Could There Be Gold In Them Swamps For Romney?

 by Aaron Goldstein  

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With the exit of Fred Thompson, conservatives will settle for Mitt Romney.

A fortnight ago, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign was on the precipice of collapse after disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire where he had been expected to win. But fortune smiled on him in his home state of Michigan on January 15th. Four days later, Romney triumphed in the Nevada Caucuses. Although he would finish a distant fourth that same night in the South Carolina Primary, Nevada proved to be richer in delegates than the Palmetto state. A lucky streak in hand, Romney has taken his dice to Florida looking for gold in them swamps.  There’s a good chance he’ll find it.

So what does Romney have going for him? Well, not much actually. His message isn’t appreciably different than it was a month ago. However, things have not gone so wonderfully for our economy and anxiety about it has increased dramatically in the first month of 2008; anxious voters are willing to listen to someone with a strong business acumen. Things are also not going so wonderfully for his opponents. Onetime frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has been sinking like a stone despite putting nearly all of his resources in the Sunshine state. His strategy to forego Iowa and New Hampshire allowed Mike Huckabee to come out from obscurity and John McCain to come back from the dead.

However, Huckabee peaked in Iowa. Despite a strong second-place finish in South Carolina, Huckabee does not have the funds to put much in the way of television and radio advertising to effectively compete. Even a well-placed karate kick from Chuck Norris won’t be enough to get much needed airtime. On the other hand, McCain is very competitive in Florida and is running first in several polls, albeit narrowly and within the margin of error. However, McCain and Giuliani share a very similar voter universe. Both candidates are strong on national security issues.  McCain was a hero in Vietnam and was right about the surge in Iraq. Giuliani was a hero in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Both are outspoken against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Both men have relatively moderate social views (although McCain is pro-life while Giuliani is pro-choice concerning abortion). But given their similarities, McCain and Giuliani will split that voter universe unless Giuliani’s vote collapses and coalesces around McCain. Short of such a collapse, this split benefits one Mitt Romney.

What benefits Romney even more is the exit of Fred Thompson from the GOP race earlier this week. While Thompson is a close friend of McCain and even supported his White House bid in 2000, the Fred Heads want a dye-in-the-wool conservative.  In the absence of Thompson, they’ll settle for Romney. It will be enough to put Romney over the top in Florida. Mitt Romney is in the right place at the right time.  If a week in politics is a lifetime, a fortnight is an eternity. If Romney finds a pot of gold in Orlando, it will be worth the wait. Then he can look forward to the next lifetime until Super Tuesday.

Elections & Political Parties

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