‘WELL, my friends, for a minute there in New Hampshire I thought this campaign might be getting easier,” John McCain started off, as he conceded to Mitt Romney last night.
They were pretty much the only words the Arizona senator managed to get out of his mouth before Romney ran him over by starting his victory speech – contrary to convention – before his opponent could even spend a few seconds on national TV brushing off the dust of ignominious defeat.
Mitt’s message: Mac is most definitely not back.
The McCain campaign will make a lot in the coming days of Romney’s having won a victory in his “home state.” Romney’s father was governor of Michigan, so the family name is more than familiar.
But, the fact is, Michigan was an important proving ground for the McCain campaign’s claim on national front-runner status. McCain won the state in 2000 (one of the few states he did win, along with New Hampshire and his home state of Arizona), and looked like he might pull off a repeat with the help of a Granite State bounce.
Instead, his bounce turned into a thud.
It won’t be hard for rival campaigns to draw a storyline out of New Hampshire and Michigan: McCain wins when Democrats and Independents vote; he loses when Republicans vote.
In New Hampshire, McCain and Romney essentially tied among Republicans, according to the exit polls. Among independents, though, McCain stomped Romney 40 percent to 27 percent. And independents made up 37 percent of the “GOP” vote in New Hampshire.
In Michigan, independents made up only 25 percent of the vote, Republicans 68 percent. (The balance? Self-described Democrats voting in the GOP race.) Here, McCain again won among Independents, 36 percent to 26 percent. But Romney crushed him among Republicans, 40 percent to 26 percent.
Even with an open primary, and no real race on the Democratic side – leaving Independents free to come out and vote for McCain – the Arizona maverick couldn’t pull out a victory.
Perhaps Romney’s personality just appeals more to Republicans than does the sometimes cantankerous McCain’s. But Romney also had something of a revival on the campaign trail in Michigan. Talking about the woes of the auto industry, and what he promised to do to make them go away, Romney seemed passionate and animated and genuine in a way that he hadn’t before in the campaign.
Having failed to become the candidate of the Christian Right – and, especially, having lost that title to populist Mike Huckabee – he’s had to remake himself as a moderate, business-oriented conservative. It’s something probably closer to the real Romney – but it’s more than a bit amusing to watch him use his experience as a corporate “turnaround artist” to turn around his own campaign.
Now, of course, Romney’s Michigan pitch holds a few contradictions. He’s the free-marketer who will throw $20 billion a year in federal money at trying to turn around Detroit’s problems by funding energy research, fuel technology, materials science, and automotive technology.
Those contradictions, and the strong social-conservative campaigns of Huckabee and Fred Thompson, now await Romney in South Carolina as he tries to shape a message with appeal outside Michigan.
As for momentum, perhaps the candidates should just admit it’s nowhere to be found.
editor@ryansager.com