Will slow and steady (Romney—purple line) win the race?
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RCP)
Even in the world of politics, where a healthy ego is practically a prerequisite, it was seen as confidence teetering on the brink of cockiness. Earlier this week, a Mitt Romney staffer said the following to New York magazine's John Heilemann:
"The dynamics couldn’t be better for us ... I don’t see any scenario where we’re not the nominee."
Arrogant as that sounded, it was largely becoming the congealing conventional wisdom as this week went along. That sentiment was fueled in no small part by an excellent week of polling, with Romney moving into no worse than co-leader status in Iowa and continuing his domination in his quasi-home state of New Hampshire. What's more: for the first time in the one-month lifespan of the Gallup daily tracking poll, Romney led Newt Gingrich in national polling.
More than anything, the new surge of Romney inevitability is based on Gingrich. His fall to Earth has been so rapid, and so complete, that it leaves one to conclude that there is neither the time nor the oxygen for another anti-Romney to appear.
Iowa and New Hampshire will be done within the next 10 days. Ten days. And while the idea of Rick Santorum emerging as the Anti-Romney (version 6.0) is plausible, it nonetheless seems unrealistic. He has been battling to stay out of the cellar in New Hampshire, and seven days isn't a lot of time for Iowa to change that calculus. Recall than in 2008, winning Iowa only bought Mike Huckabee a distant third place finish with 11 percent of the vote.
Also, it is the simple volume of anti-Romneys that is helping to save Romney's bacon. You see, when each candidate had their dizzying journey from last-to-first-and-back-to-last-again, they retained a little bit more of their support than they had at the beginning. In other words, they maintained a small reservoir of dead-enders from their boomlet days.
Look at Iowa. If you look at the PPP tracking poll in the Hawkeye State, it was close between Ron Paul (24 percent) and Mitt Romney (20 percent). But if you add up the support for Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann, you get a total of 34 percent.
If you looked at the national Gallup tracker, meanwhile, that same triumvirate, if their votes were consolidated, would have a 36-26 lead over Mitt Romney right now. As long as the non-Mitt vote is being torn in multiple directions, it makes him possible to win with 20-30 percent of the vote.
And therein lies the "x-factor" in this entire Republican race. Even as journalists, analysts, and even some GOP politicos are prepared to declare Romney as the inevitable nominee for his party, one has to recall that Romney has never been over 33 percent of the vote in a GOP primary poll.
In the most recent national GOP primary poll by PPP, they found that Mitt Romney's fav/unfav spread with Republicans stood at 55/31. In Iowa this week, they actually found Romney slightly underwater (44/47) on his fav/unfav. This is not a universally beloved potential nominee we are talking about here.
But the nominee he will be, in all likelihood.
Mitt Romney may not be the majority choice of his own party, but he is the plurality choice. As long as the anti-Romney vote has the option of going five different ways, Romney appears likely to nickel-and-dime his way to the nomination.
Which is why the next two weeks are critical to watch. Not for who wins and who loses, but for who leaves. If some of the anti-Romney's bail out of the Republican sweepstakes, it creates a window for one candidate to ride a consolidated vote back to prominence.
Here again, though, Romney has an institutional advantage. There are only two candidates that haven't had their surge yet. One (Jon Huntsman) is to Romney's left, and has a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming the nominee. The other (Rick Santorum) has a much better ideological profile for the 2012 GOP. But he's flat broke. Therefore, how does he match Romney in the air and ground war on Super Tuesday, and beyond? It simply doesn't seem plausible, unless key right-wing donors and activists back a Brinks truck up to Santorum's headquarters.
While that scenario doesn't appear likely, it is nonetheless more likely than a resurrection for one of the already fallen anti-Romneys. Sure, there could be a window for Perry 2.0, or Gingrich 2.0 (Bachmann? Meh. Not so much). But, unlike Santorum, polling shows that both of those guys have seen their favorabilities take a freaking beating since they fell off of their perch. They'd need a complete rehabilitation to get back to the front. That'll be hard to do in the midst of a primary schedule.
If it sounds like I am joining the "Romney is inevitable" chorus, it's because the math just keeps getting harder. My own political good sense and grasp of logic tells me that there is no way that a guy who can't get over 33 percent in any GOP primaries, and was the father of the Massachusetts health care reform, will be nominated by this Republican Party. Unless there are radical changes in the field, however ... and soon ... I'd bet that is exactly what's going to happen.