The End of the Beginning

What happened on Super Tuesday? A good outcome for Romney, moderately respectable for Santorum, a very low threshold of positive for Gingrich. Paulistas hung in there. Before we look at the numbers, take a look at some of today’s headlines from Real Clear Politics:

·         Romney Has No Clear Path to 1144 Delegates

·         Doubts About Romney Aren't Going Away

·         It Ain't Over, and It Won't Be for a While

·         With No Knockout, Bruising Battle Plods On

·         Danger Signs for Mitt Romney

·         Tuesday Sets Up Long Slog to Nomination

·         Mitt Romney: The Candidate of "Eh, I Guess"

·         Inconclusive Tuesday

·         Super Tuesday Ends in Split Decision

·         Romney Racks Up Delegates as Campaign Underscores Weakness

Those are all just from today. But just the negative ones, so here’s a list of the positives:

·         It Will Be Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama

·         Romney Takes Another Step Toward Nomination

·         Ohio, Romney & November

Yes, that is ten against to three neutral/positive. These are from a wide range of mostly conservative pundits, so if you ever thought conservative media was in Romney’s pocket, you haven’t been keeping score. MSM stories tend to run 70+% negative toward Romney, as you’d expect. So, essentially all of Romney’s success is in spite of overwhelmingly negative media.

If you were to read the headlines without doing any math, you might think Super Tuesday had been an unmitigated disaster for Romney. So maybe we should do the math to find out the truth.

There were ten states voting yesterday. Romney won six (60% of the states). Santorum won three (30% of the states). Gingrich won one, (10% of the states). Paul won zero, but he and all of them did pick up some delegates. And it’s delegates that count toward the nomination, so we want to look at those, but before we do that, let’s look at percentage of voters, and the lead winners held over the second place finisher.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	59.5 % (+19%)	0%	0%	40%
Vermont	39.8% (+14.3%)	24%	8%	25%
Massachusetts	72.1% (+60%)	12%	5%	10%
Idaho	61.6% (+43.4%)	18%	2%	18%
Ohio	38.0% (+1%)	37%	15%	9%
Alaska	32.6% (+3/6%)	29%	14%	24%
Tennessee	28%	37.3% (+9.3%)	24%	9%
Oklahoma	28%	33.8% (+5.7%)	27%	10%
North Dakota	24%	40.0% (+12.9%)	8%	28%
Georgia	26%	20%	47.2% (+21.3%)	7%

Romney came in second in three of the four states he did not win (3^rd in the final state, North Dakota). In addition to the three he won, Santorum came in second five times (plus 3^rd in Vermont and not on the ballot in Virginia). Paul, who won zero, came in second in Virginia, Vermont, and North Dakota (with a very close 3^rd in Idaho). Gingrich did get that important win in his home state, but he still got less than half the voters there; he came in third or dead last in all the rest. There’s a little more to rub in about Gingrich: he had tried to claim Romney barely won his “home state” of Michigan last month, but Romney hasn’t lived there for forty years (he still won, but it was close). However, Massachusetts, where Romney has been living since his 20s resoundingly supported him. Gingrich’s support in Georgia was much more tepid. And in his other home state,” Virginia, where he has been living for the past decade, he failed to get on the ballot. If Romney had failed to get a vote in Michigan, then Gingrich might have something to say about that, but Romney won the “other home state.”

OK, but since the delegate count matters in the end, that’s the real story. Here’s how that went.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	43	0	0	3
Vermont	9	4	0	4
Massachusetts	38	0	0	0
Idaho	32	0	0	0
Ohio	38	21	0	0
Alaska	8	7	3	6
Tennessee	11	26	11	0
Oklahoma	11	18	11	0
North Dakota	7	11	2	8
Georgia	19	3	54	0

 Romney was awarded 168 delegates in states he won, plus 48 in states he didn’t win (he got delegates in every state), for a total of 276 for the day.

Santorum was awarded 55 delegates in states he won, plus 35 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 90 for the day.

