Given Rick Santorum’s recent, come-from-behind primary wins, and the fact that Super Tuesday is just a few short weeks away, the February 28 primary in Michigan is shaping up to be more important than anyone could have predicted. According to the most optimistic polling that I’ve seen, Romney, the son of former Michigan Governor George Romney, is expected to finish 6-points behind Santorum. (Other polls have him lagging by more than 10%.) FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who appeared on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown last night, believes, for a number of reasons, that Michigan could be Romney’s, “last chance to win the race cleanly.” And, as a result, advertising dollars are being pumped into the mitten state by both campaigns. The question is… How dirty will things get, if Santorum doesn’t implode, like all of those that have come before him, and Romney can’t find a way to chip away at his lead?
[There are only three primaries left between now and Super Tuesday (March 6). They are to take place in Arizona (February 28), Michigan (February 28), and Washington (March 3).]
Nate Silver, in his New York Times column today, elaborated on the advertising war shaping up in Michigan. Here’s a clip:
…Mr. Santorum has a larger lead, 15 points, in another poll of Michigan from Public Policy Polling. That firm projects Michigan’s electorate to be decidedly more conservative than it was in 2008. For instance, it projects 48 percent of the voters to be evangelical Christians, up from 39 percent in 2008, and 38 percent of voters to be “very conservative,” up from 24 percent…
So far, Mr. Romney’s campaign has relied more on the “air war” — television advertising. In Florida, where he came from behind to beat Newt Gingrich, he ran far more advertisements than the other candidates.
Almost all of these ads were negative, however, and almost all of them targeted Mr. Gingrich. There are two risks to Mr. Romney if he adopts a similar strategy in Michigan.
First, Mr. Santorum might prove more resilient to the attacks. Mr. Romney will need to develop a more creative line than the one he has used so far, calling Mr. Santorum a “career politician.” That line may produce diminishing returns, since Mr. Romney has leveled a similar charge against opponents like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry in the past, and since it is slightly discordant coming from someone who has spent most of the past six years running for president.
The bigger problem, however, is that negative ads are no way to increase your base; instead, they may alienate key constituencies within the party.
That could be especially important to Mr. Romney because the window of voting through Super Tuesday might represent the last chance for him to win the nomination by consensus, with voters coalescing around him. To date, they have rejected several opportunities to do so, and the evidence probably weighs against their doing so now, but a decisive set of victories in different parts of the country would allow Mr. Romney to make a credible pitch to voters and party elites.
If, however, Mr. Romney gets only narrow wins in states like Michigan and Arizona after a negatively charged campaign, he would probably be the favorite to win the nomination, but a lot of those winning scenarios would be ugly ones, including an outside chance at a deadlocked convention…
And, not having the Republican base behind him could doom Romney when it comes time for the general election, assuming he wins the primary, as Obama’s approval numbers continue to climb with every positive report on job creation. So, most poll watchers, from what I can tell, seem to think that Romney will run a positive campaign in Michigan, forgoing the negative tactics that have gotten him this far, and try to pick up some momentum with rank and file Republicans, who have, until now, been filling the coffers of Gingrich, Santorum and the other perceived “culture warriors”. Romney’s first television ad for the Michigan market, which was released today, would appear to confirm this non-attack, let’s-look-Presidential strategy. Here it is:
Not a bad ad… if you can get beyond the fact that the car that he’s driving, or pretending to drive, was made in Canada.
And, here, for comparative purposes, is Santorum’s first ad for the Michigan market, which, on the surface, attacks Romney for having a history of running attack ads. Ironic, right? It’s a great strategy for Santorum, in that it allows him to attack, and poke fun of Romney, who is portrayed by a bumbling look-alike in the ad, while still maintaining the perception that he alone has attained the moral high ground. One might question his use of imagery, though, as the mud being slung throughout the ad brings small-s santorum to mind.
But, thanks to Super PAC spending, that’s not all. There’s also this anti-Santorum ad, released on behalf of the Romney campaign. While it’s not terribly aggressive, it raises a few points that may resonate with the Tea Party set, like the fact that Santorum once voted with Hillary Clinton to extend voting rights to felons.
Romney’s got a hell of a way to go. Michigan should have been an easy win for him, given his ties to the state, and his corporate war chest, but people still can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm for him. And it doesn’t help that he penned that 2008 op-ed in the New York Times advocating against the auto company bailout. Word is Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will be endorsing Romney shortly, but I’m not sure that will carry much weight with the Tea Party types that are rallying around Santorum, in hopes that he might be able to roll back modernity, and restore some illusive sense of American religiosity and pride. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.
Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that Romney is trying as best as he can to spin that New York Times editorial in which he said that we should let the GM and Chrysler fail. Here’s a clip from his op-ed in today’s Detroit News.
I am a son of Detroit. I was born in Harper Hospital and lived in the city until my family moved to Oakland County.
I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan & Trumbull. Cars got in my bones early. And not just any cars, American cars.
When the president of American Motors died suddenly in 1954, my dad, George Romney, was asked to take his place. I was 7 and got my love of cars and chrome and fins and roaring motors from him. I grew up around the industry and watched it flourish. Years later, I watched with sadness as it floundered.
Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.
Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them.
A labor union that had contributed millions to Democrats and his election campaign was granted an ownership share of Chrysler and a major stake in GM, two flagships of the industry.The U.S. Department of Treasury — American taxpayers — was asked to become a majority stockholder of GM. And a politically connected and ethically challenged Obama-campaign contributor, the financier Steven Rattner, was asked to preside over all this as auto czar.
