So, Mitt Romney won New Hampshire handily, Ron Paul took second, and underdog Jon Hunstman came in third.
Although I continue to see Huntsman as a long shot, I expect South Caolina to be the make or break for him. That will be the last real chance he has, probably, to rally the anti-Romney camp around him in Republican circles. Though some of the white Evangelicals won’t like the fact that Huntsman’s Mormon, if he looks conservative enough they may look past that. On the other hand we know Rick Perry will be fighting hard South Carolina, and so will a few other candidates. Still, it would seem to me that it’s no longer disputable that it’s Romney’s race to lose, but Jon Huntsman is definitely someone to watch–and who’s definitely going about to start getting more scrutiny.
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This campaign is about four months too late and too little for Huntsman. It is 18 years too late for Gingrich, whose bitchy, grudge-keeping , and occasionally hysterical personality pitched him headfirst over the political cliff of Iowa and could not at all climb back in New Hampshire. (After Cain self-destructed, I had hoped more from Gingrich. But I came to the conclusion that four years with him in the White House would be a maniacal roller-coaster ride with that man’s ego and his endless resentments.)
Other than Romney and Paul, the other candidates all have proven to be national-scale nonentities. The summed vote percentage achieved by Huntsman, Gingrich, Santorum and Perry was less than than the vote for Romney. Paul is a geriatric libertarian sui generis. New Hampshire people are a lot more libertarian-minded than are to be found in most other states. So Paul’s standing with 23 percent of the primary vote in New Hampshire is not surprising. But it also may be a vote attraction level not necessarily surpassable in other state Republican primary elections.
What put Romney at center stage, and is all but certain to keep him there, are three factors:
First, in-depth polling now shows that the prime consideration for all voters not likely to support Obama’s re-election, is to find a candidate capable of beating his incumbency in the head-to-head election coming up in November. Romney is seen as the one person most likely to accomplish that.
Second, the current key issue for most Americans is to repair the national economy of the United States, an undertaking in which both Bush and Obama got nowhere. Romney’s perceived skills are those of high-grade administrative management of large and complex corporations, and the United States of America, along with much else, undoubtedly is the largest and most complex corporate entity in human history.
Third, none of the not-Romney Republican candidates seem to have given any thought to the fact there are now just too many of them heading into the South Carolina and Florida primaries. Each of them still is infected with the vain hope that the voters yet will light his fire despite their failures in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Republican USA, including most of the evangelicals and teapartyists who form the rightguard of hardcore social conservatism, are now trending toward Romney as the one candidate who can rid them of Obama, even if his Mormon religion and his focus more on fiscal than on social conservancy is not to their total satisfaction. Dean has written that the Tea Party seems to be dissolving. There is more than a little evidence now to back up that contention. They have not gone away, but they seem to be politically growing up, more than a little.
I could be quite wrong about all that I have tried to analyze here. But on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire, that’s the way I read the cards.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I really don’t understand every non-Republican’s fascination with Huntsman. He’s a nonentity now, just like he was a week ago, a month ago and a year ago. He and I have the exact same chance of winning the Republican nomination (and I’m not even a registered Republican…).
Have to agree with Arnold, here. I went to the polls last night still trying to figure out if voting for Romney was the right thing to do- I nearly didn’t go at all, but I realized that was worse than making a choice I was not completely happy with.
In the end it boils down to the old adage: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” I voted for Romney and I very strongly believe a large number of people candidates such as Huntsman, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul are hoping will vote for them in the upcoming challenges will do the same. Bitterness (Gingrich), social issues (Santorum and to a lesser degree Huntsman), and Radical Libertarianism (Paul) are not going to accomplish the main goal of defeating Obama and rolling back the ruinous tide of budget-shredding progressivism he and his Democrat allies have shoved down the throat of the country.
Once that was settled in my head voting for Romney was not just easy, it was liberating.