Gingrich was awarded 54 delegates in the state he won, plus 27 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 81 for the day.

Paul was awarded 21 delegates for the day.

The total for the day was 468 (not all estimates are the same; these are the current estimates from MSNBC.com, which may vary slightly from RealClearPolitics.com). Romney was awarded 59% of the votes. Santorum got 19%. Gingrich got 17%. Paul got a little under 5%. Put another way, if you add up all the non-Romney delegates, that’s 192, or just 41% of the delegates.

Of the 731 delegates assigned so far, Romney has 404, Santorum has 161, Gingrich has 105, and Paul has 61. Romney has 55% of the delegates so far.

Is it a sure thing that Romney will get the nomination? No. But he is a very strong and very clear front runner. Santorum would need to garner over 60% of the remaining delegates (with Utah and California looming ahead) in order to have a chance. Another thing we’ve seen is that, when Romney goes in person to spend time in a state, so that people see him instead of the media-created perceptions of him, the trend surges in his favor. My guess is that more of that surging is likely to happen after healthy Super Tuesday wins.

Who Is the Establishment?

I’ve been puzzled by the constant insistence that an expensive barrage of Romney attack ads are decimating his opponents. They complain it’s unfair and harms the process. I’ve had to look for those attack ads; they’re nonexistent here in Texas so far. (For various reasons, the Texas primary is still up in the air. We only know it won’t be on the originally scheduled April 3^rd, and may be all the way into June. So no need to campaign here right now.)

What we do get is a constant barrage of anti-Romney ads. This past couple of weeks, during every commercial break on just about every talk radio station, enough times to practically memorize it, we have heard this ad from Time to Choose, a pro-Gingrich PAC [proviso: I did not do an exact transcript, so this is what I remember, based on the wording at the Time toChoose website]:

The Republican Party is at a Crossroads. There’s a battle going on between the establishment minority, and the conservative majority. Between the GOP establishment that wants to protect its own power at all costs, and the conservative majority that wants power returned to the people.

The establishment minority wants us to hold our noses and vote for the Massachusetts moderate. They tell us he is the best man to beat President Obama. They tell us he is the best we can do.

We’ve been down this road before. They gave us Gerald Ford. We got [crashing noise]. They gave us Bob Dole. We got [crashing noise].  They gave us John McCain. We got Barak Obama.

Now they’re trying to give us a Massachusetts moderate. Don’t let them. Not this time….

So the question at hand is, who is the GOP establishment? And how do they control so many voters in so many states?

It seems to me that if someone served in Congress for two decades, including a stint as Speaker of the House, and then stayed in the DC area to push for various causes, one might consider that person part of “the establishment.” Quite often, Gingrich teardowns of opponents are only true if you substitute his name in, in place of the opponent.

I googled the anti-Gingrich ads, since we haven’t seen them here. There’s a collection here. Only those listing Romney as approving the message are from the Romney campaign. Any others are by a Romney PAC, which can by law have no contact with the campaign. There may be some technical details that aren’t true, but I can’t find any. In fact they seem scrupulously true, and where it is opinion, those opinions are expressed with clear rationale. Hardly something to follow up with untrue attack ads, as Gingrich has done.

What about anti-Santorum ads? There are some of these credited to Romney that are actually done by Ron Paul people. But Restore the Future, a pro-Romney PAC, did this one:

Again, it’s scrupulously true. It may be that each and every point can be answered with reason by Santorum, but except for some painful minutes during the last debate (answering mainly Ron Paul), Santorum hasn’t spent the time explaining.

Is this so unfair that Santorum’s response should be to do robocalls recruiting Michigan Democrats to mess up the GOP primary vote? I think not. And apparently even that underhanded tactic didn’t work.

