With the ineffable Fred Thompson out, the Mitt Romney surge is on. And the pundits said it couldn't or wouldn't be done.
Real Clear Politics shows Romney in a close second behind John McCain in Florida. And the thing to keep in mind here is the trend: Romney is trending upwards while McCain is holding steady or declining slightly.
Looking ahead, it seems Romney may win simply because of his wide appeal:
Giuliani and McCain both appeal to foreign policy conservatives (read: hawks), fiscal conservatives (McCain to a greater extent than Giuliani), and independents.
Huckabee appeals to social conservatives.
Romney appeals to foreign policy hawks (less so than either Giuliani or McCain). All three would follow similar courses in Iraq and the War on Terror.
Romney's business experience and tax cutting ways while governor in Massachusetts make him appealing to fiscal conservatives--maybe moreso than either McCain or Giuliani.
Perhaps most importantly, Romney established his social conservatism bona fides. Pro-lifers and the defense of marriage crowd may not believe him the way they believe Mike Huckabee or believed Fred Thompson, but they will certainly prefer him to either Giuliani or McCain (less so with McCain).
On Hannity and Colmes tonight, Alan Colmes asked Romney if he felt like emphasizing his social conservatism had been a waste of time. 'With the economy on a precipice,' Colmes asked, 'wouldn't it have been wiser to have highlighted his business acumen as a unique qualifier?' Romney pointed out that social issues were important in early states, but admitted the economy may be the dominant issue going forward and, fortunately, he was strong there.
We agree (and wrote as much last week) that saving the economy could be a winning message going forward. But it was important to Romney's campaign that he distinguish himself from Giuliani (the longtime frontrunner) and to a lesser extent McCain as a social conservative. By splitting the social conservative vote and winning the fiscal conservatives, Romney might be able to winnow off enough of the foreign policy independents to win the Republican nomination--especially in states which limit voting in the Republican race to Republicans.
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2 comments:
I have been giving Romney more credit then the Media or polls have. His economic message pulled up to the forefront in Michigan and has always been a staple of his campaign to fix Washington. Mitt is more then one state, he's about the people and fixing the big problem, a huge government that is too big to move on any issue.
Rudy and McCain focused too much on Florida and S.Carolina...they should be playing to board and giving better messages to the people.
The Demo's have picked the economy as their all time favorite topic and Romney can't be beat on that...the other canidates need to focus on what the future of America needs, that is business, the terror war has been stemmed by Bush and it's time to fix the problems here for a few years and fight terror also.
oh ya, and I think that if Romney picks Thompson as VP that he would sew up the foreign policy issue easily.
I thought that maybe someone like Condie Rice would be good also, I think she might take it and it would help her do more to steer American roles in the world, I think she's done a good job so far.
It's been said that Cheney has redifined what a VP is to do, so let Thompson take care of the terror issue and Romney can handle the business/tax issue.
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