nominating contests, they argue, a candidate with a national organization who raised far more money than his opponents, and who received by far the most endorsements from party leaders, and who easily outpaced the field in securing both delegates and votes in the early contests, was destined to win the nomination in convincing fashion.  In fact, history suggests such a candidate would get stronger as the field was winnowed – not weaker.

Why hasn’t this race followed the historical precedent?  Pundits have suggested a couple of factors. One is the increase in the number of debates – 19 by my count – compared to previous years.  I’ve touched on this in a previous post. While I think debates clearly provided a platform that most benefitted Newt Gingrich, some pundits believe they also exposed those Romney qualities – remember the $10,000 bet? – that led many Republican voters to dislike him in 2008. A second factor has been the rise of SuperPacs; some analysts argue that Santorum and Gingrich have survived in large part due to the “sugar daddies” – think Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess – who have taken advantage of the Citizen United ruling to personally bankroll their favored candidate. Without their financial backing, the argument goes, Romney would have closed this race out.

Without totally discounting these factors, I think there are at least two other reasons why this race has unfolded in somewhat unexpected fashion.  The first are the rules changes to the Republican nominating process.  Most political scientists, following Josh Putnam’s careful analysis, have tended to downplay the impact of the changes in how delegates are apportioned in the primaries held prior to April 1; they argue that a careful reading of the rules suggest that despite provisions designed to increase the number of delegates allocated in proportional fashion, in fact many of these primaries will play out much like winner-take-all states, particularly in a two-person race.  This is because some states still award delegates in a winner-take-all fashion by congressional district, and some also award all the statewide delegates to anyone winning more than 50% of the statewide vote.  In short, there’s no reason to expect the delegates to be split among several candidates, even under the new rules, as long as a front-runner like Romney emerges early.

The problem with this analysis is that it underplays the impact of the rule changes on candidate strategy.  The fact is that under the 2008 rules, it would have been less likely that either Santorum or Gingrich would have gambled that they could survive in an extended race, so they would likely have folded their tents much earlier. Under the revised rules, however, they can envision a scenario by which they will pick up delegates even while suffering losses in many states. By altering candidates’ calculations to make it less likely that some would drop out, then, I would argue that the new rules have mattered.

The final reason why this race has proved so volatile, however, is perhaps the simplest: compared to previous Republican frontrunners, Mitt Romney is not a particularly strong candidate.  And this is a reminder that, when it comes to nominations in the modern era, the Party Establishment does not decide – it ratifies.  We saw this in 2008, when party leaders initially embraced Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, but gradually switched over to backing Barack Obama when it became clear he was the favorite among party activists.  I expect that we will see a similar dynamic in the Republican race if Romney continues to underperform – party leaders will begin pulling back endorsements.

But to what end?  Romney’s one remaining trump card is that unlike with the Democrats in 2008, there is as yet no clear Romney alternative.  Until one arises, he remains the frontrunner in name, if not yet in sentiment among the majority of Republican voters. It may be that either Newt or Rick may yet emerge to be the sole Mitt alternative.  If neither does so, however, does that mean Mitt is destined to be the Republican nominee?  Will party leaders hold their noses and back Mitt? Not necessarily.  There is an alternative scenario by which Republican activists can even at this late date come up with a White Knight candidate. I’ll address that in a future post.

Will Maine Make Plain Romney’s Lead Is On the Wane?

Probably not.

Tomorrow Maine holds its nonbinding presidential preference vote, which comes at the end of a week-long series of caucuses held state wide that is the first step in choosing the 24 delegates that will represent Maine at the national convention.  Ten of those delegates are chosen statewide, six are allocated (three apiece) to the state’s two congressional districts, and there are three unpledged party delegates and five bonus delegates.   But the actual delegates will not be chosen until district meetings and the state convention are held in May.

