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Salon: The Hell that Now Awaits Romney
Thanks to DU mod itsrobert for the suggestion! 
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Mitt Romney got everything he could have hoped for out of New Hampshire on Tuesday night.
He won decisively, improved on his 2008 showing in the state, and was declared the winner very early in the night, allowing him to deliver a triumphant, Obama-bashing speech in front of the largest possible television audience. He also neutralized a potential threat, Jon Huntsman, who failed to post the breakout performance he was counting on and who may not be long for the race now, and saw the two candidates vying to serve as the right’s default anti-Romney candidate — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — finish in a virtual tie for a distant, meaningless fourth place. Oh, and he can also now boast of an achievement that has eluded every other Republican presidential candidate in the modern campaign era, including Ronald Reagan: the Iowa/New Hampshire one-two punch.
Romney’s reward for all of this: 11 days of political hell, starting first thing tomorrow morning and lasting until the polls close in South Carolina two Saturdays from now. The Palmetto State’s primary is the test that the former Massachusetts governor’s nomination ambitions have been building toward for years.
On paper, the state embodies all of the demographic realities and intraparty dynamics that have made him such a tough sell to the party base. If Romney’s Mormonism really is a deal-breaker with the religious right, we will find out. About 60 percent of the state’s GOP primary universe is composed of evangelical Christians, a group that Romney has struggled with in both of his presidential campaigns. The state is also the unofficial capital of Tea Party Republicanism, with its emphasis on ideological purity and intense suspicion of the party establishment. Romney, with his economically moderate past and reputation as the “next in line” guy, reeks of the type of Republican South Carolina conservatives turned on in 2010. His Yankee roots surely don’t help, either. No wonder Romney won just 15 percent in the state in 2008 — by far his worst showing in any early contest that year.
The bigger problem for Romney, though, is that the candidates who will oppose him in South Carolina are desperate — and at least one of them will be aided by an avalanche of cash.
That would be Newt Gingrich, who it should also be noted is on a personal mission to destroy Romney, payback for the barrage of negative ads that a pro-Romney Super PAC dumped on the former House speaker in Iowa (and that Romney pretended, unconvincingly, to know nothing about). Gingrich will head to South Carolina intent on exploiting every one of Romney’s vulnerabilities in the state, and he’ll be aided by at least $5 million from a casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, who is bankrolling a Super PAC that aims to do to Romney what Romney did to Gingrich in Iowa.
He won decisively, improved on his 2008 showing in the state, and was declared the winner very early in the night, allowing him to deliver a triumphant, Obama-bashing speech in front of the largest possible television audience. He also neutralized a potential threat, Jon Huntsman, who failed to post the breakout performance he was counting on and who may not be long for the race now, and saw the two candidates vying to serve as the right’s default anti-Romney candidate — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — finish in a virtual tie for a distant, meaningless fourth place. Oh, and he can also now boast of an achievement that has eluded every other Republican presidential candidate in the modern campaign era, including Ronald Reagan: the Iowa/New Hampshire one-two punch.
Romney’s reward for all of this: 11 days of political hell, starting first thing tomorrow morning and lasting until the polls close in South Carolina two Saturdays from now. The Palmetto State’s primary is the test that the former Massachusetts governor’s nomination ambitions have been building toward for years.
On paper, the state embodies all of the demographic realities and intraparty dynamics that have made him such a tough sell to the party base. If Romney’s Mormonism really is a deal-breaker with the religious right, we will find out. About 60 percent of the state’s GOP primary universe is composed of evangelical Christians, a group that Romney has struggled with in both of his presidential campaigns. The state is also the unofficial capital of Tea Party Republicanism, with its emphasis on ideological purity and intense suspicion of the party establishment. Romney, with his economically moderate past and reputation as the “next in line” guy, reeks of the type of Republican South Carolina conservatives turned on in 2010. His Yankee roots surely don’t help, either. No wonder Romney won just 15 percent in the state in 2008 — by far his worst showing in any early contest that year.
The bigger problem for Romney, though, is that the candidates who will oppose him in South Carolina are desperate — and at least one of them will be aided by an avalanche of cash.
That would be Newt Gingrich, who it should also be noted is on a personal mission to destroy Romney, payback for the barrage of negative ads that a pro-Romney Super PAC dumped on the former House speaker in Iowa (and that Romney pretended, unconvincingly, to know nothing about). Gingrich will head to South Carolina intent on exploiting every one of Romney’s vulnerabilities in the state, and he’ll be aided by at least $5 million from a casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, who is bankrolling a Super PAC that aims to do to Romney what Romney did to Gingrich in Iowa.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/the_hell_that_now_awaits_mitt/singleton/
15 replies
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Let it all hang out, guys!
