Earlier this week, the former First Lady Barbara Bush called the 2012 Republican race “the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life”. Today’s New York Times leading article agrees, noting that even with last night’s Super Tuesday results counted, the dirty race continues to drag on:
Republican voters will have to go on for some time choosing between a candidate, Mitt Romney, who stands for nothing except country-club capitalism, and a candidate, Rick Santorum, so blinkered by his ideology that it’s hard to imagine him considering any alternative ideas or listening to any dissenting voice.
So where does this long drawn-out process for the GOP to nominate a presidential candidate for November stand? Here’s five things to take from last night and note in the coming weeks:
1) Mitt continues to struggle in the South
The frontrunner Romney lost South Carolina to Gingrich in January, and yesterday Newt took his home state of Georgia, while Santorum won Tennessee. Romney has a sizeable lead in the delegate count, but has not yet won over southern voters. It’s not enough that these conservative Americans backed John McCain in 2008: Romney needs to make gains off his own personality and politics.
2) Evangelical votes could yet boost Rick
Santorum’s success with conservative evangelical voters could help him make up some ground over the next week. Three of the four states holding primaries or caucuses in the coming week — Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi — hold 130 delegate votes between them and are of this demographic. It’s now almost a certainty there won’t be a Republican nominee until June.
3) Ron Paul keeps things interesting
Despite having yet to win a contest, Ron Paul continues to receive enough votes to keep things interesting. He finished in second place — ahead of Romney — in North Dakota, second in Vermont and in half the contests received more votes than Newt Gingrich. Should Paul leave the race soon, his not-insignificant fan base will be migrating towards another candidate, which could play out in various ways.
4) Was Ohio Mitt’s coup?
This swing-state come November was an absolutely critical win for Romney. Had Santorum taken that state, he would have received an enormous momentum boost. Yet Romney’s success comes with warnings: exit polls show he continues to struggle with working-class voters, evangelicals and those described as “very conservative”. And with the Romney campaign spending four times that of Santorum’s, a 15,000 vote margin is only barely good enough.
(As an aside, four years ago Hillary Clinton won the Ohio primary, only to go on to lose the nomination to Barack Obama who took the state in the Presidential election.)
5) GOP flailings are great for the President
Unsurprisingly (see Bush, above), the GOP race is doing little to soften the party around the edges. As I reported yesterday, the reduced turnout of voters in the primaries shows a clear gap of enthusiasm for the Republican party amongst their own people. Now new polling by Pew shows that the dirty battle between candidates is directly helping their rivals: Democrats, turned off by Romney &co. and rallying behind the president. As the New York Times writes:
A new Pew Research poll shows that 3 in 10 voters say their opinion of the Republicans has worsened during the primaries. Among Democrats, 49 percent said watching the primaries have made them more likely to vote for Mr. Obama. That is up from 36 percent in December, which shows that Mr. Obama has risen as the Republicans have fallen.
Still, it’s eight months until the big election day, and the NYT leader notes, “the president, who can be frustratingly inert at times, still has a long way to go”.