That question, then, comes up again: Who is this GOP establishment? The RNC has been all about fundraising, but every time they call, it’s absolutely all about defeating Barak Obama, not about pushing a candidate. And if they were pushing a candidate, what is the likelihood that they would choose a governor from a very blue state who never cozied up to them in DC? For that matter, how would a Massachusetts former governor become part of the establishment, or even acceptable to such an entity?

Becoming acceptable consisted of spending millions of his own money on a first campaign, going up against a much-disliked but chosen “establishment” candidate, and then stepped out of that race gracefully, and instead of going back home to enjoy his wealth with his family, he continued to campaign—for others. Rick Perry was a beneficiary of that. So were countless other candidates for governor, senate, congress, and also for John McCain for president. Because, as Romney articulated then and now, the important thing is to keep the liberals like Obama from taking away our freedoms and making America worse.

He worked tirelessly and selflessly, not even certain it would ever be worth running for president again. But his selflessness did indeed ingratiate him to many who got elected. So, among current Congress and Senate, yes, there are far more endorsements for Romney than for Gingrich and Santorum, who were their colleagues in those august bodies. Because he’s been an inside-the-beltway pal for so long? No. Because he worked so hard to put forward conservative ideas and promote conservative candidates wherever he could.

What I see happening is that the negative press (72% negative on main stream media, nearly 60% negative on Fox, plus some vitriol from Mark Levin and a fair amount of negative from Rush Limbaugh) tends to convince people that Romney is not a reliable conservative. Then, when it’s nearer time for a state to vote, they start seeing Romney in person, and hearing more of his own words. And, despite what pundits say, he is believable and engaging, and able to connect with people. Plus there’s the fact that everything he says, and everything he reveals about his record, shows a consistent conservative.

So it isn’t some far-off “establishment” that is making Romney’s nomination look likely; it is many people, across many demographics, looking for the best alternative to Obama. We may have found him and just don’t all know it yet.

Shining City Moment

Last night, the closing statements to the presidential debate were worth listening to. All agreed this was a critical election, and it’s important who we choose  to represent us and our values. Newt Gingrich, trying to convince us he’s the answer, offered himself up to debate Obama. And while that might be a delight to see, Gingrich has been much better against the media than he has been against opponents, against whom he seems at times to be throwing a petty tantrum. Plus, there’s no guarantee that Obama will risk agreeing to a series of humiliating debates.

Ron Paul went first, reiterating the connection between economic policy and freedom for all. As usual he’s right on economics, but he does it with a tone of a slightly exasperated professor saying, “Why don’t you people get it yet?”

Rick Santorum went last, agreeing that the stakes are high, but trying to convince that he is “the” conservative in the race, and that he is electable. He urges South Carolina not to settle for a moderate, but to do what they did in 1980, voting for Reagan before he was the Reagan we know. It was well said, but it was essentially the small message: “South Carolina, vote for me.”

Romney’s closing statement went third, but I’ve saved his for last. He used the moment so beautifully to talk to Americans about beautiful, positive American ideas. There was a piece by Jon Kraushar from November, called “Want to Know Who Will Win in 2012: Look for the Smile.” I’ve been thinking about his observations since then. At that moment, the two most positive, smiling candidates were Romney and Gingrich. Then, in  December, as Gingrich began to be a serious contender, he got angrier and more erratic, and then started sinking in the polls. He may maintain momentum long enough for South Carolina, but if the cheerfulness theory holds, I don’t expect him to make much further progress.

Santorum is someone I often like. Ideologically according to a couple of those charts where you compare your beliefs and see who should be your candidate, I align with him about 97% of the time, and Romney only maybe 96% (both seem surprisingly close both to me and each other). But Santorum, coming always from behind, often seems tense and pressured in debates--better among townhalls, I think. Romney almost always seems cool under pressure, and is by nature pleasant, cheerful, and positive. He’s extraordinarily hard working and detail oriented, but he appears at ease. There’s something Reaganesque about that, even if he isn’t as media savvy as Reagan, who came from that world.