Although this is a rather small number of delegates, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are not taking Maine for granted.  Mitt flew there tonight and and just concluded his speech at his first event.  Paul, meanwhile, has been actively organizing in the state, in the hope that he can secure his first “victory” in tomorrow’s straw poll.  Remember, Romney easily “won” Maine in 2008, and Paul finished a distant third.  This time, however, there’s more pressure on both of them to do well because of the added media scrutiny following Romney’s  disastrous performance in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses last Tuesday, and Paul’s generally lackluster caucus performances in the race to date.

Neither Gingrich nor Santorum are actively contesting Maine, although it will be interesting to see whether the positive coverage Santorum has received because of Tuesday’s victories will generate some positive feedback in the straw poll.

Although Maine is next door to two states – New Hampshire and Maine – that have strongly supported Romney, its people tend to be a bit more iconoclastic, particularly those in the less populated 2nd congressional district that stretches to the Canadian border.   It’s possible that Paul’s libertarian message will strike a chord here among the lakes, pines and moose.  Remember, Maine’s Governor  Paul LePage is a Republican affiliated with the Tea Party.  Although he hasn’t endorsed anyone, his election reflects the strength of the state’s populist conservative movement.  Paul is going to try to mobilize those voters.   Although news accounts suggest he is well organized in Maine, this is the same refrain I’ve heard in several caucus states, and yet the promise has never been matched by the results.  I’m beginning to think the media is simply guessing that he’s well organized, but without any real independent evidence to support the claim.   Maybe they think he’s organized because of all the emails and blogs comments his supporters make.

Romney will likely do better in the state’s more southerly 1st congressional district which contains more traditional Republicans.  In his speech this evening he stressed a few broad themes designed to appeal to them: attacking Obama and teachers’ unions, promising to expand the Navy (that plays well in Maine) and defending his off-shore accounts against hecklers.

Note that the straw poll is taken among the state’s roughly 4,000 Republican caucus delegates, so winning 50% of the vote means getting about 2,000 votes.  Keep this in mind when you see Wolf Blitzer start using the “upset” word tomorrow night.  In this vein, a victory here for either Paul or Romney will have more symbolic meaning than substantive value.  But at this point, symbolism matters if it helps shape media coverage and changes the narrative in a way the benefits either Paul or Romney.   Both CNN and MSNBC are covering this tomorrow as if it does matter.   So we will too.  I’ll try to be on sometime early in the evening to do a postscript on the straw poll.

I’ve been on something of a prediction roll and, because it’s tradition, I’ll go ahead and call this one for Romney to beat Paul 55%-35%.  But frankly, given the small numbers and lack of any polling,  that’s little more than a guess and should be treated as such.

In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to give you a flavor of what life in Maine’s northern woods is really like.  Here’s one of Maine’s fabled guides practicing his “moose  call”.  It’s pretty effective:

Just some real Maine humor there.  Seriously, this next clip will give you some insight into the average Maine voter in that neck of the woods:

Those two are Paul voters, for sure.

The Delegate Race: Where the Candidates Stand

Although we are only seven contests into the Republican nomination process, eyes are already focusing on the all-important delegate count.    As most of you know, to win the Republican nomination, a candidate must accumulate 1,144 delegates.   So where do the candidates stand?  It’s understandable if you answer “I’m not sure.”  Consider the delegate counts presented by four different sources: NPR, the Washington Post, CNN and RealClearPolitics.  I’ve listed their online delegate counts in the following table:

Candidate CNN  WAPO NPR RCP
Romney 115 112 73 90
Gingrich 35 32 29 32
Santorum 34 72 8 44
Paul 20 9 3 13

 

Why the different totals?  Aren’t they watching the same contests?  In fact, they are.  However, there are two major sources of discrepancies. One issue is whether to count the so-called un-pledged delegates.  These are the 123 Republican Party members who are automatically selected as delegates, but who are not necessarily pledged to any particular candidate.   Some of those delegates have endorsed a candidate already and, in these cases, some sources count the endorsements in their tally, but others do not.   Should we count those endorsements?  The Democratic race in 2008 may provide some guidance.  You will recall that early in the race many party leaders backed Hillary Clinton.  But when it became clear that Obama was ahead of Clinton in the delegate race, they switched their support to him.  It’s not hard to believe that a similar process may take place in this election cycle. So, it’s quite likely that endorsements today may change down the road.

