This Year Everything Is Different

The Republican Process of Self-Destruction Continues

It’s almost too good to be true. Sure, multimillionaire Massachusetts ex-governor Mitt Romney won the primary elections in Arizona and Michigan on Tuesday. But in Michigan, where he was born and where his father had been a popular governor, he won by such a razor-thin margin against Rick Santorum that the victory was of limited use to him. And he failed to win over any of the hard-core Republican factions: not the ultra-conservatives, not the Christian right and not the tea party adherents.

All of them ended up backing either Santorum or Newt Gingrich, with a few tea partiers going for Ron Paul. And only one in seven Romney voters said after the election that they were convinced by him; most only saw him as the lesser of several evils. So the process of Republican self-destruction goes merrily on.

Within the next eight days, 12 other states will have primary elections. The high point comes on Mar. 6, Super Tuesday, when they go to the polls in 10 states, among them the key state of Ohio. In years past, the leading candidate had usually been decided by then.

But this year, everything is different for two reasons: First, none of the candidates has been all that convincing. Last week, Santorum declared the president was a snob for saying all kids should go to college and that Obama only wanted liberal professors to get their hands on them for purposes of indoctrination. He also said he was sickened by John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech in which he said that as the first Catholic president he would scrupulously observe the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Santorum said he found that idea terrible and that there should be no such separation. He later backtracked, saying he regretted making that statement.

Super PACs Are Changing the Primaries

Romney wanted to show off his connections to the automobile industry in Michigan: “Ann [his wife] drives a couple of Cadillacs,” he said. Ooops! There he goes again, the detached millionaire with no connection to the real world of everyday people. The only candidate making no egregious mistakes was libertarian Ron Paul, but he has no majority support within the Republican Party.

Mainly, however, the new way of financing campaigns via Super PAC money, supposedly independent of the candidates and with no limits on the amount, will be what enables candidates with zero chance of being elected to stay in the race far longer than they could in 2008. Without the backing of a rich casino magnate, Gingrich’s campaign would have ended in January.

In the past, candidates had to claim some early electoral victories to encourage small donors to finance their campaigns further, and whoever showed up as a loser got little or nothing. Today, having a couple of well-heeled donors is enough to keep even losers in the race.

Super PACs buy television air time in critical states and air predominantly negative spots; in other words, they try to demolish their opponents. Because they all do it, viewers are confronted with a flood of advertising in which Republicans do nothing more than talk trash about each other – much to the delight of the Democrats.

Obama’s Poll Numbers on the Rise

Since the onset of the Republican primary campaign, Obama’s poll numbers have steadily risen. When asked to choose between Romney and Obama in the general election, Romney had a slight lead early this year; he now trails Obama by five points. And now, when the choice is between Obama and a generic Republican, Obama comes out on top where he was constantly behind at the end of January.

Media opinion is now dominated by discussions of whether any of the current candidates will have enough delegates to win the nomination at the August Republican convention in Florida. If not, the arcane rules of the delegate process – only some are bound by their votes while others are not – allow for an election. In this case, however, everything must be agreed upon in advance – a so-called “brokered convention.” And what sort of start a candidate who couldn’t even convince his own party to nominate him would have is something the Republicans don’t even want to think about.

All this is great news. Honestly. The thought that the United States could be led by a religious fanatic, a Wall Street millionaire, a toothless old conservative hardliner with dubious morals or a superannuated loony right wing libertarian is just too horrifying to contemplate.