Mitt Romney for President My Man Mitt: Thoughts on Iowa and the Future

I finally made it home from Iowa yesterday.

It was quite fun, until Romney lost, which really sucked. Like really sucked.

Being embedded was quite the thrill, for an amateur like myself. I went into it thinking the MSM reporters would all be jerks, but really they were all pretty cool, including Anna Marie Cox and the Reuters Reporter who I missed the press bus with at the first caucus I attended.

Iowa is an interesting state, and the caucuses are a tricky business. I am guessing that at the caucus I attended they expected maybe a couple hundred, judging by the tables and chairs they had set out. By the time I left there had to be 500 in the caucus room, maybe a hundred or two more waiting to get in, and scores leaving without ever having voted, fed up with the process. It was a zoo.

I thought Romney would win up until half way through my interview with Bob Bennett where his comments seemed to heavily suggest that he was expecting a second place finish. I am not sure weather he was receiving briefings, or not, but within 20 minutes of this interview the AP was reporting that entrance polls were showing Huckabee would run away with it.

Why a Huckabee Win

What happened in Iowa was a result of the cross. Not the cross that Jesus died on, but the cross that Drudge found in a campaign video. I think that Huck’s win can be attributed to his charisma, anti-Mormon sermons and emails, pastors telling them to vote for God, and the most from Drudge and his cross story. Really, it was a bad idea on Drudge’s part. In case he forgot, Christians like the cross. Huck’s army got their marching orders from Drudge.

The polling suggests this to be the case. If you subtract the abnormal 20% increase in Evangelicals (as show in entrance polls) from Huck’s numbers, the caucus would have resulted with Romney over Huckabee 31% to 13%. At the caucus I attended I spoke to a very positive Thompson worker. I asked him about Huckabee. He was Evangelical and he stated that nearly everyone at his church was voting for Huckabee. He almost did as well. If Huckabee was fueled by groups other than Evangelicals, then I think we would have seen his support more on the order of 40-50%. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I met a single reporter, activist or voter from any campaign who didn’t attribute Hucks’s strong showing to Evangelicals.

Romney and the Future

Romney has a couple options. Some more alluring then others. But he is injured. Romney needs to win NH or come in 2nd within a 5-7% margin to stay viable.

The polls seem to show Romney and McCain tied. Depending on the poll, either one of them could be found in first place. McCain has surged, and Romney has stayed at a core level of support. I am optimistic for a New Hampshire win for several reasons:

Obama gave Mitt the best lifeline he could have asked for

Fred gave him his second best life line

The mere fact that 60% of independents favor Obama is trouble for McCain and the other fact that independents are anti-war is even more troubling

Despite the local newspaper love fest for McCain, we have local radio’s taking him on.

The National Journal was reporting on POTUS 08 that Rudy is starting to put money in again in New Hampshire in hopes of derailing McCain since a McCain win is now worse than a Romney win.

New Hampshirians don’t care too much about Iowa results.

We have two more debates between now and the New Hampshire Primary. It was the New Hampshire debate in 1979 that really knocked the wind out of George H.W. Bush

Should Romney win New Hampshire he would in fact win Michigan and Nevada and perhaps get a decent showing in South Carolina.

Now if Romney looses New Hampshire, but can stay within 5-7% of first place, he also has a reasonable chance, albeit, not so rosy. It would basically hinge on him keeping a strong delegate lead and hoping for a brokered convention. If Romney can win Wyoming, he will have the delegate lead. If he can get some of the delegates in New Hampshire he could still have enough legitimacy to fight in Michigan and perhaps win their or Nevada. At that point Romney would still have a strong organization in Florida. This plan should sound good for Rudy people, since it flies in the face of momentum.

Going into Feb 5th Romney would still have plenty of money and a strong organization and plenty of money for states like California, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois and others where he could continue to build delegates. From here he could still win.

Lastly if Romney suffers a George Bush blowout in New Hampshire, I think it’s tough argument to say it’s winnable, although at this point, I would say anything is possible.


