Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Why I have thought for a while it will be President Romney

One of two things tend to happen in Republican primaries.  Either a right of center, party establishment candidate gets enough traction from the center early enough in the primary to crowd out the farther to the right candidates (e.g. Ronald Reagan) or the anti-establishment candidate snaps up enough center right votes and gets momentum (e.g. John McCain) to win.  Romney falls into the second category, he is just not exciting enough to get a post Florida bump, cruise to a big Super Tuesday and bury the opposition like McCain did.  Still, the formula is what holds true far more often than not.  And do not mistake malaise on the part of the Romney supporters for a sign he will not win the general election.  The fact of the matter is that he has been polling pretty much even with Obama while being attacked from the right.  That will not happen in the fall.  Bloomberg has a much better (and more in depth) analysis than I have given, but the bottom line is the same: the middle right Republican candidate who emerged (Romney because he had a campaign organization in place and the ability to raise untold amounts of cash) was going to beat the far right field because no viable farther right of center candidate emerged to pull in the rest of the party.

2 comments:

Borepatch said...

The rules are different this time, in reaction to McCain's cruise. The delegates are split for another month or so, so even the states that are ""won" only give a little more delegates (not all of them).

Also, I disagree that Romney is the "anti-establishment" candidate, but we can agree to disagree there.

And I hold to my prediction that Mussolini could beat Obama this year. Nobody thinks the economy is getting better, nobody believes he has a plan, gas prices are going through the roof, and all he does is say big, pretty, empty nothings.

You can smell the desperation coming from the Obama campaign - no money, no enthusiasm in their base (thus, the whipping up a frenzy over contraception). Not what a confident team would be doing.

I'm not a Romney fan, but I have to say that he's done an outstanding job of not falling into the traps set by the MSM.

2cents said...

He will win the nomination and the election, "enthusiasm gap" be damned. Other than both Bushes and only because I knew them at least somewhat, I have't been enthused about a candidate since Reagan. I will, however, be enthused to have Obama thrown out. Sadly it is matter of doing the least amount of damage.