I'm not going to reproduce the avalanche of polls taking in the last week on the Michigan and Arizona primaries. But the most interesting one for today was the PPP poll that was concluded yesterday, which showed that Santorum had momentum for the past 48 hours and barely topped Romney in Michigan. But PPP did say that Romney held huge leads in those voters who had already cast their votes and that might provide him the margin of victory.
Ed Rollins, former Reagan operative and Michelle Bachmann's former adviser, opined that the Republicans started this race believing they would defeat Obama in the general election and now the "establishment" is saying "What a fling mess".
Consider the case of Willard Romney. He won Michigan in the GOP primary last time by a huge margin. His father George was a two-term governor, whom people in Michigan rank as one of their best. His mother served as a Senator, even though for a short time. His brother George is a lawyer in the Detroit area and has a good reputation. This is a state where the Romney name is gold. Willard has poured millions into the state in attack ads against Santorum so what could go wrong?
Romney has been awesome in his clumsiness. The Detroit Economic Club hosted Romney's major economic speech at Ford Stadium. The optics for the campaign were totally wrong. Barack Obama filled that stadium. Here, Romney could only get about 600 people and making the stadium look cavernous with its empty seats. It might have worked for him since his economic plan was even worse than his original one, promising himself a greater tax break than before. But the media only emphasized that his campaign could not get anyone to come.
Romney has become immortal with his famous "I like trees speech" where he listed the attributes of Michigan he liked best. Trees and "Oh my, the lakes,especially the little lakes" and "Cars. I love cars."
Not knowing when to stop, Romney made an appearance at the Daytona 500 and admitted he didn't follow NASCAR racing much but he knew a lot of "the NASCAR owners."
Last week, he repeated in a more awful form his assertion--first about the economy and now about success, vote for the other guy. This time he sounded like "If you don't like success, vote for the other guy."--referring to Barack Obama. The message was that because Romney is wealthy that's better than someone born poor who worked his way up to become President of the United States.
Romney has inspired scads of lampoons. The best was one blogger's photo of Romney's Nascar entry to compete with Santorum's car. A white racing car with the Romney logo and a dog carrier strapped to the top with a dog in it.
Romney will spin any win tonight as a victory. Polls show him way ahead in Arizona because of his endorsement of their immigration bill as a"model for the country". But if he only wins marginally in Michigan, he will be wounded--perhaps beyond repair.
Democrats are rooting for Rick Santorum, even encouraging Democrats to cross the line and vote for him in Operation Hilarity. The idea is to set up a general election with a clear debate between Obama's vision of America and Santorum's angry religious conservatism.
There is a logic to this. The Republican establishment claims that Romney is doing the right thing in pandering to the Right to win the primaries. When he wins , they claim he will pivot to the center. The issue becomes one where when and if Romney loses, the Republican base will claim he wasn't conservative enough. This has played out since the 2008 election where the Right claimed that John McCain wasn't Republican enough and therefore he lost. A Romney loss in the general election would send the party further to the Right--if such a place could be found.
Democrats want to head this off at the pass and have that showdown now.
Democrats see that 25% of the voters in the 2016 election will be minorities and in 2020 whites will only the plurality of the voters. Republicans this year have done more to alienate these groups and generations of women voters than they ever have. The ever-shrinking Republican base has to concern thoughtful GOP leaders.
We are being subjected to the last hurrah of a lot of regressive and repressive forces. Some political scientists view the Tea Party phenomenon and the 2010 elections as the "premature reaction" to these demographic changes. In other words, the tea baggers were reacting to what they see coming down the pike.
But back to now, Romney has informed his organization and donors that the GOP contest will last through May--heaven help us all. But as E.J. Dionne wrote yesterday in the Washington Post Obama hasn't won yet. As E.J. pointed out, Obama stands roughly where he was in the 2008 election but events can push that either way so we may be seeing the high tide of the Obama re-election campaign. Bill Maher, who donated $1 million to the Obama SuperPac,suggests 2012 will be very close. I don't disbelieve him.
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