	4 Comments: After outspending Huckabee by an outrageous margin, your man Mitt found that the voters of Iowa, in the end, could not be bought. Nor could they be fooled by a man who oozes insincerity from every pore. After all the wasted money, and after all the weeks of relentless Huckabee bashing by people like you, your man doesn’t simply get beaten, he gets hammered, crushed. It was like a fight between the schoolyard bully and a 98 pound weakling that ends with the bully suffering a hellacious beat down. Of course the flaw in that analogy is that it is really Romney who is the weakling—a moral weakling, that is. After 7 years of Bush, Americans are used to being lied to and taken for fools. But it seems that they can’t stomach smarmy insincerity; given that this is the stock in trade of the Romney candidacy, therein lies the problem for the plastic man from Massachusetts. You Romney folks are right about at least one thing, however. Huckabee is indeed a flawed candidate; if nominated it’s hard for me to believe that he has a chance in hell of winning the general election. Most Americans are far too open minded for the over-the-top super-Christianity that seemed to play well with the self-styled moralists in Iowa. But in your frantic search for Huckabee’s flaws as a candidate, the thing that you folks continue to ignore is Romney’s obvious flaws as a human. The ethical and moral lapses, combined with his peculiar penchant for just plain lying, all the while portraying himself as the wholesome candidate of truth, justice and the American way…well in the end even the Republicans who continue to deny themselves the truth about the Bush Administration could not be fooled by Mitt. So now it’s on to New Hampshire where Mitt is already backpedaling furiously in an attempt to lower expectations. What’s clear, however, is that if the people of New Hampshire see Romney as clearly as Iowans did, all your frantic attempts to discredit Huckabee and McCain will be fruitless. It’s about Mitt now; people don’t trust him, they don’t believe him, they don’t like him. No amount of Huckabee and McCain bashing by the frantic legions of Romney supporters will obscure these simple facts…Mitt’s moral and ethical dwarfism will, in the end, doom him. Evidence, it seems, that primary voters are not as stupid as you and Mitt take them for. The system works! Have a nice day Phil By Anonymous, at January 5, 2008 at 10:37 AM After outspending Huckabee by an outrageous margin, your man Mitt found that the voters of Iowa, in the end, could not be bought. Nor could they be fooled by a man who oozes insincerity from every pore. After all the wasted money, and after all the weeks of relentless Huckabee bashing by people like you, your man doesn’t simply get beaten, he gets hammered, crushed. It was like a fight between the schoolyard bully and a 98 pound weakling that ends with the bully suffering a hellacious beat down. Of course the flaw in that analogy is that it is really Romney who is the weakling—a moral weakling, that is. After 7 years of Bush, Americans are used to being lied to and taken for fools. But it seems that they can’t stomach smarmy insincerity; given that this is the stock in trade of the Romney candidacy, therein lies the problem for the plastic man from Massachusetts. You Romney folks are right about at least one thing, however. Huckabee is indeed a flawed candidate; if nominated it’s hard for me to believe that he has a chance in hell of winning the general election. Most Americans are far too open minded for the over-the-top super-Christianity that seemed to play well with the self-styled moralists in Iowa. But in your frantic search for Huckabee’s flaws as a candidate, the thing that you folks continue to ignore is Romney’s obvious flaws as a human. The ethical and moral lapses, combined with his peculiar penchant for just plain lying, all the while portraying himself as the wholesome candidate of truth, justice and the American way…well in the end even the Republicans who continue to deny themselves the truth about the Bush Administration could not be fooled by Mitt. So now it’s on to New Hampshire where Mitt is already backpedaling furiously in an attempt to lower expectations. What’s clear, however, is that if the people of New Hampshire see Romney as clearly as Iowans did, all your frantic attempts to discredit Huckabee and McCain will be fruitless. It’s about Mitt now; people don’t trust him, they don’t believe him, they don’t like him. No amount of Huckabee and McCain bashing by the frantic legions of Romney supporters will obscure these simple facts…Mitt’s moral and ethical dwarfism will, in the end, doom him. Evidence, it seems, that primary voters are not as stupid as you and Mitt take them for. The system works! Have a nice day Phil By Anonymous, at January 5, 2008 at 11:08 AM The key demographics that threw in with Huckster in Iowa were: 1 - People with household incomes of less than 30K. 