Is Romney inevitable? Not so fast, Willard

Last week, the Beltway narrative was quite firm: the race for the GOP nomination was over. Mitt Romney had won Iowa, he’d won New Hampshire, he was leading in the polls in South Carolina – why bother continuing to vote? Stick a fork in it and give him the crown.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation of  Mr. 1 Percent.

For one thing, it turns out Mitt didn’t win Iowa. He was only leading by a paltry 8 votes on election night, and as we mentioned at the time, 8-vote leads can easily turn into 8-vote deficits once the actual election results have been tabulated. Which, it turns out, was the case – Iowa announced the almost sort-of final results today, and it turns out Mittens is NOT the winner – it’s Rick Santorum.

As Texas Governor Rick Perry might say, “Oops”.

Oh, remember Perry? He dropped out and endorsed Newt  “shut down the EPA” Gingrich, creating the possibility of a consolidated Not Mitt vote.

And that’s the other funny thing that happened. Since the weekend, the Not Mitt vote HAS been consolidating – and it’s all flowing to a surging Gingrich .

Bachman is out. Huntsman is out. Cain is out. Perry is out. Pollster PPP tweets that Santorum’s support is collapsing and flowing to Newt as well. That was always Romney’s nightmare… the majority of Republicans can’t stand him, but as the establishment choice, he was able to win with a plurality as long as the opposition fragmented 7 ways.

Last week the polls were all about double-digit Romney leads; but all four polls released today show Newt on top by anywhere from 1 to 6 percent.

Will Mr 1-to-6 Percent manage to beat Mr. 1 Percent?

Herding cats

What’s going on? In the past, voters have generally responded well to the “front runner is inevitable might as well vote for him” narrative, although God only knows why.

For those of you who remember 1988, the Democratic Party had packed super Tuesday with Southern states, hoping that would help a Southerner head the ticket and lead the party back from the Reagan wilderness. But instead of voting for Southern man Al Gore, all those pickup truck-driving good ol’ boys went and voted for the front runner because of his presumed electability – and Michael Dukakis, a dweeby ethnic nerd from (shudder) Massachusetts proceeded to get his ass handed to him in the general election by a man widely derided as a wimp (George HW Bush).

This year, the GOP party establishment is rallying behind Romney – because of his presumed electability. But this year’s base is much less inclined to line up and be good little robots for the people they see as the Out of Touch Effete Eastern Establishment.

So the Not Mitts may not be down and out just yet.

Why Not Mitt?

Here’s Jed Lewison, writing Monday night at DailyKos:

• Here’s my analysis: Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee. And the more you see him, the less you like him…
• And Romney still doesn’t have an explanation for how he got rich off of failure. He can get away with it in a Republican debate. But Barack Obama won’t let him get away with it.
• Oh, and just wait until he releases his tax returns. If he ever does. Imagine how pissy he’s going to be about explaining those.
• I have a feeling when this election is over, both parties are going to seriously consider banning Massachusetts politicians from seeking the presidency.

Here’s Greg Sargent at the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog:

• At a time when the 2012 presidential election is expected to focus heavily on tax fairness, the GOP is set to nominate someone who is worth as much as $250 million, but pays a lower tax rate than many middle class taxpayers.
• At a time when polls suggest public anger at Wall Street conduct is running high, the GOP is set to nominate someone who presided over corporate restructuring deals that resulted in mass layoffs and economic suffering — even as he raked in an enormous fortune in the process.
• At a time when majorities support higher taxes on the wealthy and are increasingly preoccupied with inequality and the shrinking middle class, the GOP is set to nominate a candidate whose tax plan, by one analysis, would cut taxes on the top 0.1 percent by nearly half a million dollars, while marginally raising them on many lower end taxpayers.
• At a time when Democrats are salivating to paint their opponent as the candidate of the one percent, the GOP is set to nominate a candidate who regularly says things that (fairly or not) can be used to feed this narrative. To name just a few, Romney has said that “corporations are people”; confided that he likes to “be able to fire people” who provide him services; and has refused to say whether any and all questions about inequality and Wall Street excess are rooted in anything other than “envy.”
• …The bad economy is obviously a huge liability for Obama. But it remains possible that it is inflating the poll strength of opponents like Romney, because respondents are picking the alternative to Obama before getting to know him better, a state of affairs that could change once Romney’s record and biography are better understood by voters.

And it’s not just Democrats. Sargent notes that conservative writer Erick Erickson predicts that Romney will be a “disastrous general election candidate.”

Writing at Town Hall, conservative firebrand John Hawkins takes it even further:

• If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn’t do much better than Mitt Romney.
• He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he’s run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure.
• Moreover, he’s so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that’s before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue.
• … Mitt Romney can still be stopped in South Carolina and “(b)etween now and March 3rd, the last event before Super Tuesday, only 15.20% of all delegates to the Republican National Convention will be selected and the vast majority will be proportional.” Mitt Romney is the least conservative candidate remaining in the field and isn’t particularly electable either.
•  If you don’t want to spend the better part of the next year trying to drag this sad sack of Mitt across the finish line so he can disappoint us for the next four years, then stand up, speak out, and stop letting the mainstream media and a bunch of Beltway conservatives tell you that the race has to be over with just 1.8% of the delegates needed for a victory awarded. The Tea Party didn’t rise up, fight Barack Obama, and help the GOP have its best year in half a century just to see the Republican Party ideologically slide all the way back to the pre-Reagan years as a reward.
• If the establishment manages to grease the wheels for Mitt to such a degree that it turns out he’s unstoppable, then it’s still better to go down brawling instead of supporting a candidate you know is a mediocrity because you think he’s “probably going to win the nomination.” Given the type of man he is, whether Mitt wins or loses, you’re unlikely to look back at fighting like hell to get another nominee with anything other than pride.

Next on the schedule: Tonight, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich (#2) will be appearing on ABC television, reportedly to state that Newt had asked her for an “open marriage” so that he could continue the illicit affair he was then conducting with Callista (aka Mrs. Gingrich #3). How will this play in conservative, “marriage = 1 man + 1 woman” South Carolina?

Fasten your seatbelts, folks – it’s going to be a bumpy ride to the coronation.

(Image of Mr. 1% by DonkeyHotey, under a Creative Commons license)