Forget Iowa And New Hampshire, It’s Florida That Will Matter
Daniel Barman analyses the current status of the GOP nomination race and believes that Florida will be the crucial state.
2 Sep 2011, 14:00
Can Romney do it?
This is because despite the vast number of states that will vote on each Tuesday in March and afterwards, and in spite of the decision of the Republican National Committee to make all states holding primaries or caucuses prior to April 1st distribute their delegates proportionally, no one actually has the money or resources to fight a truly national campaign. As a consequence, the decisive factor when the national battle begins after the Florida primary will be as it was in 2008 the momentum that the candidates bring into it from the six preceding weeks. And as in 2008, it is expectations as much as reality which will determine that momentum.
The reason for this is quite simply that a majority of Republicans, while willing to accept Mitt Romney as the nominee, would prefer someone else. This is not new, the same was true of John McCain in 2008, and it places Romney in the same position. He has a solid base of support and knows what he is going to receive in the early states (25% in Iowa, 37-40% in NH, 40% in Michigan, 35% in Florida). The key is to either turn those percentages into wins, or if defeat is inevitable, to ensure that no single opponent is able to establish themselves as the clear conservative alternative.
McCain managed this in 2008. That year, Mitt Romney’s played the role of attempting to unite conservative opposition to McCain, with a plan to sweep the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan, and then use the subsequent momentum to dominate the rest of a divided field. This strategy had promise – though Romney was running to the right of John McCain in New Hampshire, a win there for Romney would eliminate McCain, leaving Romney the only establishment choice. It would seem doubtful that Giuliani’s numbers in Florida, where he had decided to base his campaign could hold up through four weeks of Romney victories, and a decisive Romney win there would have left Romney having beaten all foes before going into the first “Super” Tuesday.
Harold Macmillan talked of “Events, dear boy, events”. In the end things went wrong for Romney from the start. His very dominance in Iowa that led McCain and Giuliani to concede the state gave an opening for Mike Huckabee to upset him with moral support from his absent rivals. This defeat weakened Romney and revived McCain’s campaign in New Hampshire, inflicting two-defeats on the supposed frontrunner in the space of a week. McCain’s loss to Romney in Michigan and narrow 31-29 win over Huckabee in South Carolina ensured that neither would establish themselves as the clear conservative alternative. This left Florida as Romney’s last chance to demonstrate that he was the only candidate capable of defeating John McCain. A win would not have won Romney the nomination, but it would have sent a message to Republicans opposed to McCain that there was only one game in town, creating a one-on-one race that would have been dangerous for the Arizona Senator.
In the end McCain prevailed by a narrow 35%-32% margin, not least because then Governor Charlie Cristie provided a last minute endorsement, one reason for the perceived coziness between Marco Rubio and Team Romney. McCain’s victory, and his own fourth place finish, ended Giuliani’s hopes, and ensured that McCain would have the left and center to himself while Romney and Huckabee picked up scraps on the right. Romney dropped out after being crushed the following Tuesday.
This year it’s Romney playing the part of John McCain, hoping to hang on through the early states in order to deny any of his opponents a clear shot at becoming the “anti-Romney”. It’s also why even though he is not contesting Iowa this year, his campaign is far from indifferent as to the outcome there. A Bachman win would not provide her with a clear path to the nomination, but it would greatly complicate Perry’s win, as much as Huckabee’s 2008 win did to Romney himself. It would provide her viability that could be key later on. The difference between Bachman winning 10% and 20% in Florida could be the difference between a Romney or a Perry victory.
Nonetheless, this is wishful thinking in the current environment, nice but not necessary to a Romney nomination. Despite her win in the straw poll, it is Rick Perry and not Michelle Bachman who appears to be emerging as a clear favorite in Iowa. Two recent polls, one from We Ask America and another from PPP both show him in the lead, though they differ on the margin and Mitt Romney’s position(WAA has Perry ahead 29 to 17, with Romney in single digits, PPP has Perry up 22-19-18 over Romney and Bachman). Perry has also received a rapid flood of endorsements in establishment dominated South Carolina, where his southern background should play well.
As a result, Romney is falling back on his old-standbys. He continues to lead comfortably in New Hampshire as well as in Michigan where his father was a popular governor during the 1960s. A recent poll had him leading Perry and Bachman 32% to 17% and 10% respectively. Romney also leads in Nevada, which he comfortably won in 2008, and he is a likely favorite in Arizona.
With each candidate leading expectations in their own states, and assuming that expectations perform closer to reality than they did in 2008, all signs point to a battle royale in the Everglades at the end of February. And to the victor goes the spoils.
For Perry, a win in Florida would do to Romney what losing South Carolina did to John McCain in 2000 – relegate him to the status of a regional candidate with limited appeal outside of the Northeast and Mormon West. While Romney would likely exceed McCain’s 2000 performance, that narrative would make it extremely hard to win the states he needs to win outside of those areas, and result in an electoral map that would look lot like the 2004 Presidential election, with Romney as John Kerry, albeit likely losing Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from Kerry’s total.
If however Romney were to win, defeating Perry in a southern swing state vital to a GOP victory in the general election it would set up an altogether different narrative. It would reinforce the impression of Perry as the more ideologically extreme candidate, appealing to the Republican primary perhaps, but facing serious hurdles in attracting voters outside the hardest core of the GOP base, and therefore an unwise choice to run against Obama. By contrast, Romney would have proven that he could defeat Perry in the only truly major state to feature a one-on-one battle between the two, giving confidence to major donors that only should Romney beat Perry out for the nomination but that he should.
Whoever wins will not only be able to bask in the glow of victory in front of a national audience, but they will also benefit from a week of the media reinforcing the above narratives before additional states vote the following Tuesday. That media storm will likely reinforce whatever narrative emerges from Florida, whether Romney’s difficulty with the Tea Party or Perry’s ideological positions and limited mainstream appeal. This is particularly vital for Mitt Romney, given that Super Tuesday this year has taken on a distinctly southern dimension, with the decision of California, New Jersey, and New York to move their primaries back. A win in Florida will enable Romney to present a Perry sweep of the South as a further confirmation of his limited regional and ideological appeal rather than as a confirmation of his momentum towards the nomination. And if Romney can survive Super Tuesday with a win outside the south, later months promise a wealth of delegates, not least because the Winner-Take-All policies of his strongest states(whether WTA at the statewide or congressional level) will likely provide him with close to 90% of the haul from states such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Contrasted with the more proportional nature of Perry’s strongest states (Romney is may well get more Delegates out of New Jersey than Perry from Texas), this is Romney’s clearest path to the nomination.
Given its importance, Florida GOP politicians are likely to become Kingmakers, which is one reason Marco Rubio is talked about so vociferously for the Vice Presidential spot. If things keep up as they have been, look for him to become the star and moderator of the GOP’s Battle of the Everglades.
Comments (3)
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Like all your articles, brilliant.
02/09/2011 21:54A brilliant, well-researched article. Thank you.
03/09/2011 16:26Thanks for the messages. I am really pleased you are enjoying the article.
With this piece I wanted to try and given an impression of what I hear when I talk with people I know working on the campaigns this year. And at least for Romney, the memory of Florida is enormously bitter for a lot of them.
Ironically its far more important to them this time. They can't beat Perry in a national race, so they have to pick up momentum by defeating him in individual contests. They can cede Iowa and South Carolina, but a win in New Hampshire is going to provoke eye-rolls. Florida is at close as it comes to being Perry's turf while still remaining winnable for Romney.
03/09/2011 22:08