2 - Women who live in towns with a population of less than 10K. I manage a facilities operation with roughly 65 employees, and the first statistic describes a lot of my housekeeping employees. Not in every case, but in a huge case a household income of less than 30K means no college education. That brings it into better perspective. Things like the Chuck Norris endorsement making a difference, and the fact that Huckster never once responded with anything of substance to Romney's issue contrast ads. Hucksters campaign strategies make perfect sense when put into context of his target audience. Even the college educated evangelicals rejected Huckster's candidacy, but their vote was split between Romney, Thompson, and McCain. Educated evangelicals know exactly what Huckster was/is up to. If you look at iowagop.com you'll see that Huckster won largely in communities in central Iowa away from population centers. In smaller towns it would be easier for a local church to get out the vote for their man than it would be in a larger city if only because there are less competing activities to do on any given Thursday night. So basically we're seeing Huckster get the uneducated vote, and the small town church vote. (In places where few reporters are likely to hang out to watch for shenanigans.) Does this remind anyone of classic democrat get out the vote efforts with inner city black churches? Huckster also hasn't seen a very big fund raising bounce which seems to go hand in hand with getting votes from people with a household income of 30K or less. By Big Jay, at January 5, 2008 at 12:21 PM I posted this comment over at NYforMitt in response to a video by a guy nicknamed "Yellow." I am copying it here: Yellow, I totally agree with you. This was and is a religious war for Huckabee & his supporters: the fundamentalist evangelical Christians vs. the Mormons. I used to be a religious-right, black and white sort of fundamentalist evangelical - like the ones that voted for Huckabee. I graduated from a fundamentalist evangelical Bible College where Walter Martin came for one week to talk about his book, "Kingdom of the Cults." I used to think that Mormonism was a cult, and I think I know where they are coming from. They see Huckabee as Christ’s candidate. He is the one that will save our nation from it’s wayward ways and sins and bring this nation back to Christ. Just like Huckabee preached. This is his promise to them. Any — I mean - ANY attack against Huckabee is perceived by his followers as an attack against Christianity and Christians -- and just energizes them even more to support him. Just read their posts and you will know what I mean. So the more Huckabee and his “cross” commercial were attacked, the more the ARMY of GOD banded together to vote for God’s man. Nothing else mattered. Nothing. It’s pretty scary, actually, that a group of people can be so blinded to all the other important issues in our country (illegal immigration, taxes, crime, national security) and vote for one man on basically one issue. But if you think people can’t be fooled by a con man, just look at history. Look at all the people that drank Jim Jone’s Koolaid. And even by saying that, I’m sure I am going to be perceived as persecuting Huckabee and his Army. They just don’t get it. They won’t get it. They are rallied behind God! And God's David! I don’t think the Iowan Evangelicals that voted for Romney are stupid, but I do think they “stupidized” themselves so they could justify voting for Huckabee. When practically the whole conservative movement comes out against your guy, and there are hard facts about his incredibly liberal history of governing Arkansas and his incredibly poor ethics, you have to literally stick your fingers in your ears and shut your eyes and yell really loud, “I DON’T HEAR YOU!!!!!” There are a lot of things that bother me about Huckabee (soft on crime, tax hiker, soft on illegal immigration, etc.), but the thing that really did it for me is that he is a chronic liar and he is unethical. Where am I wrong on this?? P.S. By the way, I still consider myself to be a born-again Christian, but no longer a right-wing, hard-core fundamentalist. I also no longer believe that Mormonism is some dangerous cult anymore than Christianity is a dangerous cult. Now, the Moonies, Jim Jones' church, David Koresh -- those are examples of dangerous cults. But any group formed around a set of tenets/beliefs can technically be called a cult. It's just that Mike Huckabee is not only using class warfare, but religious warfare to promote himself. And there is one thing I disagree with Yellow on - I do NOT think Mike Huckabee is a good man. I think he is a devious, evil, self-serving man who will do or say anything to make money and promote himself. He's the kind of man who gives real Christians a very bad name. Like the bumper sticker said: "God, save me from your people!" By Anonymous, at January 5, 2008 at 4:04 PM Post a Comment