This morning's Washington Post Blog had perhaps the most important piece of evidence about Mitt Romney's approach to this election:
You tell him you’re going to be in a race, and he wants to win it,” said Russ Schriefer, Romney’s senior media adviser. “His mind-set was: ‘Look, if you guys think it’s worth me going to Iowa, great. Send me there. . But can we win? And what does winning mean?’
Romney is perhaps the only contender in recent memory to take such a disparaging approach to Iowa voters of his own party in an attempt to unseat an incumbent president. And it is indicative of his patrician personality, and the potential impact it will have in the general election, should he be nominated by the GOP. Romney had to be persuaded by his advisors that it was "worth it" to go out, Santorum-like, to visit the voters of his own party in this first caucus state. He won but a Pyrrhic victory in the end, one soiled by a surge of Santorum that highlighted what I predict will the key differentiator in the fall: the Likeabilty Factor.
As Romney says repeatedly, and as he proclaimed last night, "The President is a likeable guy, but he's over his head". Indeed, surveys continue to show that Barack Obama is still well-liked by the majority of Americans, including those who do not support his policies or approve his performance.
But Iowa Republicans last night demonstrated that this will not be an election similar to 1952, where the rational choice, the methodical war hero Eisenhower, demolished the cerebral, "Egghead" Adlai Stevenson. Instead it will be an election where the Likeability Factor will be the key ingredient in the recipe for success. The "Surge of Santorum" that soiled Romney's Pyrrhic victory resulted in over 75% of his own party's adherents rejecting the most "rational choice", the one whose poll numbers give him the best chance of unseating Barack Obama.
The President is at his best when campaigning, and his oratorical skills in igniting large crowds, as well as his ability to project a "down home" image in one-to-one interactions with voters will turn this election to his favor. Ultimately, the Democratic Party will be able to portray Mitt Romney into a Groundhog-Day-like Second Coming of the George H.W. Bush of 1992--the populist versus the patrician. The GOP will then realize that they whiffed away their best and only viable contender in a long-forgotten "Surge of Santorum".