Well, even yesterday I was starting to assume that the Santorum moment was over -- the Talking Points Memo poll tracker showed Mitt Romney rapidly gaining on Santorum in Michigan (Romney's in red, Santorim's in black)....
An NBC/Marist poll not only showed the two of them tied in Michigan, but revealed that Romney is crushing Santorum among early voters. Oh, and Romney is headed toward a blowout in Arizona, where he also has a massive lead in early voting, a sign of a far more impressive and machine-like organization.
Yes, some national polls, and polls in states that aren't voting till next month, show Santorum with a big and even increasing lead -- but that's the pattern I recall from the period when the Romney campaign was crushing Newt Gingrich: As Gingrich's numbers fell in states that were just about to vote, he would still seem to be gaining in later-voting states. But that's because the Romney Death Star hadn't gotten to those states yet, with gazillions of dollars' worth of Romney and Romney super PAC attack ads. The polls in the later-voting states were lagging indicators.
So, yeah, when Talking Points Memo lists five ways Rick Santorum blew it in last night's debate, it's worth paying attention, but the die was already cast.
Last night's results matter because they remind us that Romney isn't a hapless stumblebum, or at least Team Romney isn't -- they now know how to prepare the candidate to attack. But meanwhile he's been doing what he has to do to reverse early setbacks. It ain't pretty, and it ain't cheap, but it is brutally efficient.
Romney is a stumblebum. But Santorum is a messianic fraud. The other two are certifiable kooks. Pick your poison, Republicans.
ReplyDeleteRomney stumbles a lot, but he's not a stumblebum. He can turn on the rage and the self-righteous indignation. He's the weakest part of his own campaign, but it's a skilled campaign. And he'll have a billion dollars from super PAC sugar daddies in the general. I advise against drape-measuring for the Democrats.
ReplyDeletecynical though i may be, i just can't imagine any amount of organizing and money making up for romney's woeful inadequacy at simulating normal human mannerisms and speech patterns. holy fuck, he is so appallingly uncharismatic that it's almost sad.
ReplyDeleteone thing that I've not seen here nor anywhere else is the fact that moreso than any other candidate who surged, Mitt Romney brought the Santorum surge upon himself.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Bernstein (or somebody else) noted that Santorum never got a real bounce coming out of Iowa and his real surge happened during the Missouri/Minnesota/Colorado votes, states where Romney didn't really campaign because two of the three didn't count. What Romney's team neglected to consider was the PR buzz even from meaningless wins.