Anyway, Romney’s closing statement is a nice moment I want to remember from this campaign, regardless of outcome. Here is the transcript, as well as the two-minute video. Enjoy.

I agree with a lot of what these last two men have just said; I think this is an absolutely critical election. I  but believe that the founders took very careful thought in the preparation of the words of our Declaration of Independence, that said that the Creator had endowed us with certain unalienable rights. Not the state, but the Creator. Among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And by virtue of those words, the pursuit of happiness, this became the place on the planet where we were able to pursue our dreams as we might choose. People came here from all over the world, wishing to pursue happiness in their own way. And that has made us the most powerful economic engine in the world, where we can guard freedom because our military is the strongest in the world, coming from that powerful economic engine.

This president’s changing that. He’s changing the very nature of America. He’s turning us, not, from a merit society, an opportunity society, where people are free to choose their own course. But instead he’s making us an entitlement society, where people think they’re entitled to what other people have, where government takes from some and gives to others. That has never been the source of American greatness.

We need to return to the principles upon which this country was founded. Our president said, I think in a very revealing way, that he wants to fundamentally transform America. He’s wrong. We need to restore the values that made America the hope of the earth. And I understand those values. I will do everything in my power to restore those values by keeping America free, by fighting for free enterprise, by standing up to President Obama and pointing out how he has made it almost impossible for our private sector to reboot. I will get America working again. I will defeat Barak Obama and keep America as it’s always been, the shining city on a hill. Thank you.

To Iowa and Beyond

I had a post almost completed for today, a civilization question, instead of the political election questions that have dominated here the past month. But I got distracted late last night watching the Iowa returns.

Screen Shot of the Interactive Map*

My son Political Sphere gets off work at midnight, and he wanted to see how it turned out too. We lasted until almost 2:00 central time, shortly after the lead changed from Santorum by 18 to Romney by a few. At that point, Romney was projected as the winner. Either way, both are assigned 11 Iowa delegates. I’m not displeased or surprised by the ending (except maybe for how very close it is). The party has gone through one non-Romney after another. Just before Christmas the non-Romney of the day was Gingrich, and while I much prefer him to Obama, I feel better about Santorum taking that slot.

Santorum gave a nice speech before the crowds in those wee hours, thanking the people who so often told him, “Welcome to Iowa.”  You can see the speech here; it’s about 20 minutes. In there he mentioned his intention to remove all regulations costing over $150 Million a year. Prior to this administration the average number of such regulations was 60; under Obama that has risen to 150—not exactly a stimulus to increase jobs. So I’m with Santorum on that plan.

I’m reminded of an aside about Iowa. We went on a family trip once where we stayed in a vacation home along the Mississippi, across from Keokuk, Iowa. On the coffee table at that house was a funny book about Iowa, trying to convince people that it actually existed. Most people, it said, when Iowa is mentioned, actually picture Ohio, or maybe that western state with the potatoes (Idaho). But Iowa is more or less invisible. We laughed about it, because it’s true we don’t know a whole lot about Iowa. But the primary caucus there, being the first, does get them some attention and respect. And the people there take it seriously. They really do turn out to meet the candidates, and they ask questions and study. If everybody took the process as seriously as Iowa does, we’d have a better electorate. So, thank you, Iowa.

Now, getting into a little of the nitty-gritty, I read something while I was waiting for results, from Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean back in the day. It was that campaign that started using online media to connect with voters. He wrote a book I read a couple of summers ago, called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He’s a strategist, and a liberal one. I couldn’t come up with that kind of thinking in my own mind; I don’t think that way. For that arcane expertise, there must be people like him, I guess, along with Karl Rove, Dick Morris, or, more for research than implementation, Frank Luntz.

Anyway, Trippi's article yesterday had some interesting things to look at. He said:

Watch Dubuque: The county in the northeast corner of the state is heavily Catholic and an area Romney scored well in four years ago. If Rick Santorum isn’t winning here it means the Santorum surge isn’t real or isn’t big enough to matter. The state is 23% Catholic—if Santorum, a pro-life Catholic himself, consolidates the Catholic vote in Dubuque and elsewhere, the Iowa surprise could be a Santorum win.

