Peggy Noonan gushes about Mitt Romney's "emergence."
Chris Cillizza raves about "Mitt's Very Good Month"
Chuck Todd declares Romney "a very solid front-runner"
While the purveyors of conventional wisdom coalesce behind the inspiring phenomenon that is Mitt Romney, it's worth putting this new consensus in context.
Far from a juggernaut, Mitt Romney is the "Seinfeld Frontunner" -- ie, his status as indomitable top dog is literally based on nothing.
It may be hard to remember now, amidst the Pro-Romney hysteria, but just a few weeks ago the CWC (conventional wisdom community) sounded furious alarms about Romney's campaign, declaring that he had a "health care problem" (which he tried to conquer in a speech they panned), and that this along with his many other apostasies were causing concern among party insiders. Perhaps the most salient example of Romney's troubles was a scathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled "Obama's Running Mate." That was a month ago.
So what has happened since, to catapult Romney into clear frontrunner status?
1) His Campaign Convinced Political Reporters to Write That He Raised a Whopping $10 Million in One Day. We say "convinced" because you can be sure that the reporters have not personally seen $10 million worth of checks. Which means, they're going strictly on the campaign's word. Having worked alongside campaign fundraisers, I believe there is very ample reason to doubt the veracity of Romney's claim that he raised $10 million in one day -- something that sounds incredibly impressive but is highly implausible based on my experience.
First, beyond the fact that the press has no way to check whether the $10 million figure is true (unless reporters personally saw and counted every check), it's likely that if anything was "raised" that day that they were "commitments" to raise a certain amount, rather than the actual checks themselves. After all, it was a call-a-thon. It's not like he was at an in-person event and got checks in hand. And trust me, commitments and actual checks are not the same thing.
Second, even if it were true that he raised $10 million that day (and again, it's very likely not), this would be a much less impressive commitment when you consider that Romney raised $65 million when he ran in 2008 as a middle-of-the-pack candidate, meaning that all he had to do in order to nab $10 million this time, was ask his first 15 % of donors from his first campaign (ie, his low-hanging fruit) to hold their powder this year until the big call-a-thon day, so he could come out with a big number for the event and get a nice headline.
No one doubts that Romney will raise plenty of money. But the shock of the huge (and again, specious) "10 million in one day" number served to net his campaign fawning stories, with the political press lapping it up and the same pundits who had questioned his health care speech declaring a corner was turned. In fact, the $10 million gambit actually led the Washington Post to write: "In case there was any doubt about who the frontrunner for the GOP nomination actually is, Romney cleared it up when he raised more than $10 million in a single day earlier this month."
2) Polls from Seven Months Before the Voting Starts, Before Any Debates Occurred, and Before the GOP Field is Set, Showed Him With a Modest Lead. First off, the polls show Romney leading a large pack, but with many putting him at less than 1/4 of the vote -- nowhere near the amount of support the eventual winner will end up having in Iowa and elsewhere. Secondly, the polls are so early as to be useless. They are based in large part on name identification (Romney is the only one other than Ron Paul who ran in '08), don't account for Jon Huntsman's entrance into the race, and were conducted before voters have tuned in and major coverage of the race has occurred. Does anyone believe that the GOP pack should be worried about Herman Cain and throwing barbs at him? He currently sits in third place. Maybe Tim Pawlenty should attack his pizza.
3) He Did Not Make a Total Fool of Himself at the Debate This Week, and Therefore Won "By Not Losing." Aside from whether debates should impact someone's chances of winning (I'd argue they tell very little about how they'd perform as President, and that Chuck Woolery would do wonderfully in them), I also question whether most people watching the debate thought that Romney's performance stood out, or that all he had to do to win their vote was not look like a moron. That's the media's perspective because they view everything through a score-keeping prism (eg, Romney's up by 7 points, so as long as he doesn't screw up, he wins). But to the average viewer tuning in, it's likely they're watching it divorced from that context, and simply looking to see who they find the most appealing. And on that score, "winning by not losing" simply doesn't mean very much.
The bottom line? Mitt Romney may be the one to beat in the GOP primary, and he should not be underestimated by Democrats if he becomes the nominee. But he engenders little enthusiasm among the GOP base (or even among his own supporters), the field of candidates has not settled yet, and the reasons the media -- the same Henny Pennys who last month declared him in grave danger -- cites in coronating him the frontrunner, have about as much substance as George Constanza.
In truth, the best reason why Romney has a decent shot to take his party's nomination is far more simple: it's a really crappy field of candidates.