Though it will have surely little effect on the insurmountable lead now held by presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate managed for the first time in over thirty days to face a setback of sorts, losing eleven delegates in Maine to Representative Ron Paul--the first time the former governor's delegate count has gone backward since a careful recount caused him to lose by a handful of votes in Iowa in January.
The original Maine caucus totals had been razor close anyway--only about one hundred votes separated Romney from Paul out of over six thousand votes cast on February 11. But Paul's superior organizational gurus and his Apple-toting procedural wonks won the day, and now Paul gets the winner's share of Maine's delegates. So, despite his relatively small delegate total, Ron Paul remains stubbornly and paradoxically relevant, in part because of his loyal activist following, and in part because of the absence of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.
Undaunted, the Romney juggernaut moves on, this week to North Carolina and Indiana, two states once considered fertile insurrectionist territory for Santorum and Gingrich, and to West Virginia. It is widely assumed that Romney will win easily in Tuesday's primaries, but depending on his margins of victory in each of the three states voting, he may not reach the magic number. If he falls short, Romney's campaign rolls south to Texas and beyond, and though he may not officially clinch the trophy until after Republicans vote in the Lone Star state, there is little left for the challengers except the moral right to brag each time a delegate is picked up by someone other than Romney.
The Associated Press places Romney's delegate count at 856, while CNN shows his total to be 841, both numbers somewhat short of the 1144 needed to claim the nomination outright. Ron Paul has 76 delegates.
With most of the major Republican players and former candidates backing Romney--some enthusiastically, others with tap-water warmth--the real challenge for the governor is honing his message and, in the words of the Old School politicians, finding the music.
This past Wednesday's government report than last quarter's growth in American jobs was far more tepid than had been originally projected was yet another sign that for Romney the message should be sharpened to include many more specifics about the economy. Even President Obama, now stumping vigorously in swing states like Ohio and Virginia, admits that there is much to be done, and Obama's strategists and handlers fear the one thing that President's should fear the most--an electorate seeking to blame someone for a persistently bad economy.
But, as has been the case for months, sidebar matters seem to constantly distract from what should the central issues--and last week's one year anniversary of the death of Bin Laden marked another such occasion for moral misappropriation and high profile sniping, with each side accusing the other of "politicizing" the milestone. Still, you can't blame the President for seeking to claim credit for the most positive moment of his foreign policy narrative, nor can you fault the challenger for grousing about an opportunity seized and resynthesized into a campaign commercial. Fine--it's an election year, now let's move on.
The President spent the weekend formally introducing his reelection campaign, first at Ohio State University, then in Richmond at a rally at Virginia Commonwealth University, and at both locations he field-tested his mixed-bag message, the short version of which is: the economy has come a long way since he took office; the economy still has a long way to go; we should take a renewed interest in foreign policy. The first part of that message is simple enough to grasp, and, as he often has, Obama touts the turnaround in the automotive industry as his shining trophy of success. And, as would be expected, the President cites the jobs which have been created since the low employment low points of early 2009. But beyond that, Obama was short on specifics and long on the kind of soaring rhetoric that plays well for a crowd made of in large part of college students (many of whom were in junior high school or high school in the early months of the recession).
Then, there was the message of pro-active internationalist policy, which, as has already been pointed out by several foreign policy analysts, carries great risk--especially if things get dicey with Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, or during the final stages of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan--and the presumption of decisive action, something notably missing in U.S. policy toward uprisings in Libya, Egypt and Syria. Still, Obama cited his biggest accomplishments: no Americans fighting in Iraq; the elimination of bin Laden; an al Qaeda on the wane. The applause for Obama in the Schottenstein Center Arena was lukewarm. Obama needs those young voters to coalesce--as they did four years ago--around his candidacy, and some among younger voters are noticeably fidgety at the thought of an American military incursion on foreign soil so soon after our extraction from Iraq.
And this brings us to the paradox.
Ron Paul, of all people, poses an unusual threat--and not to Mitt Romney. In the strange narrative that has been the Republican race so far, there remains the possibility (though he dodges the question gracefully each time it comes up) that Paul may bolt from the GOP fold, and seek a third party path in the general election. This means he would take with him his legions of loyalists and self-sustaining, self-organizing activists. This would mean little to the overall Republican math, but could have a potent negative effect on President Obama's numbers. Why? Because Obama's most successful constituent mobilization four years ago was "the youth vote," that often vaguely defined group ranging from 18 to 29 which every Democratic nominee since the days of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern has come to desire, but for whom scant few have found reciprocal love.
Ron Paul's non-interventionist message, never his strongest suit with Republican traditionalists, strategic conservatives or neo-conservatives, nevertheless resonates extremely well with many younger voters. How many among the folks ranging in age from 18 to 29 might follow Paul's libertarian music for the purity of his promise to keep us out of costly, morally hazardous wars?
And does that following pose a real danger to Romney, or to President Obama?
Copyright 2012, Thursday Review
Road Show is published each week by Thursday Review publications, copyright 2008, 2012