So I did that. I moved my mouse over the interactive map and found Dubuque County. Dubuque went Romney 31% (779 votes), Paul 26% (659 votes), Santorum 24% (601 votes). That eastern point of the state actually went pretty heavily toward Romney. I don’t know if that actually means Santorum’s surge is only temporary. He will, of course, suddenly get an influx of funding, because of his Iowa success. It isn’t likely to give him a win in New Hampshire, where Romney polls very strong (and is the basket in which Huntsman is putting all his eggs). But we’ll see.

Scrolling over the state gave some other info. If I’m not mistaken, at the point when Santorum was up by 18 votes statewide, two counties had not completed their count: Clinton and Keokuk. Then there was a change. Keokuk was complete, but Lee and Kossuth were not. And then Clinton County completed its votes, giving an edge to Romney. The other two remain incomplete this morning; I don’t know the story behind that. Political Sphere suggests that a precinct in each of those counties failed to have a turnout, so the precinct chair hadn’t bothered to turn in a count. They are pretty small. Total votes for Kossuth County are in the 400 range, and total for Lee a little over 600. Going by the percentages uncounted, we estimate there could only be about 20 votes possible from Kossuth and maybe 30 from Lee. Tiny amounts, but in this race enough to be decisive. It is one of those object lessons: every vote counts.

We were amused to notice that in Pottawattamie County, where Romney edged out Santorum by a couple of percentage points, Santorum got exactly 666 votes. Not a good omen. Especially if those voters chose Santorum based on his religion (Catholic), because they were afraid of Romney’s (Mormon). If so (not saying it is), they really needed either one more voter or a defector.

There were exit polls, and we wondered about the name for these, because the data was up well before the results. And this was a caucus, so people don’t come and go all day; they come at 7:00 PM and stay until they’re done, and then leave. So, these are probably “entry polls.” Anyway, Romney did well among middle and upper middle class, older, more educated voters, as well as the less intensely conservative and moderate. Moderate to liberal thinkers, particularly young voters, went with Paul. Tea Party middle income with some education went with Santorum.

According to the map, Romney only won 17 of, I think, 99 counties. He did tend to get the larger population centers (such as they are in Iowa). Santorum may have won more individual counties. But Ron Paul also led in a significant number of them. For people who like politics just for the sport of it, this was an exciting event.

Commentators describe Iowa as a winnowing state, rather than a selector. It looks like Michelle Bachmann, who won the straw poll in Iowa just last August, is out. Iowans liked her then, and her message has remained pretty much unchanged. This is why political science is a mystery to me. As of this writing Perry is still in. I’d like to see him stay through South Carolina at least. We’ll see. Gingrich is certainly in until then. So now, beyond Iowa, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

____________________________________
* Interactive Map found here.

Measuring Rick Santorum

It’s the day before the Iowa caucuses. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. While I’m mildly interested, I am not one to work out the mathematical and strategic possibilities based on each of these early state primaries. However, polls have been showing a sudden rise for Rick Santorum, and I hadn’t covered him yet, so I thought I’d do that today.

I have always liked Santorum. I’ve read his book, It Takes a Family, which I thought was quite president someday.” He’s thoughtful and intelligent, and consistently conservative.

My hesitation I that his experience is more limited that some of the other candidates (particularly compared to Romney) in successfully persuading people. If he were to be the nominee, I would gladly support him. I don’t foresee that happening this time around, however. So, if I could see a future for him, I’d like to see him in a significant cabinet position, something that gives him experience that would place him in a good position eight years hence. (I’d also like to see more of Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, or even Michelle Bachman, all with more experience down the road.) I wouldn’t object at all to Santorum as VP.

