The Republican Gang, Part Four

Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina...

It's been an interesting few weeks, to be sure!

When last I posted, Romney had just won Iowa, if only by eight votes. It was effectively a tie, but, well, someone has to be declared the winner, and that winner was Romney. Duly noted: one up for the Whirr/Clack Mechanism.

As for New Hampshire, well, Romney did as well there as may be expected. He won a comfortable 39% of the vote, with Ron Paul trailing him at 23%. To put this into some perspective: in 2008, McCain won New Hampshire with 37%, and Romney came in second with 31%. So: Romney did better there this time around, and even though there may be some doubts as to the substance of that improvement, he thoroughly whooped his main adversaries, with both Gingrich and Santorum limping along at the back of the field with a modest 9% each. Two up for Romney.

And then, of course, we had South Carolina. Wild mood swings all round, it seemed. When last I posted (on January 4th), Gingrich was leading in the polls in the state by 16%. Now, those polls weren't minty fresh even then, and they most certainly hadn't taken the New Hampshire results in their stride. Polls released a while later reversed the situation; suddenly, Romney had dashed to the fore and was leading by some 10%.

Ah, the pundits said. It might all be over soon; Romney will wrap up the nomination by winning all three early states. History will be written, and the Mechanism will ride in triumph through the streets of Florida. His whirr will be wondrous; his clack convincing.

Alas, though, it was not to be. Just two days before South Carolinians headed off to their ballot boxes, a weird thing happened: Romney lost Iowa. It wasn't by much, to be sure: in the official tally, his eight vote advantage was turned into a 34 vote deficit. But, well, someone had to win, and it turned out the winner was Rick Santorum, after all.

And when January 21st came along, it appeared South Carolina had changed its mind again, too. They'd reverted to the Not-Romney, and as far as they were concerned, the Not-Romney was called Newt Gingrich. Gingrich won the state with 40%, a solid 12% lead over Romney.

And so, it turned out, Romney hadn't triumphed at all. He hadn't won the first three states; he only managed to win the smallest one (New Hampshire). He might well go off and ride into Florida with his moneybags a-jingling and an army of staffers at his back, but he is no Caesar yet.

*******

So what happens now?

Well, in the end, the answer may well be sought by looking at the situation from a negative point of view.

Let's face it: Romney is not well-loved by many Republicans. They don't trust him. They don't know him. He just isn't one of them. And there is, in truth, not all that much Romney can do about this. He can't, because those Republicans are essentially right. Romney's a Mormon; he is a multimillionaire who earned his money in ways that most people do not understand but mistrust instinctively; his track record as a politician is moderate as best and downright opportunistic at worst.

As such, Romney is a very big duck waiting for his Porky.

The thing is, though, Romney's Porkies aren't all that convincing, and there aren't all that many of them left. Bachmann is out, so is Cain. Huntsman's joined them, as has Rick Perry. The list of Porkies therefore boils down to Gingrich, Santorum and Ron Paul. Of these, Paul can't be considered a Porky at all; he's decidedly anti-Pork, in fact. Paul follows his own agenda, and that agenda does not include hunting ducks.

So it's just Gingrich and Santorum. Of these two, Santorum immediately disqualifies himself. Frankly, one really can't imagine him as Porky; at best, he might pose as Porky's young nephew. He's a relatively innocuous piglet who goes around shooting anything with wings and missing without fail. To misquote Jed Bartlet: he's a peashooter in a Magnum world.

And that leaves Gingrich, whose appearance alone elevates him to a great Porky figure. Could he be? Could he really take down Romney? After South Carolina, there's at least a chance. A good chance, surely.

Well, in many ways, the Porky description fits Gingrich perfectly. The thing is, though - as anyone who knows his Loony Tunes will tell you - Porky isn't the best duck hunter in the world. In fact, he's pretty dismal. I mean, he wears a jacket; he's got a bow tie. He might sport a hunting cap. But he doesn't get his Daffy, does he?

And so Romney will, in all likelihood, survive. He won't survive because of any redeeming qualities of his own; he'll simply get by because, well, his opponents are Porkies.

In other words, to put it negatively: Romney is still the hands-down favourite to win the nomination. Not because he deserves it, but because his opponents deserve it less. Not because he's good, but because the others are worse.

*****

A few final words on the Republican nomination process. In Part Three of this series, I pointed out that the Republicans had taken a good look at the Democratic nomination battle between Obama and Clinton in 2008, and decided to create something similar for themselves. They changed the rules, hoping for a protracted struggle between the candidates.

Well, given the current results, they may well get it. I'm not at all sure they should be happy, though. The thing is, the 2008 struggle was a positive one: Democrats were divided about who they liked more. Obama was good, but Clinton was better - or was that the other way around? Gosh, let's see...

2012, however, may well be the other side of the coin. It may well be negative, not positive. It may well be a question of who's worst, not who's better. And that's not a struggle you want to drag out, I'd think.

The Republican Gang, Part Three

So: January 4th, 2012. Another month, and another shake-up in the Republican race.

The results from Iowa - the first time anyone could actually vote - are in. And it's abundantly clear that... err, that....

No, darn it! Nothing's clear at all! Romney "won" Iowa. He won it by getting 24.6% of the vote; he won it by doing worse than in 2008, when he managed 25,2%. And he won it by a measly 8 votes. That's a third of Bachmann's 23 children, for Christ's sake.

