Romney’s inevitability commences
Thursday, March 1st, 2012The 2012 Republican nomination fight might be ready to slide into this moment that occurred in the 2008 Democratic nomination fight, where Barack Obama was asked “Why can’t you close the deal?”, and in a bit of a huff Obama could only answer “I am.” In other words — Mitt Romney is on path to picking up the delegates necessary in winning the nomination, it’s just that his competitors happen to be on the path to picking up a bunch of delegates that do not add up to winning the nomination.
It leads to a splintered party, I suppose. Obama’s brittle coalition faltered after Election day; Romney’s probably will before Election Day.
The most interesting item in the coverage of the campaign that I see — which is something that just sounds off — when reading the newspaper yesterday is an awkward framing of candidate not technically coordinated Superpacs working on candidates’ behalf, which in the past would have simply been described as “The Gingrich Campaign is currently running ads” but now ends up as “Superpac supporting Gingrich is currently running ads”. The current model of campaign finance is interesting — back in the day (up through 04), your Paul Tsongases of the world threw up their hands at this point and grumbled that they can’t continue their campaign only because their money has dried up in a huff.
Today’s exercise in Republican political analysis takes us through the winding back (always an interesting exercise, and you can do so back to the Whig Party factions)– I guess the latest reasonable analysis of same old ground but from a different angle comes in with Rule and Ruin — and your thought of the day is that Kevin Phillips’s diagnosis of where the Republicans ought go (“The Secret to politics is knowing who hates who”) was not set in stone, prophetic but self-fulfilling but not inevitable. For Mitt Romney, what you’re looking at is where his father, George Romney, was in 1967, and how parallels with him visa vie… who the hell Rick Santorum is.
