The Mormon Who Could Beat Obama

Among the candidates for the Republican nomination for the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Mitt Romney is seen as the favorite. But this is without counting on the undermining work that has been initiated by his rivals.

There are already nine Republicans — pending the possible candidacies of Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, governor of Texas — who want to measure themselves against the incumbent president on November 6, 2012. In this nomination contest, Mitt Romney is a “reasonable” candidate. As a defender of moderate conservatism, he could seduce those centrists whose votes will determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. So could his rivals Jon Huntsman, Obama’s former ambassador to China, and Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota — but Romney has the advantage of being better known.

The other candidates prefer to compete on demagogy, when they do not suffer from a lack of credibility (such as the African-American Herman Cain, former pizzeria chain boss and political novice) or a lack of visibility (such as the dull Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania, or Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico). Republican celebrity Newt Gingrich is almost out of the race since his campaign team resigned in protest against his lack of involvement. As for the Libertarian Ron Paul, his candidacy is anecdotal.

Millionaire former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt Romney, 64, has solid assets. He’s a good-looking man, well-known on the political scene (he narrowly lost the 2008 primary against John McCain), and he already has a significant network and war chest. The man who saved the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics from financial failure possesses a trump card — his experience as a businessman — in this period of U.S. economic stagnation.

The businessman’s credo

“With our economy in crisis, the president and his fellow liberals turned to Europe for their answers […] Theirs is a European-style solution to an American problem. It does not work there and it will never work here! […] The right answer is to believe in America — to believe in free enterprise, capitalism,” Romney repeats at will, but otherwise remains very quiet on foreign policy issues, unlike Huntsman, who asserts his international experience, or Pawlenty, the only candidate opposed to the accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The latest polls are in Romney’s favor. If the election were held today, he would come out on top, slightly ahead of Obama. His victory in the primary is, however, far from certain. Romney has multiple handicaps. He is cold and self-conscious, and finds it difficult to electrify the crowds. He is awkward, too. Thinking he was being witty at a Tampa meeting with the unemployed, he said that he too was looking for a job — a bit much in a country facing unprecedented mass unemployment (16 million Americans are affected).

And above all, the Republican Party’s center of gravity has clearly moved to the right with the emergence of the tea party. And it could choose a candidate from this trend, such as Michele Bachmann, the ultraconservative muse of the tea party. This fervent Christian, mother of five children — and foster-mother to 23 — made a sensation during the televised debate held among all the candidates in mid-June in New Hampshire.

Too moderate

Romney is too “light” for the tea party, so he tries to provide guarantees to the conservative base. In the past, he was in favor of abortion rights, but now says that he is pro-life. He keeps a low profile about belonging to the Mormon church, which Evangelicals do not look upon favorably. His Achilles’ heel is the universal health insurance (“Romneycare”), a direct inspiration for Obama’s reform which was so rebuffed by Republicans, that he put in place in Massachusetts when he was governor and that continues to hang like a millstone around his neck. He now says that creating universal health insurance is the sole responsibility of the states, positioning himself on the same line as all the other candidates: Out with Washington and its “big government.”

Will that be enough? Nothing is less certain. Lacking a champion — Romney only has a slight lead in the polls — the Republican camp is unstable and worked by its most reactionary members. It is difficult to predict who will win the primaries, the first stage of which will take place in January 2012 in Iowa. For Romney, who went into the campaign very early, the road will be long.