A bigger source of discrepancy, however, comes from decisions regarding how to appraise the caucus results.  To date, of the seven Republican contests, four have been caucuses: Iowa, Nevada, Minnesota and Colorado.  Not coincidentally, Rick Santorum has won three of the four. However, formally speaking, no delegates have been awarded in any of them. Instead, in all four states only the first of a three-step process has taken place; an initial slate of delegates has been selected at the precinct level, but they will in turn attend county-level meetings, which in turn will select representatives to the state-level convention. The actual delegates who will attend the Republican convention are chosen in that final state-level step.

Some sources, such as NPR, have decided not to award the “winners” of the caucus states any delegates.  There are sound reasons for exercising such caution.  Consider Nevada. In 2008, Mitt Romney won an overwhelming victory in the first stage of the Nevada caucus.  However, before the second step – the county-level meetings – took place, Romney had dropped out of the race.  When the precinct-level delegates attended the county meetings, Ron Paul supporters flooded the county-level meetings in an effort to win over Romney’s delegates. (In some cases, the Romney delegates didn’t show up). Party leaders who supported McCain, who by this time had clearly won the Republican nomination, were forced to reschedule the county-level meetings in an effort to prevent the Paulistas from claiming Nevada’s delegates.

It’s not hard to see how something similar might happen in this election cycle.  If Santorum drops out before the county-level meetings take place in Iowa, Minnesota or Colorado, his precinct-level delegates may opt to back another candidate.  Given this possibility, it’s understandable why NPR is not willing to give Santorum any delegates for his caucus victories.  On the other hand, his “victories” in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado, aren’t entirely meaningless; they position him to claim the bulk of these state delegates if he stays in the race and his precinct-level delegates remain committed through the county and state conventions.

So, which source is “right”?  They all are – as long as you understand the criteria on which the delegate calculation is based.   My preference is to take the conservative route and exclude the caucus results from delegate calculations.  But there are valid reasons to include the caucus results in the delegate calculations.

No  matter which route you take, however, there is a long way to go before the Republican nomination will be decided.  And, as I’ll discuss in a future post – it’s not clear that the nominee will be decided before the Republican convention.

Rick VestWearer Battles Mitt Vader and the Romney Empire: The State of the Race Today

Longtime readers have heard me harp on Mitt Romney’s weaknesses as a candidate for several weeks now, so last night’s results, in which Rick Santorum beat the Mittster in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses, and in the largely meaningless primary in Missouri, likely did not surprise you. (Well, Colorado surprised me – but not too much).  Keep in mind, however, that because the punditocracy has been peddling the Romney-inevitability narrative for so long, Romney’s losses are a surprise to them.  (Remember CNN’s Will Cain prattling on about Romney’s “breakthrough” among conservatives in Nevada?  Some breakthrough!)  And that means they will inevitably overreact to the Rickster’s victory by proclaiming that we now face a new electoral landscape, with Mitt suddenly vulnerable.

This is nonsense, of course.  Romney remains what he has always been: a flawed front-runner – but the front-runner nonetheless.  This is not saying he can’t be beat. Nevada notwithstanding, he has never demonstrated to me that he can expand his base much beyond the numbers he pulled in 2008 and I trust I have cited enough data to have persuaded you of this even before yesterday’s results. Again, his root problem is the authenticity issue, and we saw that on display last night, in his concession speech, where he introduced a new theme: his father’s humble roots, and once again trotted out that “I’m not part of Washington” line. Neither really works for him.  His father may have been from humble roots, but Mitt assuredly is not.  And the reason he is not a career politician is not for lack of trying; he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1994, served a term as Massachusetts governor, and has been running for president for five years. Against this backdrop his “I’m a man of the people” claim rings slightly hollow.

