Jan 07 2008
Can Romney Only Win By Losing Independents?
It seems Romney’s only hope to win the GOP primary in NH is to hope enough independents jump ship from the GOP to Obama, and dilute McCain’s support:
Registered independents can vote in either primary in the state of New Hampshire and more than half (55 percent) of this key voting group say they plan to vote in the Democratic primary. Registered independents are now more likely to support Obama over Clinton by 9 points; last month independents broke for Clinton by 6 points.
The rest of the independents seem to be heading to McCain. The current wild theory is Romney can win if the GOP loses the center and McCain loses his support. This is what is known as a Pyrrhic victory, where a win in a battle means nothing because the war is lost in the process. The GOP purity wars do create some very strange ideas!
I guess the fact Joe Lieberman is out supporting McCain is another sign of what a traitor McCain is to the GOP fringe. I just saw former PA Governor Ridge (another moderate GOPer) noting how Sen Lieberman is demonstrating how McCain can cross party lines and garner support. Sort of makes Romney the Ned Lamont of 2008, doesn’t it???
I don’t know if Romney is trying to do that, or if they see that Independents are going to Democrats this year anyway, so try to go right even more. But no sane person supports stuff like mass deportation, so why promise it? I think some people are getting tired, stressed and desperate and that can make them do some strange things.
AJ: This is the worst analyzed race in my memory going back to 1976. Obama changes everything is correct in spite of your protestations. The winner in November will be the one who can turn out their base and appeal to the middle. Of these two, base turn out will be the most important because McCain will be in a tight race and will need every vote he can get and Obama will have to come to grips with the reality in Iraq without alienating his base. At the moment Obama can do both but McCain can only do one. McCain does need to show that he can win the Republican base. South Carolina will be the big test for McCain with Florida as the minor test.
Finally, delegates is everything no some election mo. The RNC has penalized all the early states. NH only has 12 delegates. I’m not sure how NH awards delegates but McCain will not even be in second place after NH. Michigan will have to provide him with the delegate count. Even in MI, Romney will be competative (his father was governor).
After MI, Romney will be in 1st place and then comes SC and who is front? Huckaboom. So after SC there will be a three way tie for the lead with Rudy and Thompson behing with some delegates. Even Florida lost half its delegates whcih will mute a Rudy victory. All this vindicates Rudy’s February 5th strategy. There will be no clear delegate leader as of 02/05 and that will decide the front runner. All this in January on the Republican side is a bunch of MSM overhype trying to sell advertising. The Republican will have a national primary on February 5th.
The Republican race seems to be more regional and decentralized than the Democratic race. That is what is making it hard to analyze for me plus it is a five way race.
Mark:
From what I have seen it is a real toss up in Michigan. There is a poll putting McCain ahead, a poll putting Huckabee ahead and a poll putting Romney.
I have to tell you, I liked Romney more before he joined forces with Tancredo.
Seems like everyone is late to the deportation is a fools errand. I’ve been saying this since 2005 and look at the 2006 election. I say one word that caused the GOP disaster in 2006. Deportation. Talk about Hitler, round them all up in cattle cars and ship them to the border. Nice!!
I’m from MI, I think Romney will pull it off here… He was born right he in Detroit and we still remember his father. I highly doubt Romney is trying to pull a Pyrrhic victory… like you said it’s wild theory… I think we should avoid the outlandish.
In fact, I think a Romney–McCain ticket would be a very good combination.
Klmt:
If they didn’t kill each other.
I think the picture is much bigger than that. How many of those independents are really independents? How many are Democrats who simply like to keep thier options open?
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….”and Patrick Hynes — a consultant to the McCain campaign, who has worked in New Hampshire for fifteen years — put it,
if you could track, say, five undeclareds from year to year, you would find numbers one and two consistently voted in the Democratic primary, and numbers three and four consistently voted in the Republican primary, and number five was the only one who shifted between the two.”
Interestingly, Marist puts McCain up among registered Republicans, 33 percent to 31 percent, but only up one point among Independents.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjhiMzc1OGJlZDUxZTViY2QyNTlmOTYxNmRiMmM4OGY=
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Maybe it is just the reverse…..
McCain can’t win without the Independent vote who normally vote Democrat.
I’m from Michigan too, that state was probably in the top seven or ten most prosperous states when George Romney was governor. Everyone liked him and he was a very smart executive. People remember that. Now they see his son being just as brilliant and successful as a businessman. Michigan has dropped to about the bottom five of states now with almost eight percent unemployment after the last thirty years of getting progressively more liberal and Democrat. The Dem strongholds are Detroit and Flint where the unions left a lot of welfare cases. Michigan needs a Romney really badly and most of the voting age people know it. Its kinda an older state because it’s so cheap to live there, I could see Romney winning in a rout.
MarkN is right about the overhype but wrong on “deportation”. (2006 election losses were due to repub’s loss of fiscal constraint, Foleygate, corruption, unhappiness with Bush & Iraq — all fueled by liberal media.)
The GOP race is wide open, no matter what NH does. Unfortunately, the unquestionable conservative in the race – Thompson – is hanging by a thread. He will probably be done after SC, if not before. If McCain wins NH, he’s in decent shape; if he comes in second, he’ll fade & will be done. Romney, Huck & Rudy are all viable after NH.
On the dem side, Obama has the big “mo” and has become a phenomenon, but is still not a sure thing to defeat the ruthless & well-financed Clinton machine. There are many big-delegate states that can swing things her way.
The fact that Obama will likely get a high percentage of the indy votes speaks to the excitement of his campaign and the energy at play on the dem side. This does not bode well for Nov, but there is still lots of time. Some of the tracking polls show Romney closing on McCain, which would probably be due to blowback at the attacks against Romney and Romney outperforming everyone at the Fox debate. (Thompson is great on substance, but is not animated enough to project well on TV.)
Bikerken:
I will not vote for mass deportation. If the likes of Savage take over the Republican party, count me out.
Agree with Terrye. At that point, I’d have to deport myself from the party and probably do a couple years as a guest worker with the Dims.
Savage drinks. When he was on at evening drive time and I used to catch him a few times a week, I could usually tell if it was a one martini day or a liter. He’s a completely fictitious character, who fits right in with today’s right wing kulture of kook. He’s such a loose cannon he didn’t even last on FoxNews for more than a couple weeks… and that’s sayin something.