So Mitt Romney finally seems to have squeaked out a decent Super Tuesday last night after hours in which it looked like he was going to be humiliated with losses in every major state. But the GOP front-runner has a real problem.
Romney remains on a seemingly inexorable path to the nomination, the only GOP candidate with a clear path to a majority of delegates. But he is not winning rock-ribbed Republican hearts at exactly the time he needs to be.
In fact, he took several steps backward after his win in Michigan last week. Momentum from that victory should have won him Tennessee and made an Ohio victory a foregone conclusion. But he lost Tennessee last night by a far larger margin than anyone expected, and he only crawled into the winner’s circle in Ohio.
It’s time to recalculate the enduring dynamic of this endless GOP race. People have been saying for months that it’s a race between Mitt and the Not-Romneys, but the results last night suggest that term (which I invented in a Post column in October) needs to be amended.
It would be truer to say Mitt has only succeeded when he’s made himself a Not — first the Not-Bachmann, then the Not-Perry, then the Not-Cain, then the Not-Newt and, where he’s made his case stick, the Not-Santorum.
Romney’s argument is that the others can’t win, that their views are not congruent with the mainstream — and he has spent an enormous amount of money on negative ads to talk Republican voters into the idea.
I think he’s right: They can’t. But it’s a hard fact that Romney hasn’t succeeded in convincing more than a third of the GOP electorate that they should surrender their deep doubts about him and support him anyway because he’s the only one who can beat Barack Obama.
Rick Santorum has found a way to connect with voters who are discomfited by Romney. Some of it has to do with Romney’s ideological impurity on health care. And some of it — especially among very conservative evangelical voters — surely has to do with his Mormon faith.
Exit polls suggest Santorum is winning overwhelmingly among conservatives who want a candidate like them. Even though Santorum is a Catholic and they’re Protestants, he’s certainly a lot more like them than Romney, who comes from a minority faith tradition.
What can Romney do? He won’t quit his faith. He’s already set his position on health care in stone — he likes what he did in Massachusetts and no matter the similarities to ObamaCare, he’ll repeal the federal mandate.
He’s just going to have to barrel ahead. Next Tuesday is likely to be a bad day for him, with evangelical-heavy Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi more like the Southern states Santorum and Newt Gingrich have won.
He’ll likely get on track as the larger states start to come in play later in March and April.
But whatever victories he scored last night, he’s bruised and bloodied.
Romney can win the nomination as the Not-Santorum. But if that’s how he does it, if he doesn’t succeed in uniting the party on a positive note, he will be seriously weakened going into the general election.