Mitt Romney won five out of the ten state contests on Super Tuesday – but not the knockout he needed. The bitter fight for the presidential nomination could now drag on for months.
She’s the grandmother of American politics – and she’s already endorsed the Mitt Romney campaign. But last night Barbara Bush was bemoaning the ugly nature of the Republican campaign, as the candidates tear into each other at every opportunity. She called it the worst campaign she’d ever seen: “I think the rest of the world is looking at us and thinking, ‘What are you doing? Why aren’t you getting along?’ she said.
To the outside world, the sight of a political party which seems bent on ripping itself apart is undignified and unedifying, to say the least. Thanks to his deep pockets, and the even deeper ones of his rich campaign supporters, Mitt Romney has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into the race so far, filling the airwaves with (mostly) negative ads. But even though he’s outspent Rick Santorum by a margin of four to one, his narrow win last night means it looks as if he can’t even buy the votes he needs.
What are you doing? Why aren’t you getting along? Barbara Bush
As for Rick Santorum, whose latest salvo basically accuses Romney of being a liar, he has done just well enough to carry on. His team told reporters last night, he is determined to carry on until the Republican convention itself. A presumably exhausted Romney didn’t sound like he relished the prospect: “Tomorrow we wake up and we start again. And the next day we do the same again.”, he said. “And so it will go, day by day, step by step, door to door, heart to heart. There will be good days and bad days, always long hours, and never enough time.” Sounds a barrel of laughs.
Will Mitt ever connect with the ordinary voter? Read Matt Frei's blog
There are two reasons for Republicans to worry. The GOP has a consistently weak front runner who just can’t connect with ordinary people. And the ugly primary contest, not to mention the right-wing conservative ground they’re fighting on, is putting off increasing numbers of voters. In fact, the longer the contest goes on, the more unpopular the party is becoming, with attitudes on a host of social and cultural issues far removed from the more tolerant, diverse society, that most of America has become.
The irony is that the Republicans actually wanted a longer race: in 2008, the excitement of the Obama/Clinton battle energised the Demcoratic base and won over a whole new raft of voters who’d never bothered to tune into politics before. But for the Republicans this cycle could hardly be more different. The candidates themselves have hardly helped: Newt Gingrich wants to build a colony on the moon, Rick Santorum said JFK’s speech on separating Church and State made him want to ‘throw up’, and called Obama a ‘snob’ for promoting college education. As for Romney, he’s all about the blue blood, not blue collar.
Romney’s popularity ratings just keep on getting worse. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows his unfavourability ratings have gone up to 39 per cent, whereas his favourable ratings are just 28%. It’s not a good sign for the general election, when he can’t even convince his own supporters, especially the working class. His latest tactic has been to wheel out his wife Ann (whose Pinterest page depicts Mitt in all manner of homely settings, along with a couple of handy granola recpies).
Mrs Romney has been talking up her humble roots as the grand-daughter of a Welsh coal miner, and promoting her down-home views on the economy: “I’m angry because we have 16 grandchildren and I do not want them inheriting our excesses”, she said. Not that she was helped much by husband Mitt, who put his foot in it yet again when he described his wife as “the heavyweight champion of my life”, before hastily correcting himself – “I didn’t mean weight. That didn’t come out right.”
A conservative, a liberal and a moderate go into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Hi Mitt!’. Foster Freiss
Joking aside, though, evidence from all the Super Tuesday exit polls shows that while Romney is continuing to do well among rich, educated, wealthy voters, in other words, guys like him, he isn’t making many inroads with anyone else. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who switched his endorsement to Santorum ahead of last night’s vote put it thus: “I think in the long run, what makes Rick Santorum strong is his blue collar roots and his ability to connect with blue collar voters. People say ‘He seems like one of us’. Nobody says that about Romney”.
And as we have seen, Romney can’t get over that aura of untrustworthiness – his critics says he constantly ‘flip flops’ on every major issue. He has even spawned a joke from Santorum’s money-man Foster Friess, who is still in good humour despite the trouble it’s got him into before. “A conservative, a liberal and a moderate walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Hi Mitt’.”
Ok, so it’s not exactly Saturday Night Live. But it shows how marginalised Romney’s brand of Republicanism has become within a party that has been lurching to the right for years.
Barbara Bush certainly is not impressed with the results: nor too is Jeb Bush. After watching the infighting spill out in public, during the Republican debates he warned it was all playing to peoples’ fears: “I used to be a conservative”, he said, ruefully. Meanwhile, it’s Barack Obama who’s winning back voters, and enjoying a free hand at that electorally lucrative centre ground.
Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News