Another poll has come out showing Newt Gingrich on the rise. This one shows him in second place in Iowa, behind Herman Cain and ahead of Mitt Romney. If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you know that I’ve been predicting that Gingrich would make a move. He’s really the last flavor left for Republicans to sample before they bite the bullet and nominate Multiple-Choice Mitt. It’s getting late enough in the game now that we can begin to make some rational predictions.
The Republican primary calendar has taken shape, and the Iowa Caucuses are now scheduled for Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012. That is only eight weeks away. In the We Ask America automated poll, Rick Perry did not manage to get a single vote from anyone in the 18-24 or 35-44 age categories, even though 864 Republican voters were surveyed. That’s a degree of weakness that is almost unfathomable. Overall, he received the support of a mere 4% of voters. That places him in Rick Santorum (3%) and Jon Huntsman (2%) territory. I’m finding it hard to believe that Perry is doing this badly, but it appears that his campaign is just dead as a doornail.
And, if that’s the case, then we should not expect him to come in first, second, or third place in the Iowa Caucuses. While it’s not that important to win the Iowa Caucuses, it’s devastating to get blown out (at least, if you’ve actually campaigned there). Perry’s weakness has tempted Romney into the contest. That is in itself an interesting development because it was Romney’s loss to Huckabee in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses that threw him off stride and ultimately doomed his campaign. One of the first decisions Romney made for the 2012 cycle was that he would not make the same mistake twice. Until recently, he had no intention of contesting Iowa and he went a full year with only two visits to the Hawkeye State. The problem is that he’s polling well enough that he has no excuse for writing it off.
It remains to be seen if Herman Cain can weather the storm over his creepy history of sexual harassment, especially with news that one of his victims is coming forward. If he doesn’t implode, he looks almost assured of a top three finish in Iowa. In fact, it looks very likely that the top three will be some iteration of Cain-Romney-Gingrich. If Cain falters badly, his support will have to go somewhere, and most of that support will not go to Romney. It may go to the only candidate who looks like he has a chance: Gingrich.
In a knockdown-dragout battle between Romney and Gingrich, I think Romney would prevail in short order. Gingrich is too flawed as a human being to withstand the glare. But he can definitely win Iowa if the cards fall right for him. What’s really uncertain is if Perry can stick around long enough, especially after getting pummeled in Iowa and New Hampshire, to give the Republicans one last chance to derail the nomination of a candidate they collectively hate.
NEWT on the rise?
oy
they hate WILLARD
Will we ever live to see the day that Newt’s political star finally burns out forever? It feels like he’s been around since the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And somehow he always seems to seep back up to the top of the Republican compost pile. Please Newt, would you just go away and enjoy your gig at FOX?
as Cain minus Abel.
Women have long memories, even though his marriages haven’t been as lasting.
You bet, he’s a flava. Possibly of the week.
The GOP is grasping.
There are a lot of assumptions here, and I’m not sure I agree with all of them.
First off, aren’t you forgetting somebody? Eight weeks is still a pretty long time. It took less than eight weeks for Perry to go from front-runner to oblivion. Isn’t it possible for someone to go from oblivion to front-runner in that time? And isn’t there a plausible candidate who is on the ballot? Someone who served as governor of Utah and ambassador to China, someone who is more intelligent and telegenic than anyone else in the field?
The second assumption is that it’s too late for somebody to get into the race. If Romney, as you expect, emerges as the only candidate still standing after the January primaries and caucuses, and if he really is unpopular in the party, isn’t it possible, and in fact likely, that somebody will enter the later contests? There would certainly be plenty of delegates left to win, especially with the winner-take-all primaries late in the calendar. Is there really nobody else in the Republican party who wants to be President?
It’s even possible for somebody to be drafted by the voters. If Sarah Palin or Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan or Mitch Daniels won one of the primaries as a write-in, that would be pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say? Don’t you think that candidate would step into the race at that point, unless there was a skeleton that the candidate knew would emerge from the closet during the campaign?
I’m not convinced that Romney is going to win this thing.
JLG, I’m not sure Romney will be the nominee either…but his odds look increasingly good.
And it’s possible (difficult, but possible) for a candidate to come from behind over eight weeks—particularly in a relatively small state like Iowa. However, I’ve seen no indication from Republican voters that Jon Huntsman is the kind of candidate they’re looking for.
As for the technicalities of when and how to get into the race, Josh Putnam at Frontloading HQ ( http://frontloading.blogspot.com/ ) probably has the details and information you (and any potential late-entry candidates) would want. The fact is that it’s pretty tough to build a viable presidential campaign on the fly—as Rick Perry has demonstrated.
As for write-in candidates, are there any who have won a primary in either of the major parties in the last 40 years?
I’m pretty sure not in the last 40 years. Henry Cabot Lodge won NH as a write-in 1964, and Eisenhower in 1952. But I don’t see why it can’t happen, if the voters don’t like the choices that they are being offered.
There are some elements of the nominating process that have disappeared, and I’m not sure why. Another thing that doesn’t happen anymore, and used to happen quite a bit, is a governor of a state running in that state’s presidential primary, and nowhere else. The idea would be that the governor would then control the state’s delegation, and could wheel and deal a bit at the convention. (I think that’s how Agnew got his spot on the ticket in 1968). It seems to me that favorite son candidates would be a solution in a year when the candidates on the ballot aren’t arousing any passion in the electorate.
As for not seeing any movement toward Huntsman, that’s true, there hasn’t been any. Except you could have said that a month ago about Cain and a week ago about Gingrich. This is still a very fluid period of the race.
Thanks for your reply. I agree that the next two months are, at least potentially, a fluid time in the race for the Republican nomination.
As for why write-ins and favorite son candidacies have disappeared, my understanding is that’s because of the reforms initiated by the Democratic Party after 1968. The current nomination process is designed to produce a nominee based on votes (by caucus or primary) by the citizenry (either party members only, or open to independents as well). That wasn’t the case in the 1950s and 60s.
Ed Kilgore made a similar point a couple of days ago. http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2011/11/why_romney_should_go_for_the_k.php#comment
s
“…the ‘quick kill’ would enable [Romney] to escape the intense ideological pressures of a nominating contest where Romney, in particular, will be required to prove his conservative bona fides constantly, at the expense of his general election appeal. “
“More generally, a long primary season is a very bad thing for the Republican Party. At this point, Barack Obama’s best, and perhaps only, strategy for re-election is to make this a “two futures” choice, in which the extremism of the GOP gets as much attention as the current state of the economy. Nothing will play into this strategy quite like months of Republican candidates barnstorming through Tea Party-dominated state primaries accusing each other of being reasonable instead of right.”
Juan Cole: Newt’s new Crusade against the Arab Spring
The GOP is running scared right now. As much work as they’ve put into understanding how and why voters do what they do, they know this is not a good crop of candidates. Mitt Romney is a non-starter. He may garner half the vote in the national election but that’s strictly going to be partisan support of people voting pragmatically.
The Republicans basically have a 3 pronged strategy here:
Romney is not a threat because he’s a Republican, if anything he’s a threat to Republicans. He doesn’t inspire them to vote or rally which is dangerous for them. Romney doesn’t represent wealth or success for the Republican party. They still haven’t figured out a way to sell his life story that doesn’t make it sound like he’s anybody who could be replaced with anybody. He represents stagnation, hopelessness, and a caricature. Yes the entire rest of the field may be Froot Loops, but no one wants to eat sugar-free Count Chocula. So, they are just setting the table for mush that is Mitt and trying to turn the blandness into a feature.
a couple of observations:
Jindal only won that big because Louisiana Democrats couldn’t be bothered to run any one.