Bay Buchanan was on CNN this morning all but conceding Mitt Romney’s defeat to John McCain in the New Hampshire primary. She intimated that the Arizona senator would prove himself to be a one-state winner, with echoes of 2000. Then she argued that Mitt Romney would show that he’s the nominee through a Michigan victory.
I wish I could also get paid a lot of money to rationalize losing. It’s about as likely that Romney is going to put together a victory through Michigan as it is that his father actually marched with Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
It’s been awhile since there was any polling done in the state. But the most recent measures did not look good for Mitt – Rasmussen’s Dec. 8 poll showed Huckabee taking the lead, and we all know what happened in the last state where that occurred. What’s more, it appears that Michiganders were so enamored of Romney after the October debate in Dearborn that they put Rudy Giuliani ahead of him in a November poll.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Michigan has lost half of its delegates for bucking Republican Party rules and moving the date of the primary up to Jan. 15. That means that even if Romney wins, he won’t be able to claim a decisive delegate count as evidence of his momentum.
So what’s really going on out there in Michigan? McCain is making a significant press, according to the Ann Arbor News, with two events planned in the state over the coming week. Dawson Bell at the Detroit Free Press points out that McCain has a variety of endorsements in the state, as well as organization to put up a fight against Romney. And he also warns of the unsettled state of the Republican electorate, highlighting Huckabee’s recent gains among the state’s religious conservatives. That can’t be good news for Romney, whose loss of “values voters” to Huckabee in Iowa proved his undoing. In a state that has had its economy sundered by the global marketplace, the former Arkansas Governor’s cracks about not wanting to elect the guy that took your job away from you ought to ring true.
For a formerly presumptive frontrunner who told us he’d run away with the early contests, telling us you’ll pull it out in the third real contest (since not even Romney is trumpeting his Wyoming victory) doesn’t sound too hopeful. It might be time to pull the family car into the rest stop and hose down the dog again.
1 Response to “Mitt’s road to victory runs through…Michigan!?”
Something to say?
McCain is better known for his NH victory in 2000 but don’t forget that he won Michigan too. Now that those two primaries are back to back McCain’s chances for running away with the nomination are significantly improved.
Left by ameeks
January 9, 2008 at 4:51am