A few weeks ago, Jonathan Bernstein tried to shoot down speculation about a brokered Republican convention. He made some good points, particularly about the largely mythical proportional representation in the early primary and caucus states. Even in the early contests, the overall winner will take home considerably more than their proportional share of the delegates. Yet, I don’t think his argument is completely convincing.
It comes down to a disagreement over the role of winnowing. Under ordinary circumstances, candidates must do very well in early primaries or their fundraising dries up and they can’t afford to travel, let alone maintain field offices and staff, or run expensive television/radio/internet advertisements. So, for example, we should expect candidates who do poorly in Iowa to simply drop out of the race. Then more candidates will drop out after New Hampshire, and more again after South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida. By the time Super Tuesday rolls around, we should be down to two candidates, or three at the most.
This is, indeed, how all recent nominating processes have proceeded. But this year is different. For starters, the current frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, has almost no money, almost no field staff, and has run basically no advertising. And the same could be said to only a slighter lesser degree of previous poll-leaders Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann. The polls confirm that Iowans vastly prefer Gingrich to Romney, and this despite Gingrich not having lavished on them the attention they usually demand.
Can Romney (or Perry or Paul) overwhelm this advantage with advertising and field organization? Maybe they can, but the fact that the polls have shown a consistent preference for Anyone-But-Mitt indicates that simply not being Mitt is more effective than having money and organization. You don’t even need to travel to the states you are campaigning for as long as your name isn’t Mitt. You just have to time things right so that you’re the not-Mitt flavor of the month when the music stops.
So, how do we get to a brokered convention? Two things need to happen. First, we need to see a continuation of the same pattern we’ve been watching for months. Say that Gingrich wins Iowa and everyone instantly has buyer’s remorse. Maybe Ron Paul wins in New Hampshire, and everyone has buyer’s remorse. Then, perhaps Romney finally wins something, say in Nevada, and he gets a little traction. Maybe Rick Perry sticks around and does better than expected in South Carolina and Florida. That’s the second thing that needs to happen; candidates need to keep running without much money. Rather than settling down into a contest between Mitt Romney and a single opponent, imagine that it settles down to Mitt Romney vs. Perry, Paul, and Gingrich, with each bobbing up and down enough to prevent anyone from clearly rising to the top.
It’s not that far-fetched.
Approximately three out of every four Republican base voters are not interested in voting for Mitt Romney. If that doesn’t change, he isn’t going to be the nominee. He’ll either lose a one-on-one contest against whomever emerges as his chief adversary, or the delegates will be divvied up too much to give anyone the majority of the delegates at the convention. But, here’s one of the most important considerations. All of the alternatives to Romney are deeply unacceptable to very sizable and powerful factions in the Republican Party.
You can see how beltway insiders like Michael Gerson, George Will, David Frum, and a host of Republican congressmembers are savaging Newt Gingrich. Prior to that, you saw Karl Rove and his minions go after Rick Perry very aggressively. Ron Paul’s foreign policy views (e.g., blaming 9/11 on America) are anathema to the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community, 98% of elected Republicans, and the vast majority of the base. So, as long as Romney can’t break above the 25% mark, whoever rises up to challenge him will be beaten back down like a game of whack-a-mole. It’s been going on all through 2011, and I see no obvious reason why it should change in 2012.
And, if that’s the case, Romney is only going to win in states where he can do so with a small plurality of the vote, and he may be losing to a rotating cast of not-Mitts, none of whom are acceptable to the whole party, but all of whom have important and motivated constituencies that can keep them going on a shoestring budget using free (and social) media.
Oddly, Romney wants three or more opponents to split the not-Mitt vote and to avoid the electorate settling on any one alternative. Romney might not be able to survive if he knocks out too many opponents too early.
Now, we’ve seen the Republican base take a long time to digest Poppy Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain as their nominees, only to come around in the end. That’s what most people expect will happen with Romney. But this time could be different.
Because Romney only appeals to a quarter of the Republican electorate, and because every alternative to Romney is hated by important parts of the Establishment, there is no solution. The campaign may simply fail to resolve itself, and it could go to the convention for the final decision.
I certainly hope so.
