Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Ken Dean, who successfully managed primary and caucus victories for both Gary Hart and Jerry Brown and now helps run a small sheep farm in southern Vermont.
Sarah Palin, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann are gone. Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Willard Mitt Romney remain, and are hoping to be the fresh new challenger facing President Barack Obama in November. One of these will be elected president of the United States in 2012 and serve a four-year term, as leader of the free world.
The quasi-fascinating process started in Iowa Tuesday, Jan. 3, and continued in New Hampshire Jan. 10. South Carolina Jan. 21 and Florida Jan. 31 are next. Nevada and Maine Feb. 4, follow on the 2012 Republican primary/caucus calendar.
The “still moving” distilled political truth. For over seven months this race has been about Romney and non-Romney. Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is capable, poised, prepared and a skilled refined Republican presidential candidate. Notice he rarely makes a verbal mistake, or any kind of obvious mistake, at least on camera. The non-Rick Perry. He learned this early from his father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan who was a Republican presidential candidate in 1968 challenging Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller. Both father and son were successful businessmen, Republican and Mormon, and were elected governors in solid traditional Democratic states, where few Republicans made it. That takes talent, a lot of effective strategic planning, solid organizational infrastructure, and all the money needed to finance it.
Mitt Romney has all those. He also has a consistent base of 25 percent support in the Republican Party, both in 2008 and 2012. What he does not have, at least not yet, is the other 75 percent.
His situation is not new. In 1976 Jimmy Carter faced almost an identical situation. In 1976 Carter was a one-term state senator and a one-term governor from Georgia, and the national party was not warming up to him. His support base in the early 1976 Democratic caucuses and primaries remained forever in the 25 percent range. He was the only serious moderate conservative in the race; most of the remaining 75 percent were far more liberal, fragmenting their strength and money. Example: data from New Hampshire in February 1976 showed Jimmy Carter, 28 percent; Morris Udall, 23 percent; Birch Bayh, 15 percent; Fred Harris, 11 percent; Sargent Shriver, 8 percent; others, 4 percent. By the time the non-Carter vote came down to one candidate later in the season after Jerry Brown’s victories, it was too late. Carter was well on his way to the nomination and could not be caught. And what was Carter’s vote total in Iowa in January 1976? It was 28 percent.
Final Iowa results from Tuesday, Jan. 3, showed Mitt Romney, 25 percent; Rick Santorum, 25 percent; Ron Paul, 21 percent; Newt Gingrich, 13 percent; Rick Perry, 10 percent; Michele Bachmann, 5 percent, Jon Huntsman, 1 percent. Unless the non-Romney vote (which is substantial) coalesces around one candidate fast, Romney will be the Republican nominee. All that remains is whether it will take him 14 days or 14 weeks. Rick Santorum had an impressive rise in the final weeks of Iowa. However, it will be hard for him to repeat it, in equal proportions and national delegate strength elsewhere.
Sixty percent of Iowa Republican caucus voters are rural, religious, evangelical, agrarian and conservative. Data tells us they are far more concerned with pure ideology than November electability. And to use their terms, “a timid moderate Massachusetts Mormon from Utah” was not their first caucus choice. So they ended up with a very conservative, blue collar, devout Roman Catholic Republican from western Pennsylvania who lost his latest U.S. Senate race.
In 1988, Pat Robertson won Iowa (with the above-mentioned evangelical constituency), defeating Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. Mike Huckabee won Iowa in 2008 (with this same constituency), defeating John McCain and Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum won the same Iowa counties and regions of Huckabee and Robertson supporters. But only because he was the last one standing. Bachmann, Perry and Gingrich had already faded. Santorum was all that remained.
Romney is prepared and ready and on the ballot in 50 states, staffed and fully financed in 30, with media buys running in Florida and Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina daily at his side. The three Johns — Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and former Gov. John Sununu of New Hampshire — are in the Romney inner circle of advisers, planners, surrogate speakers and protectors.
It will be very hard to take this ship down. It will take at times, serious hits. Newt Gingrich is a veteran bomb thrower. And the kamikaze Gingrich plane is headed for the S.S. Romney full throttle especially in South Carolina. Millions of dollars of more attack ads coming. Gingrich is wounded and finds a new donor to give him five million. However, as long as the non-Romney vote is divided among four or five people, and conservative base is fully fractured among them, Romney wins by a plurality state by state.
Remember it is nine-inning ball game to the nomination, not two. The unexpected surprise can always happen, and at any hour, in New Hampshire and everywhere else. However, those with the big armada, who can organize in all 50 states, take the normal hits in the early states, historically tend to reach the final goal. Time will tell. New Hampshire results coming in. Stay tuned. It is just the second inning.
