Republican Split Decision
Romney had a good night but Santorum has cause to fight on.
March 8, 2012
If Republican poohbahs were hoping that Super Tuesday's 10 contests would settle the Republican primary contest, they woke up Wednesday disappointed. While Mitt Romney had a good night and stretched his lead among delegates, Rick Santorum did well enough to more than justify staying in the race.
The good news for Mr. Romney is that he won easily where he had to—in New England and Virginia—and went on to win narrowly the crucial showdown in Ohio. The pundits made much of the large vote for Ron Paul in Vermont and Virginia, which was no doubt a protest vote against Mr. Romney or the entire field. But the former Massachusetts Governor still gathered most of the delegates and it appeared more than 40 of 49 delegates in Virginia.
In Ohio, Mr. Romney did well with what is becoming a familiar coalition: party regulars, college grads and those making more than $100,000 a year, voters who think the economy is the most important issue, and those who think he has the best chance of defeating President Obama.
It's clear that most tea partiers and the most conservative voters still prefer another candidate, but Mr. Romney won enough of them to prevail. His pro-growth 20% tax cut and tax reform outline, unveiled before Michigan, have been important to winning over conservative skeptics who favor substance over biography. Two weeks ago he was trailing Mr. Santorum badly in Ohio, and exit polls showed Mr. Romney picking up the bulk of those who decided in the last week.
Yet Mr. Santorum also did well in Ohio because he continues to carve out pluralities among tea party supporters, cultural conservatives, younger voters, and those who didn't attend college and aren't affluent. Partly this is the result of Mr. Santorum actively targeting these voters as a kindred spirit who understands their pain and values, but it also reflects Mr. Romney's weakness among the populist precincts of the GOP.
The same conservative doubts plagued Mr. Romney in Oklahoma, and especially Tennessee, where he made large media buys in the last week. Mr. Santorum won both and North Dakota.
Mr. Santorum is also scoring on the stump with his warnings about the threat to freedom posed by ObamaCare. Especially if the economy improves, this will be a crucial issue for Republicans in November because it reflects the great American fault line over the role of government. Yet the issue has bedeviled Mr. Romney's because of his refusal to distance himself from RomneyCare in Massachusetts and to say more than his cursory line that he'll "repeal ObamaCare."
Mr. Santorum hit health care hard in his remarks on Tuesday night, claiming Mr. Romney favored an individual mandate imposed from Washington even as recently as the 2009-2010 ObamaCare debate. We've long thought RomneyCare was the former Governor's great vulnerability, and he would be wise to come up with a better explanation for how his views differ from Mr. Obama's. Voters want to hear him do what Mr. Santorum does and take ObamaCare apart as policy and philosophy.
As for Newt Gingrich, he says his win in Georgia means he can fight another day. But he showed little strength anywhere else, and his overriding problem is his negative image even among Republicans. In Ohio's exit poll, 48% said they'd be dissatisfied if he were the GOP nominee. That's not an argument for electability.
His speech Tuesday night also betrayed his familiar ill-discipline as he rambled on with a history of the 2012 campaign from Iowa to Georgia. He'll have to defeat Mr. Santorum soon in more states than Georgia and outside of the South to claim to be the main alternative to Mr. Romney.
Republican elites are aching to declare this race over and take aim at Mr. Obama. The fear is that the intraparty debate is hurting the GOP brand and the image of the candidates. Some of that is inevitable in any primary campaign, but November is a long way off and the American public hasn't concluded that Mr. Obama deserves another term.
The hand-wringing is fruitless in any case. The voters are in charge and their split decision shows that Republicans still haven't settled on a standard-bearer.
online.wsj.com
My take: Gingrich should bow out now. |
