As we await the results from Super Tuesday, here’s the question I’m puzzling over: Why can’t anyone (Mitt Romney excepted) play this game?
For all his weaknesses as a candidate, Mitt Romney has done the one essential thing a candidate for office must do: build a campaign organization. He’s raised money, hired staff, recruited and deployed volunteers, made decisions about how and where and when to use campaign resources. It’s all pretty basic—and pretty important—stuff for a political campaign. And it’s probably going to be enough to cinch the Republican nomination this year.
But why is he the only Republican presidential candidate to do that this year? Rick Perry’s won six (six!) statewide campaigns in Texas, our second largest state. Newt Gingrich won numerous House races and oversaw the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. Rick Santorum ran statewide three times in Pennsylvania and won twice. How come none of them could put together campaigns that could execute the basics—like getting on the ballot in Virginia, or filing complete delegate slates in Ohio? This is stuff that College Republicans roll out of bed in the morning knowing how to do…isn’t it?
I can’t think of a precedent for this (and people will tell you, I can usually come up with a precedent for almost anything). Even when Democrats were going up against popular Republican incumbents (Nixon in ’72, Reagan in ’84, Bush I in ’92, Bush II in ’04), even when their eventual nominee got trounced in November, they always had multiple candidates who knew how to run a campaign—at least to the extent of, you know, getting on the ballot.
Any theories?
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/