The Mittster Posted by Michael Cohen

So someone asked me last night who I thought was going to win the GOP primary and while everyone you talk to seems to think McCain is going to win, I couldn't get his utterly uninspiring performance in Concord yesterday out of my head. It wasn't just that he
seemed tired and abrasive, but there was no lift at all in his remarks; zero sense of where he intends to take the country. Even the opening speakers pretty much fell back on McCain's military career as "an American hero" as opposed to offering any sense of what a McCain Presidency would offer.  (In fairness, it's not clear what the Presidency of any Republican would be like, with the possible exception of Rudy "More war" and Thompson "The Return of the Afternoon Nap")

McCain's lead here really feels more like a process of elimination; Romney is a phony; Huckabee is too religious; Thompson is too lazy and Rudy is . . . well Rudy; so McCain just seems like the lesser of several evils. But I'm not sure that's much of a viable message. It reminds me of a great line I once heard Pat Caddell say about the Mondale 84 campaign, simply put "it exists." If Hillary had a problem using the experience argument against Obama, I just don't see how McCain is going to be able to make it more effectively. That and the fact that half the electorate says they won't vote for someone over the age of 70.

Now having said all that about McCain, this is hardly an endorsement for Romney and if anything it would be an endorsement for Huckabee, but I can't help but escape this sneaking suspicion that Romney still wins this thing. If only because this new bogus change message he is running on might actually resonate with voters in later primary states not familiar with his shameless flip-flopping and phoniness.

The irony is that competence and outside the Beltway change is exactly the message that Romney should have run on from the beginning . . . instead he sold his soul to the hard right and made a deal with the devil. Is it too late to get it back; everyone except Joe Klein seems to think so, but with his resources and his determination I stand by my prediction of a Romney victory (which may be the dumbest thing I've ever written on this site!).

As for Huckabee, I think he's being sorely underestimated. Already polls are showing him with a big lead in South Carolina.  Any advantage McCain gets from NH (if he wins) may well be blunted by a good Huckabee performance in the South and as long as Romney is viable after NH, he has the money to and the organization to crush McCain and Huckabee.  Of course, if Romney ekes out a win tonight it could be over; after all the GOP establishment will certainly rally around him if it's between him and Huckabee.

Whatever the case, however, I think the last two weeks have demonstrated the extraordinary fissures in the GOP and the stunning weakness of these candidates. They all have crippling liabilities and outside immigration and terror they have little to run on in November. So for all the current intrigue on the GOP side, I'm not sure it's going to make much of a difference ten months from now.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

I don't speak with a lot of Republicans, so I don't know what they are thinking. But I too get the sense that McCain just doesn't want it enough anymore, and has been going through the motions.

[J.S.]

I think you're right but McCain may not be so easy to beat, especially if foreign policy issues become paramount again, and you can bet on it that Osama Bin Laden has a juicy tape just waiting for October.

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