« Previous Entry | Main | Next Entry »

Posted: January 8, 2008 6:04 PM
Romney May Find Solace in Muddled GOP Field
Email This

The Romney team had a plan to win the GOP nomination — raise a ton of money, win in Iowa and New Hampshire and use that momentum to crush the other competitors.

Part one came off almost without a hitch, although a healthy hunk of his campaign coffers come from his own fortune. But then came the part that went a tad awry.

Iowa.

Fueled by a huge evangelical turnout, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stunned the field and ran away with a caucus victory last week. Now, part three of the plan appears to be running afoul of the rocks in the Granite State.

Even if Sen. John McCain scores a victory over Romney in New Hampshire, the former Massachusetts governor may be able to benefit from the total chaos within the Republican race.

After New Hampshire, the contest heads west to Michigan where Romney’s father served as governor. His staunchest competition in the state is most likely McCain, who even with a win in New Hampshire, is short on cash and paid Michigan staff following summer layoffs.

But if Romney is to capitalize on the lack of any frontrunner, aides say he must address his message and strategy in the days ahead.

One idea is to glom onto the single-word theme that has come to dominate the last half-dozen news cycles - the “C” word.

“There has always been a debate in Romneyworld as to whether he should run as a ‘change’ candidate — the business professional and turnaround artist — or run as the consensus conservative,” one of those helpful unnamed advisers told the Los Angeles Times. “He wanted to do both and has tried to do both, but that is hard. The political universe can only digest so much information about a candidate at one time.”

And in apparent trial-run of Romney as the “Agent of Change”, he was taking aim at the surging Democratic frontrunner, Barack Obama.

“He beat them all because he talked about change in Washington,” The Hill newspaper had Romney telling 100 voters in Salem, N.H.

“I not only talk about change, I can demonstrate change,” he said — and to be clear, this was Romney’s stump speech not Sen. Hillary Clinton’s.

But should the Romney campaign be seeking advice, no worries, Time’s Ana Marie Cox is here to tell them how to win: “the Romney campaign must look past a mere tweak of message and hope that the bitter sniping of the last two debates and their intensely negative attacks on McCain will nudge moderate Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary and encourage conservative Republicans to look at second-tier candidates instead of McCain, if they choose not to vote for Romney.”

According to the pundits, the game is now: Romney wants to finish a close second behind McCain in New Hampshire then crush him in Michigan. To manage that close second, Romney wants all those Granite State independents to vote for Obama.