I'll admit it - I was a Romney skeptic at one point. I just didn't see how he could win the nomination.
After all, Romneycare is just the tip of the iceberg. It only takes a little digging into his past to learn that Romney has at some point claimed moderate views on nearly every issue important to Republicans.
Then there's his lack of personal charisma. When he's not asking black voters "who let the dogs out," he's joking about waitresses pinching his butt, or strapping his dog onto the roof of his car.
And that's before you get to the whole Mormon thing. After all, Romney isn't just any Mormon, he's the product of an influential Mormon family that practiced polygamy and claims Joseph Smith as a relation.
On the face of it, Willard "Mitt" Romney would seem to be the last person on Earth the anti-health care reform, Christian fundamentalist, Tea Bagging base furious at the "RINO" establishment would nominate to take on Obama.
But with the primary race now underway, it becomes easier to see how Romney does in fact, against all odds, win this thing.
Start with the fact that Romney's weaknesses only become an issue if the media actually talks about them.
And the media, especially the conservative media, have treated Mitt Romney with kids gloves this time around. Questions about his faith have been deemed off limits. Conservative talkers have grumbled about his health care mandate, but have utterly failed to lay out the full extent of his liberal past to their listeners.
While Perry's support of a state-level Dream Act leads to the virtual collapse of his campaign, everyone ignores the fact that Romney called Bush's national immigration reform plan "reasonable" and said that any Republican who opposed it "had made a big mistake." Or that he personally employed illegal immigrants to landscape his mansion.
I'd argue this selective focus is no accident. As a conservative blogger puts it:
The Republican Party has more in common with the old Soviet Communists that they would care to admit. Rather than leave it up to voters to decide who the candidate will be, they rig the system in favor of their anointed one is.
In 1988, they choose Papa Bush. In 1996, it was Bob Dole’s turn. In 2000 they railroaded McCain in favor of George W. Bush. In 2008, they made it up to McCain by favoring him. Now in 2012, they have chosen Mitt Romney. Karl Rove is behind Romney’s campaign and has assembled Bush’s old contributors. The game is fixed in favor of Romney.
There's actually data to back up the idea that the establishment favors Romney. National Journal conducted a poll of Republican insiders which revealed that they overwhelmingly favored him, viewing him as most electable.
Karl Rove, who controls the powerful American Crossroads PAC, appears to back Romney.
It's easy to see why the establishment favors Romney. His moderate past actually becomes an advantage in a general election, allowing him to run on a non-partisan platform of "jobs." With Marco Rubio on the ticket, a choice Romney has already signaled he would make, you have a candidacy with equal appeal to Tea Baggers and technocratic suburbanite independents - one, I'd argue, that would be tough for Obama to beat. And who better to extend Wall Street's dominance over America than a guy who actually ran a private equity firm - and who has proven himself willing to do whatever it takes to gain power, consistency be damned?
But Romney's greatest advantage may lie in changes made to the Republican primary rules. In 2008, Romney struggled to win key early states, and McCain was able to amass a lead under the Republicans' "winner take all" delegate system.
For 2012, Romney-friendly states have been moved up on the calendar. And perhaps more importantly, primaries held before April will now allocate their delegates proportionally, a change designed to make it more difficult for an insurgent candidate like Perry or Palin to achieve an early "knock out win" using Iowa as a launching board.
According to Politico, the new calendar, which "almost seems designed to play to Romney’s strengths and compensate for his weaknesses" was partly designed by the Romney campaign itself.
The changes to the broader primary structure were made primarily to please GOP officials from around the country, all of whom would like their states to participate in the primary process. A shift toward dividing delegates proportionally in each state makes it hard for a front-runner to amass big lead — and thus effectively claim the nomination before most states have voted.
But the Romney camp also has had a hand in crafting the calendar. Aides like longtime Republican National Committee member Ron Kaufman were on hand to keep an eye on the process, and the former Massachusetts governor’s allies continue to try to tweak the calendar around its edges and to move up Romney-friendly states.
Additionally:
After Super Tuesday and a few other smaller Southern primaries in March, the calendar almost entirely favors Romney — March 20 is Illinois, and April 24 is slated for a slew of Northeastern states that will almost all go to Romney.
Got that? So the Midwestern and Southern early primary states where Romney might struggle are proportional. The Northeastern states that vote on April 24 will be "winner take all."
The irony is that despite all of this, Mitt Romney may still struggle to amass enough delegates. He has trouble advancing past 30% or so in the polls, with the majority of voters favoring an alternative. He'll still face strong resistance in the evangelical South.
But consider the following scenario. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry arrive at the end of the campaign each lacking the 1,211 delegates to put them over the top as the nominee. Thanks to the proportional allocation of the early primaries, the second tier candidates have managed to amass a decent number of delegates themselves.
Then, in a "startling" development, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum all swing their weight behind Romney, asking their delegates to switch their allegiance to him. Suddenly it becomes clear that Romney did have a path to the nomination all along.