American media loves a good horse race. That’s why you see so much feverish debate over trivia. For instance, does Mitt Romney have what it takes to appeal to white working-class Republicans? The answer, if you’re clear-eyed, is moot, because voters who are truly working class – earning less than $50,000 – are most likely to vote Democratic in the general election. Reporters and pundits covering the GOP nomination for the White House are already bored. No need elevating that boredom to ennui with the realities of class.
The only question is when Romney will secure the nomination, not if. Other questions – if, say, he will be worn down politically and organizationally by November – are big questions no one can answer right now. In terms of party politics, no one can conceivably catch up to Romney, and this despite supporters who don’t like really him.
Of the 10 states in play on Super Tuesday (March 6), he won six – Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia and Vermont. Sure, there’s room for debate amid victory. For instance, he won Ohio only by a hair. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich weren’t on the ballot in Virginia. Mormons favoured a fellow Mormon in Idaho. And Massachusetts chose its former governor by a landslide (72.2 percent).
Romney now has 415 delegates, more than the others combined. He has more organization; he has more money; he has more momentum. Of all the differences between this nomination and those of the past (and there are obviously many), the one fundamental difference is the rule changes initiated by the Republican Party. Every state is supposed to allot delegates proportionally to ballots cast for each candidate. It used to be winner-takes-all. If there was any question about who the frontrunner might be, that was settled by the time the first Super Tuesday came around. But that can’t happen this year, because some states, like Florida ignored the rule and remained winner-take-all while others, like Georgia, now issue a percentage of delegates. Bottom-line is Romney is winning. It’s winning piecemeal but it’s still winning.
What’s fascinating is what 2012 has revealed about the GOP and American politics in general. For instance, the curious case of religion. Santorum is a Catholic and you’d think he’d be a shoo-in among Catholics. No so! You’d also think Catholics wouldn’t care for a Mormon. Not so! Turn all that upside down. Santorum is so socially radical, as if he were speaking for Pope Benedict himself on, say, the issue of birth control, that Catholics have flocked to Romney. Meanwhile, Romney scarcely talks about religion at all, even waffling on abortion. Perhaps that why evangelical Christians, who favoured Bush, have rallied around Santorum’s orthodox anti-abortionism.
Another curiosity is the beginning of what could be a split of the GOP. I don’t mean to overstate this, but it’s true that Ron Paul is the Tea Party favourite, and his positions on drug enforcement and war are contrary to party dogma. He has, however, a snowball’s change in getting the GOP nomination. Even so, Paul, who ran in 2008, is laying the groundwork for a libertarian insurrection. Paul is elderly so some are saying the beneficiary of his effort is his son, Rand, who rode a wave of Tea Party enthusiasm to become a US Senator in 2010.
Then there’s the money. No one has even spent as much at this time in the nomination process as Romney. Not even close. I’m talking about Romney’s coffers as well as those of the super PAC (political action committee) that supports him. It’s called Restore Our Future and it is the product of the 2009 ruling by the US Supreme Court that said money is the same as free speech and so it can’t be subject to campaign finance laws. Romney’s super PAC comprises huge donors, spending millions on each state during the nomination. Whenever Romney has stumbled or been threatened by Gingrich or Santorum, he opens the cash spigot. Romney might be the first GOP nominee universally known for not being able to sell his platform so he buys one.
As I said, American media loves a good horse race (and who doesn’t!) but that also means a certain degree of myopia when it comes to explaining why Romney can’t warm the cockles of Republicans. A better place to find answers is the larger cultural and political shifts that have taken place since the era of President George W. Bush.
The last decade saw significant and radical shifts to the right while Bush was in office. He and his henchmen Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were able to force the GOP’s rank-and-file to get in line. The rank-and-file are of course now the same people in thrall to the radicalism of the Tea Party ideology. But once Bush left office, that radicalism could not be contained. Add to that the historic election of the first African-American President of the United States and you have the making of a reactionary extravaganza that was the 2010 mid-terms.
Without a strong leader like Bush – or for that matter, an influential intellectual like William F. Buckley, who died in 2008 – that radicalism has become unbridled. Even House Speaker John Boehner, who could reasonably presume that the rank-and-file would get in line as they historically have done, cannot control his right flank. Hence, the reason the GOP’s top priority since 2008 has been unseating Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, pity the poor quarter-billionaire. While the party was moving to the radical right, Romney, as governor of Massachusetts from 2002 to 2007, was busy achieving health care reform, which had been a long-time objective of the Republican Party (yes, it’s true!). I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He thought he was doing the right thing for the party – being a moderate Republican able to accomplish a Republican agenda while running a very liberal state. I can see why people would think he’d be a good candidate in a general election. Too bad he didn’t foresee that his main problem would be his own party.
John Stoehr is a lecturer in English at Yale University.
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