It has been a disadvantage to Santorum in the debates to be behind, and therefore forced to be on offensive against candidates he mostly agrees with. But in the last debate, December 15^th, there was a moment where he shined. His answer was juxtaposed right after Ron Paul for contrast. The question for both was essentially what he would do as president if he received solid intel that Iran had a nuclear weapon. Early last year I had a conversation with a Paul fan. He mentioned that he really didn’t like Santorum, because he was so pro-war under any circumstances. That wasn’t something I’d ever noticed about Santorum, so I’ve paid attention since then. I think my friend would look at this exchange and think Paul makes perfect sense. I, on the other hand, see it as clear evidence of what people say about Paul’s wrong-headedness on foreign policy, and Santorum gives a good explanation of the more accurate view.

You can see the debate here. The exchanges transcribed below can be seen from about 57 minutes in to just after the hour mark.

Brett Baier: Congressman Paul, the question was based on the premise that you had solid intelligence; you actually had solid intelligence [that Iran had a nuclear weapon] as President Paul. And yet you still at that point would pull back American sanctions. And again, as a GOP nominee would be running left of President Obama on this issue.

Ron Paul: Yes. All we’re doing is promoting their desire to have it [a nuclear weapon]. Ehud Barak, the defense minister for Israel, said that, um, that, if he were in Iran, he would probably want a nuclear weapon too, because they’re surrounded, for geopolitical reasons. So that’s an understanding. So, the fact that they are surrounded, they have a desire…. And how do we treat people with a nuclear weapon? With a lot more respect. What did we do with Libya? We talked with them; we talked them out of their nuclear weapon, and then we killed them. So it makes more sense to work with people. And the whole thing is, nuclear weapons are loaded over there: Pakistan and India; Israel has 300 of them; we have our ships there. We gotta get it in a proper context. We don’t need another war.

Brett Baier: Understood. And you make that point quite a lot. I’m gonna…  I’ll try one more time. Iran is reportedly running exercises on closing the Straits of Hormuz, a key passage, as you know, for global trade. Now, what should the US response be if Iran were to take that dramatic step.

Ron Paul: Well, this is…  The plans are on the book. All they talk about is when are we, the West, going to bomb Iran. So why wouldn’t they talk about… They don’t have a weapon; they don’t have a nuclear weapon. Why wouldn’t they try to send out some information there and say, “You know, if you come and bomb us, we might close the Straits of Hormuz down”? So, already the president, I think is wisely backing off on the sanctions, because it’s going to be an economic calamity if you take all the oil out of Europe. So I think that makes sense. He knows these sanctions are overreaching. Sanctions are an act of war, when you prevent goods and services from going into a country. We need to approach this a little differently. We have 12,000 diplomats in our services; we ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while.

Brett Baier: OK…. Senator Santorum, you have a very different thought about the threat from Iran. For several years, according to US military leaders, Iran has provided training, funding, and lethal arms to jihadists killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are those acts of war?

Rick Santorum: They have been continually. They just tried to plan an attack here in this country, killing the Saudi ambassador. They’ve been at war with us since 1979. The IEDs that have killed so many soldiers—they’re manufactured in Iran. This is…  Iran is not any other country. It’s a country that is ruled by the equivalent of al Qaeda, on top of this country. They are a radical theocracy. The principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to President Amadinijad, is not freedom, opportunity; it’s martyrdom. The idea, Ron, that mutual assured destruction, like the policy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, would work on Iran, when their principle virtue is martyrdom, is…  Mutual assured destruction with respect to Iran would not be a, any kind of, you know, preventing a war; it would be an inducement to war. This is what their objective is; their objective is to in fact create a calamity. This is what their theology teaches. They believe that it is their mission to take on the West. They don’t hate us because of what we do, or the policies we have. They hate us because of who we are and what we believe in. And we need to make sure that they do not have a nuclear weapon. And we should be working with the state of Israel right now. We should use covert activity. And we should be planting a missile strike against their facilities, and say, “If you do not open up those facilities and close them down, we will close them down for you.”