Article VI Blog

Yesterday, Nation Review Digital posted, with a 10/19 date, Ramesh Ponneru’s assessment of Romney and 2012.  Frankly, he sounds remarkably like us.

Romney’s current and former consultants tend to agree about what he did wrong last time. They do not fault the flip-flops. But “inauthentic” is a word that often comes up. “It’s a matter of emphasis,” says one former adviser. “He emphasized issues that didn’t fit his profile. The volume, the way he presented them, didn’t fit with who he is.” This adviser cites Romney’s attacks on McCain and Giuliani over their support for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Another ’08 veteran agrees that Romney was badly positioned but mostly blames reporters. “They wanted to write the Mormon story and the abortion flip-flop story. And then in Iowa when the marriage issue [came] up, you [had] to talk about it.”

These Romneyites do not believe that the governor should abandon his conservative positions on the social issues. Most of them share those positions, and also know that flip-flopping again would render Romney ridiculous. They just want him to avoid emphasizing the social issues. It is advice he appears to be taking to heart. Economics and foreign policy, in that order, have been the focus of his public comments. His critique of Obama has been that the president is endangering our currency by spending so much on domestic programs, threatening our security by cutting defense spending, and reducing our credibility with allies by drawing closer to our enemies. Romney has not complained about Obama’s social liberalism. At one point, Romney was fighting against liberal policies on stem cells more actively than any other governor in the country. When I asked him about Obama’s record on the subject, he began his answer by noting that he had not been following it much over the last year.

How was it we put it?  Oh yeah, it went like this:

This pains me deeply to say, but a front-burner social conservative simply cannot win the general.  We want a candidate that has social conservative tendencies, but not one that leads with them, that is a recipe for being out of power for four more years.  Social conservatives (evangelicals, the Religious Right…) have got to wake up to their role in the party and play that role, or they are gong to have to be sent packing.  It’s a vitally important role for crying out loud – it’s just not the lead.  Supporting is always where the best acting is done.

And then there is this goodie from Ramesh:

Yet it is extremely difficult — more difficult than many people realize — to capture the Republican presidential nomination from the right in the modern era. The politics of religion largely account for this difficulty. The movement candidacy always runs a risk of being destroyed by an evangelical candidacy. No movement candidate can win without strong support from evangelical voters. But an evangelical candidate running on the basis of his religion can win a lot of votes from his coreligionists, and thus block the movement candidate’s progress, without being able to win the nomination himself. As Huckabee showed in the last race, the evangelical candidate need not be well-known or well-funded to play this role. Pat Robertson played it in 1988. (Pat Buchanan splintered the movement in a slightly different way in 1996.)

Romney’s problem was not that he is a Mormon. It was that he is not an evangelical. A strong plurality of evangelicals “would have backed Huckabee against anybody — Mormon, Buddhist, or Catholic,” says another former Romney adviser. “They were voting for one of their own.” To attribute Romney’s loss in Iowa to anti-Mormon prejudice from evangelicals, he says, is like attributing Romney’s victories in Utah and Nevada to Mormons’ hostility to people from all other faiths. But this adviser reaches the same conclusion as his colleagues who blamed anti-Mormonism: Romney should not spend as much time and resources on Iowa next time.

In the broadest brushstroke that is correct, although I think it discounts the effect anti-Mormon rhetoric can play in emphasizing that tendency more than even usual.   As we analyzed a while ago in Iowa new votes, votes that did not typically caucus, were the difference.  They were not there for Robertson and they were not there for Buchanan – they were there because there was a Mormon in the race.  Evangelicals, by their nature, want their “independence” from political alliances to be very clear.  That’s why there is always a dance between the social conservatives and the rest of the party.  It does not take a big effort, just a small one to send them spinning off into space.

The biggest problem, frankly, was that the few anti-Mormons got the press’ ear and established the story line – and Huckabee’s particular political genius allowed him to play it like a maestro.  Evangelicals felt like they had to make a religious decision rather than just sort of look the other way and make a purely political decision – something they normally would have done with an areligious (McCain) or even Catholic (Giuliani) candidate.

It is agreed with Ramesh that Romney has to de-emphasize Iowa.  But there is one other thing that has to happen – the press needs to be neutralized on the Mormon meme to some extent.  It would not take much, a few huge name Evangelicals leaders to endorse Romney outright without the qualifications about how Mormons are different – just a straightforward “I endorse him.”  Of course, there is a chance that the press is just bored of the meme – Goodness knows they beat it to death last time, but I would not count on it.  We already know that the anti-Mormons are agitating, and the press loves nothing more than a religious fight.  Not to mention the left is going to hammer on it hard (it works for them – divide and conquer and all that.)  Of course, if there is no blatant Evangelical for the anti-Mormons to coalesce around it won’t matter, but Huckabee still has to make a buck, so I wouldn’t count on that either.

However, if Romney does as Ramesh suggests, runs as the establishment candidate not the movement candidate, then the anti-Mormon agitators will appear to be out of the mainstream and be far less effective.  That’ll help quite a bit.  Richard Albert at The Hill just this morning in burnishing Romney’s credentials as both the establishment guy and “the next in line.”

Romney has less of a hill to climb this time than last time, but it is still there.  Frankly, I think the biggest thing in his favor this time around is that the current administration is so antithetical to all branches of the Republican coalition that they will just forget the differences to regain the White House.  The effects of last time, whether they be anti-Mormonism of Evangelical independence, are far less effective in the face of a common opponent.  Last time we were in power, this time we are not.  That is the biggest difference.

Lowell: I cannot add much to John’s fine post, other than to say “met too!”  I was especially impressed with Ramesh’s comments about how “it is extremely difficult — more difficult than many people realize — to capture the Republican presidential nomination from the right in the modern era.” Romney very understandably tried to run with those realities in mind and came across as not fully believable.

Folks, John and I have spent a fair amount of time with Mitt Romney. He’s believable. He’s the real deal. He seemed to struggle at communicating to the public who he really is. I think he can overcome that and I will be watching to see the impact the change will have. It could be quite significant.

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