I share Nate Silver’s inability to use the past as a guide to the future when trying to figure out what will happen in the Republican nominating contest. I have been of two minds over the last year. Most of the time, I have looked at Romney’s competition and seen it as so wanting that I could envision Romney winning every single contest. But my earliest inclination was that Romney could never overcome his authorship of Massachusetts’ heath care bill, and that the Republicans would never coalesce around him. A somewhat hybrid version has been to see the Republicans as vacillating back and forth between these two views to such a degree that it results in a brokered convention.
All I can say for sure is that Romney did not and will not win every contest. He came close to closing the deal, but he failed. My guess is that Santorum will continue to gain strength over the rest of February. He’ll never be able to match Romney financially, but he should begin to raise enough money to actually build an organization and do some advertising. Every day that Santorum is still in the race is a day in which he grows stronger relative to Romney.
It shouldn’t be this way. Romney should be using his superior resources to widen the gap. But he’s actually a rather hopeless candidate. He can try to destroy his opponents with negative advertising but he doesn’t really have much he can say about Santorum that will drive Republican base-voters away from him. The truth is that Santorum is a more seasoned politician, he’s more likable, and he’s actually a conservative. The only reason to prefer Romney is because he has the money to run a general election campaign. I am beginning to feel like that is not enough. For the first time, I am beginning to think that Romney might actually lose the nomination and that Santorum might win it.
And, even worse, I am beginning to think that Santorum is a much stronger candidate against Obama than Romney. I think Gingrich is a stronger candidate than Romney. I just can’t exaggerate how bad I think Romney is as a politician and as an alternative to the president.