The thing about Huntsman is that he does occasionally jump into the double-digits in some polls, and he just managed to pull in third in New Hampshire. Had Rick Perry dropped out as expected, I would expect Huntsman to have high hopes for South Carolina, because South Carolina voters will not like Mitt. Those voters will seek a conservative alternative, and Huntsman would have a very decent shot of taking out Santorum there simply because he does have a strong resume and a pretty good organization for a late entrant and Santorum is, well, Santorum. South Carolina will Huntsman’s last chance to be anything or anyone significant, but it’s also Perry and Santorum’s last shots. My gut says Rick Perry will spoil that for both of them.
Still, Hunstman is a long shot who’s not out of it yet.
In fact, if I were a betting man, I would bet that party insiders persuaded Perry to stay in simply so it would stop the other stragglers from surging ahead.
Dean,
That fact that Huntsman, Santorum, Gingrich and Perry all are determined to stay in the race and duke it out against Romney is a main fatal flow of the anti-Romney candidates; exactly as I described in my first comment on this post today. Each one of them can individually get only a relatively small number of votes. But of them wants to give up the struggle as long as they still have campaign money to spend.
As for South Carolina being that tough an assignment for Romney just a few days from now, the polls all indicate that his political strength among Republicans and independents has been strengthened since his unprecedented victories both in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has more than enough money in his campaign funds to blitz both South Carolina and Florida with advertising, a capability that most of his opponents lack.
As for Paul, his campaign attracts mostly libertarians, rather than Republicans per se. And because he can afford to run a low-budget campaign, his presence in any state primary sucks away enough votes from the anti-Romney squad to make it further impossible for any of them to make headway in this campaign.
The more I think of this, the more I think that Romney is unbeatable in the Republican nomination struggle. And unless something drastically changes the Obama calculus, I think Romney will be unbeatable in the general election as well as the primaries.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I am a Texan and a Tea Partier but I see that we have no choices but Romney in this race. People will not be ready for another Texan, or possibly even a Southerner in my lifetime, Mormonism is not the bugaboo it was in the past; Ron Paul while he is a Libertarian and has some really good ideas economically, he is really just an old man nut case- too old and past his prime, and he isn’t quite as old as I am. He is acting as a spoiler to get votes for Romney as I see it.
Huntsman is just not well enough known and is pretty liberal in some ways.
Newt, well Newt is Newt and that’s not a good thing. He is one of those men who is just too full of himself to see anything else.
Santorum is a nice guy, not ready for prime time and maybe never will be.
That’s my rundown on them.
My view is that if Perry dropped, one of the other stragglers like Huntsman might have a shot. But with Perry in the race, it’s all but sealed for Romney.
What I think however is that if there is a major upset in South Carolina, the whole race changes, whereas if there isn’t, it’s pretty much over.
Paul is attracting the protest vote and the odd young skull-full-of-mush voter and that’s about it methinks.
Ruth,
I’m a year older than Ron Paul, but I too consider him far too old to serve as president of the United States. If he were to win both the Republican nomination and the national election, he would be 81 years of age by the time America would be shopping for a president in 2016. In addition to old age, he sounds more like a crank than a serious national leader. However, I do agree with some of the points he raises about how far our country and its governance has strayed from the Constitution of the United States.
I’m with the Tea Party for the fiscal conservatism issues, but not for some of their social conservatism ideas. I’ve never been comfortable with the notion that anyone could stop me from buying whatever firearm I wanted for legal purposes, and I’m equally uncomfortable about anyone trying to stop my wife or daughter from terminating a pregnancy any time before birth. On the other hand, I want illegal immigration into this country stopped dead in its tracks, and I want the size, responsibilities of government reduced to a level that taxpayers can afford to maintain.
I wouldn’t at all say that America isn’t prepared to accept another Texan in particular or southerner in general as president. It’s been almost 150 years since the guns were stacked and the battle flags folded at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. The interstate battles now are largely confined to professional football teams going at each other on the television screens coincidental with Thanksgiving dinners.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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