Santorum’s southern comfort means misery for Mitt
“We did it again”, a giddy Rick Santorum told supporters after suprising the pundits with two more primary wins. Bad news for Mitt Romney and for a Republican party facing a long, bitter fight ahead.
Rick Santorum wasn’t even in Alabama or Mississippi to celebrate his twin victories last night: he was already in Louisiana, with his eyes on the next prize – the Land of Lincoln’s 46 delegates. He is now out to prove he is the only conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, and will be hoping that he has finally done enough to earn a one-on-one contest. For Mitt Romney, who’d been optimistically predicting a win in Alabama at least, third place meant for a crushingly disappointing night. The glum convicts photographed hauling ballot boxes in Jefferson County looked like they’d had a better time.
If you’re the front runner and you keep coming third, you’re not much of a front runner. Newt Gingrich.
So what are the lessons? Santorum, as ever, mopped up votes from ultra-conservative and evangelical voters: in Mississippi, an overwhelming 83% of Republicans identified themselves as such. “This campaign is about ordinary folks doing extraordinary things”, he told supporters – but despite his incredible resilience, and ability to defy all expectations, despite a chronic lack of cash and organisation, he has still to prove he can really broaden his coalition beyond his base. And, above all, he badly needs Newt Gingrich to drop out of the race.
Narrowing the field?
The ever-irrepressible Newt, whose skin appears thicker than his namesake reptile, has shown little sign of backing off. He taunted Romney in his election speech: “If you’re the front runner and you keep coming third, you’re not much of a front runner”, but some of his advisers have been touting the idea of some kind of joint ticket. The Politico website quotes an email suggesting Gingrich and Santorum “would make a powerful ticket against Barack Obama”. But it’s hard to see how he can now raise enough cash to carry on.
As for Mitt Romney, it’s the same old message: GOP [Republican] supporters just aren’t into you. His efforts to find common ground with ordinary southerners saw him pilloried as ‘Cheese Grits Mitt’. He’s ploughed vast amounts of money and resources into each campaign, outspending his opponents by as much as ten to one. But he’s either scraped a win, or actually lost. Today he’ll be in New York, at the start of a week of intensive fundraising: hard to believe, but his campaign is running short of cash-in-hand. He needs a message to reassure donors that he’s worth the investment.
Spending blitz
Not that money seems to be a problem yet. With all eyes now on next Tuesday’s Illinois primary, with it’s far broader demographic mix, Romney has already plunged a million bucks into advertising there, while his Super PAC group of wealthy supporters has spent more than twice as much. Yet there remains a nagging doubt: he has still been winning more delegates than his rivals, but it’s a grim old slog. And the passion still isn’t there.
There’s more. Half the voters in Mississippi and Alabama last night said Romney simply wasn’t conservative enough, while a substantial percentage were put off by his Mormon faith. As the Washington Post has noted, a straight fight between Romney and Santorum could split the Republicans down class and ideological lines, which surely won’t do much for the party’s electoral fortunes come November.
On to Illinois
Or perhaps there’s solace for Romney yet. He did at least pick up a handful of delegates last night, winning the rather less visible contests in American Samoa and Hawaii. Aloha.
And Santorum still lacks any kind of proper organisation: just take Illinois, where his team’s failure to complete the proper files means he doesn’t have a full slate of delegates in four of the eighteen districts. There hasn’t been much polling there to assess the likely outcome: although a survey in last week’s Chicago Tribune put Romney a fraction ahead, 46% of voters said they could change their minds before the primary takes place.
As we’ve said: Romney badly needs a story that can trump the ‘Santoromentum’ caption plastered all over the news channels. He’s a former CEO. There’s something wrong with the heart (or the soul) of his campaign. The job of any good businessman should surely be to fix it.