Romney's Dilemma

Richelieu's thinking the way I'm thinking:

The big question for Romney is New Hampshire. Does his campaign want to start driving up Giuliani and Huckabee's negatives now with risky paid mail and TV to try to pre-empt any bounce either could get from a strong second- or third-place finish in Iowa? (Assuming N.H. will follow Iowa by a few days.) Or does Team Romney wait and try to ride out the bumps? The scary scenario of a Huckabee upset and Giuliani third place in Iowa, followed by a Rudy or even Huckabee surge in New Hampshire, is looming. Rudy's squishy record as New York City mayor is indeed a big liability, but only if voters hear about it. The campaign clock is ticking. As the vulnerable Iowa frontrunner, Romney must both energize his own effort and slow down the competition's. That last part poses a very tough question: Does Mitt Romney want to get a political heart attack in January ... or give one?

Obviously, Romney doesn't want to play Dick Gephardt to Giuliani’s Howard Dean, launching a war of mutually assured destruction that allows McCain or Thompson to play the John Kerry role, grab an early upset, and sweep to the nomination. But if it hadn’t been for Gephardt (and that scream, of course), Howard Dean might have been the Democratic nominee in ’04, and the same goes for Giuliani this time around: If nobody goes negative on him before Iowa and Romney gets bloodied or even beaten by Huckabee, then the window for the Romney campaign to tear Rudy down will start closing fast. And since Romney’s probably the only candidate with the resources to give Hizzoner the negative-ad drubbing he deserves, if he stumbles early Rudy might just coast from then on out.

All of this assumes that things will be over in a hurry, of course, which as Marc points out isn't necessarily the case. The Ambinder "long campaign" scenario seems plausible at the moment; I would consider it not only plausible but likely if '04 hadn't happened the way it did. The day after John Kerry's tight win in Iowa, remember, it seemed like the race would drag on for a month at least, with Edwards and Dean and Kerry and maybe even Wesley Clark locked in an epic dogfight. But in reality it was already over: Momentum trumped everything else.

(On the other hand, the whole "we need to be united against Bush" dynamic seemed to play a substantial role in the Democratic electorate's rush to judgment three years ago, and for all the potency of Hillary-hating, it may not have the same "suck it up and vote for the front-runner" effect on GOP voters this time around.)

Comments

Importantly, Kerry possessed lots of qualities that made him appealing to primary voters; namely, he appeared electable and he had lots of anti-war rhetoric. Deaniacs didn't have much there there, except that their guy was against the war before it was cool (thought most voters were not paying attention that far in advance).

This doesn't seem to be the case with Rudy and social issues, though he keeps creeping to the right (I saw somewhere he said that thanks to 9/11 he was reconsidering his position on guns. I assume this trick is coming to the choice issue soon).

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | November 5, 2007 1:08 PM

Romney isn't playing to his strengths- and yes, he does actually have some!

I stand well to the right on most social issues, and I don't take Romney seriously when he tries to pander to me. Neither do most social conservatives.

But Romney CAN position himself as an intelligent, competent man who knows how to get things built (think of the Winter Olympics), how to take charge of a project, and how to manage a budget.

At a time when the American infrastructure is perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be crumbling and when the incumbent President is widely perceived as an incompetent who dithered while New Orleans was devastated, Romney could proclaim, "I'm a man who can get the bridges and levees fixed, and I'm a man who'll know what to do when the next natural disaster strikes." THAT'S a message that he could sell, and it might resonate with people (even conservative) who no longer have much faith in government's ability to change social mores, but who'd still like to think the government can handle its basic responsibilities.

Posted by astorian | November 5, 2007 2:40 PM

So is Huckabee the equivalent of John Edwards, circa '04?

Posted by Quietus | November 5, 2007 4:39 PM

This is a pretty solid analysis, although the thought of either party's race lasting much beyond the huge primary block on Feb 5 still seems pretty unlikely.

One quibble though. I was a Dean volunteer in early '04 and Dean's scream was a symptom, not the cause of his campaign's collapse. He'd already lost Iowa when it happened and it was that defeat which punctured the ridiculously high expectations his campaign had set and revealed how disorganized and amateurish his campaign infrstructure really was. It wasn't all Dean's fault, his campaign got swamped with a tidal wave of tech-savvy activist Dems looking for a real antiwar candidate and I think they just didn't know how to turn that momentum into something manageable. Had Dean played it cooler, had a better organization, and set more reasonable expectations in advance, he might have weathered Iowa, but that's not what happened. It was all over and done with by the time the scream happened.

When my state voted, I voted for Edwards.

Romney has the advantage of running a very tight campaign ship and his supporters aren't portraying him as the man who will transform the GOP and politics itself, so I think he's better positioned to survive an Iowa loss than Dean, that said, he's gonna have a much harder time if he doesn't lock up Iowa.

His best bet is to kill Giuliani any way he can. If Huck upsets in Iowa that's bad for Romney, but Huck's not on the radar in NH and Romney can regroup. If Rudy can show strong in IA, NH, and SC he might have enough juice on Feb 5 to tie things up. Romney's got to risk a little splatterback and start hitting Rudy.

Posted by Justin K. | November 5, 2007 5:19 PM