But let’s not over react and suddenly anoint Santorum as the new frontrunner.  To begin, the low turnout in yesterday’s caucuses suggest that Rick did not exactly energize the base. In Colorado, turnout dropped from about 70,000 in 2008 to roughly 65,000 yesterday, and it was also down in Minnesota (I don’t have final turnout figures there as yet, but with 95% of precincts in, about 48,000 votes were counted, compared to 62,000 in 2008.)   So it’s not as if Santorum’s wins were the product of exciting voters the way that Gingrich did in South Carolina.   The Missouri vote, as I noted last night, is very misleading because of a) the exceedingly low turnout one would expect in a beauty contest with no delegates at stake and b) Gingrich was not on the ballot.  In short, as you might expect of a social conservative, Santorum has done best in low turnout caucus states that tend to be dominated by activists, but he has not done well in the bigger primaries that attract the less committed voters. Until he demonstrates broader appeal, I’m not going to turn in my Tom Brady Patriots jersey for a sweater vest quite yet.

So where does the race stand?  Just where it was before yesterday: Mitt is the weak frontrunner who faces an extended battle for the nomination, but who will remain the frontrunner if the Republican base doesn’t rally around a single alternative.  Note that we can’t be sure of the delegate count until the final votes are tallied in Minnesota, but no matter what happens Romney will remain in the delegate lead.   It may be more instructive at this point, however, to look at the popular vote totals. To date Romney has won about 1.1 million votes, compared to about .8 for Gingrich and only 430,000 for the Rickster.  Paul trails the field with 305,000 votes.  I think that’s probably a relatively accurate barometer of their strengths as candidates right now.

The race now heads to Maine, which concludes its caucus this Saturday.  I expect Romney to hold on there, but it will be interesting to see how much support Paul receives.  The underplayed story of the race so far, I think, is how poorly Paul has performed in the caucus states.  He finished third in Iowa, third in Nevada, second in Minnesota and – at this point – will finish last in Colorado.  He has vowed to take the race to the convention, and he still may do so – but the idea that he is going to arrive there with a huge chunk of delegates accumulated in the caucus states now looks increasingly farfetched.

Gingrich, meanwhile, is right where we expected him to be: treading water during the month of February while he waits for the campaign to move to more favorable locales.  The punditocracy is speculating that Rick has replaced Newt as the non-Mitt but the data as yet don’t support that conclusion.  In national polls, Santorum remains in third place behind Gingrich, although he may get a boost in the national standings, which remain relatively fluid, from yesterday’s results.  The Rickster may also benefit from the Obama administration’s recent ruling that health insurance plans must cover birth control and from a backlash among social conservatives responding to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 2-1 decision overturning California’s ban on gay marriage.  In the long run, however, this is still an election that will turn on the economy more than social issues.

After Saturday, the road ahead leads on February 28 to Arizona and Michigan, both states in which Romney is expected to do well. (Mitt won Michigan in 2008 and finished second to McCain in Arizona). While Arizona is a winner-take-all state, Michigan allocates its delegates in more proportional fashion, using a combination of winner-take-all at the congressional district level and proportional allocation statewide.  Given these differences, look for Rick to ignore Arizona and instead try to steal some delegates in Michigan from Mitt by making his populist economic pitch.  In the interim, however, Romney will load up the big SuperPac gun and take dead aim at Rick who, by virtue of his two terms as Senator, has a long and inviting voting record to attack.

Bottom line?  I expect Mitt Vader and the Romney Empire To Strike Back with all the force the Dark Side can muster against Young Rick VestWearer.  The next two weeks won’t be pretty.

And then comes March 6.  May the Political Force Be With You.