And who came in second? Not Bachmann, of course. Or Gingrich, or even Ron Paul. It was, instead, Rick Santorum, the guy who's be polling at approximately 0,002% all year long. Santorum, the Winchester Weasel, suddenly became the mouse that squeaked the Grand Republican Squeak.

There's something rotten in the GOP, indeed, and my word, it has never been clearer than it is now.

Who won the Iowa caucus? Well, I suppose the answer would have to be Barack Obama.

So what now?

Well, conventional wisdom will tell you that Romney - for all his faults, for all his manifest unlikeability - will now go on and sew up the nomination pretty easily. And I suppose that might well be the case. Not because of Romney's strengths, mind, but simply because it's very difficult to see any meaningful challenge emerging from his sorry band of would-be usurpers.

That might be the case. Then again, it might not.

Consider: Romney's riding high in New Hampshire; he should win by a very comfortable majority. But a win by anything less that the current poll lead (the Real Clear Politics average puts that at a whopping 21%), might well be considered a loss.

And afterwards it's South Carolina. And after that, Florida. And currently Romney isn't leading in either of these states. Instead, it's Gingrich who's ahead (by 16% and 7% respectively). The pundits will tell you that all that will change, and that, as the primaries in those states loom larger into view, Romney will simply have too much money and be backed too fully by the GOP establishment to not score well in those states. But you only have to believe one thing to realise that might not be true. You only have to believe that the majority of Republican voters simply don't want him. And if you look at the Iowa caucus, there's ample reason to believe that that's true.

And all this, of course, is playing out against the backdrop of the Rules (the Rules of the Republican Party, to be precise). It's ironic, but these rules may well become a bit of a burden for the GOP.

Let me explain.

In 2008, the Republicans lost. McCain never really had a chance against Obama; the Presidential contest was, in effect, over before it began. The Republicans, as you might imagine, took some note of this, but for some reason known only to themselves, they decided to blame their defeat, not on the fallibility of George W. Bush or the lack of viability of McCain, but on the process of election. There'd been this great big battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they reasoned, so the answer's simple. If we change our rules and have our own great big battle, we'll win.

As a result, the Republicans changed their election rules. In particular, they changed Rule 15, which now reads (insofar as relevant):

(1) No primary, caucus, or convention to elect, select, allocate, or bind delegates to the national convention shall occur prior to the first Tuesday in March in the year in which a national convention is held. Except Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada may begin their processes at any time on or after February 1 in the year in which a national convention is held and shall not be subject to the provisions of paragraph (b)(2) of this rule.

(2) Any presidential primary, caucus, convention, or other meeting held for the purpose of selecting delegates to the national convention which occurs prior to the first day of April in the year in which the national convention is held, shall provide for the allocation of delegates on a proportional basis.

What this means is, firstly, that any state that holds a caucus or a primary prior to February 1st 2012 be will penalised. The penalty is simple: such a state will have it's delegate count halved. Yes, that's right: all the results from New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida will all effectively be halved. (Rather weirdly, Iowa is exempt, the reason being that it doesn't actually allocate delegates on the basis of its caucus; that allocation comes later on).

Secondly, it means that any primary or caucus held before April 1 2012 will have to be, at least to some degree, proportional. That is: the results of such a caucus or primary will have to be weighed proportionally to the votes being cast, and the delegates allocated will have to be split according to that vote. It's not longer a winner-takes-all system. In the case of Iowa, for example, the results would mean that Romney takes 13 delegates out of the state, whilst Santorum takes 12.

The two changes together, mean, simply put, that it has become much harder to sweep through the first few contests and win the whole caboodle in one fell swoop. As long as there are candidates that have enough money and sufficient organisation to keep going, the process will drag on.

So what will the effect of these new rules be? At first glance, they would not seem to hinder a Romney bid. If anything, the Whirr/Click Mechanism is well oiled; organisation is not going to be a problem. As for wealth, well, anyone care to bet $ 10,000?

But look a little closer, and the problem for Romney becomes clear. Romney won Iowa, but only by a third of Bachmann's children. He did worse there than four years ago. Republicans just don't want him. As long as the rest of the field is fragmented, he's fine: he may well be the 25% guy, but that might well be enough to get him the nomination. But, as the process drags on, the field is going to be whittled down. The first casualty is already known: it's Michele Bachmann. The next to go may well be Ron Paul (who might sail off for a Libertarian bid), or Huntsman. And even as that happens, the not-Romney vote will start to coalesce; it will start to gather like a pall around the remaining competitors (say, Newt Gingrich or Perry). And it is quite possible that, if this happens, 25% will seem very paltry indeed.

And so, in the wake of the Iowa results, nothing is clear at all. Romney should win, there's no doubting that. And he will, but only as long as the competition against him remains fractured. The moment it solidifies around a single candidate - the ultimate Not-Romney - he's in trouble.

The question, therefore, isn't really how well Romney does. It's how well (or how badly) the other guys do. It's whether or not there's anyone amongst them who can rise above the field and take Romney on.

In the end, I doubt that will happen. But who knows? Those pesky, dastardly voters might decide otherwise and blow the whole thing up.

I mean really, will people never learn?