This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.
My view at the time — and I set it out plainly in an op-ed in the New York Times — was that “the American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing.” Instead of a bailout, I favored “managed bankruptcy” as the way forward.
Managed bankruptcy may sound like a death knell. But in fact, it is a way for a troubled company to restructure itself rapidly, entering and leaving the courtroom sometimes in weeks or months instead of years, and then returning to profitable operation.
In the case of Chrysler and GM, that was precisely what the companies needed. Both were saddled with an accumulation of labor, pension, and real estate costs that made them unsustainable. Health and retirement benefits alone amounted to an extra $2,000 baked into the price of every car they produced.
Shorn of those excess costs, and shorn of the bungling management that had driven them into a deep rut, they could re-emerge as vibrant and competitive companies. Ultimately, that is what happened. The course I recommended was eventually followed. GM entered managed bankruptcy in June 2009 and exited it a month later in July…
So, he would have saved the auto companies, but done it in such a way that they could have killed the unions, and driven labor costs down even further. Sounds great, right? Of course, people familiar with the situation at the time, don’t think that Romney’s plan would have worked, as no private firms would have given either GM or Chrysler the money they needed to reorganize after bankruptcy. Here, with more on that, is a clip from today’s New York Times.
…Officials in Mr. Obama’s administration, and many economists in both parties, scoff at Mr. Romney’s suggestion that a managed bankruptcy was possible without the billions of dollars in government aid to the car companies. They say Wall Street and private equity firms in early 2009 were in no position to lend the kind of money that the companies needed to manage the bankruptcy process in an orderly fashion.
They also point out a fact that Mr. Romney neglects to mention in Tuesday’s opinion article: that it was the Bush administration that made the initial loans to General Motors and Chrysler, starting the “bailouts” that Mr. Romney derides…
All I can say with any certainty is that the next few weeks are going to be interesting ones for Michigan, with the candidates moving among us, desperately spinning the truth in order to stay alive and throwing mud (or that delightful mixture of fecal matter and lube shown in the ad above) as they accelerate toward the 28th. That is, if Santorum doesn’t implode before the primary, like Herman, Newt, and Rick did earlier in the season. (Romney’s clear hope is that people will see Santorum as a religious nut, who wants to make birth control illegal, but he’s afraid to say so himself, as it may turn off some of the backward Republican base, who long for the good old days when women had no control over their own fertility.)
So, with all of that said, I’m curious to know which of the ads resonated with you? Do you buy Romney’s explanation as to why he suggested that we let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt? Do you accept Romney’s “I’m a regular Michigander” narrative? If you’re a Democrat, will you be crossing party lines to vote in the Republican primary, in hopes of keeping the crazy train rolling? And, regardless of party affiliation, who will you be voting for come the 28th?
31 Comments
I didn’t link to it in the post, but The Wall Street Journal also has a video on Romney’s rocky road in Michigan.
Daily kos is having a current running debater about whether to support Santorum right now, as in the General election, he less electible. As a politics junkie, I’dlove to see a brokered GOP convention in the summer, with no one holding enough delegates to win. That would be TV worth watching.
The Republican party needs to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt, like the Penn State football program. Through decades of fear mongering and inbreeding, they’ve cultivated a cancer, and I think, finally, the guys at the top are beginning to realize it. I’d say it was funny, if the consequences for America weren’t so terrifying. The fact that a pizza making ass pincher, a serial cheater that was drummed out of the House over ethics violations, and a prehistoric imbecile like Santorum were able to get this far is testament to the fact that the Republican system is not only broken, but dangerous to mankind.
GOP,,,
ROTFLMAO!!!
WL.
How does one go about crossing party lines and voting in the Republican primary? Do you have to register as a Republican? Is there still time?
Elvis,
What about a brokered GOP convention that ends up nominating Jeb Bush? With the family money and political connections and two ex-presidents campaigning, how could Obama hope to win? If I were a Democrat, I would be hoping for a nomination of one of the current group of losers.
Background on the Michigan Republican primary from Metafilter:
The 2012 Michigan Republican primary will take place on February 28, 2012, Michigan was given 59 delegates to the GOP national convention, but this number was reduced to 30 as a penalty for bringing election date forward before 6th March as the GOP rules set. The candidate with the greatest number of votes in each of the 14 Congressional Districts will receive two delegates. The two remaining delegates will be given proportionally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Republican_primary,_2012
Michigan has an “open” primary. Here are details.
Any Michigan Republican is eligible to participate in the primary. A registered voter declares her or his party designation by selecting a Republican ballot at the polls. The voter’s choice becomes public information.
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/MI-R
More:
Voters do not have to declare a political party to vote; but must vote for all one party once they enter the voting booth.
http://www.fairvote.org/congressional-and-presidential-primaries-open-closed-semi-closed-and-top-two#.Tz0NVcpVsvw
Salon has a good article today. Here’s the best part.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/16/rombos_got_nothing_on_santorum/singleton/
… the guy can’t fake authenticity no matter how hard he tries … pretty much sums it up. Romney is a con artist who stands for nothing. He panders to whoever he thinks will benefit him at the time (the OpEd on letting the autos go bankrupt). Counter that with someone who will take us back to the Salem witch trials, who doesn’t believe in science and who is for Tort Reform – as long as it is not his wife -who sues a chiropractor for a 1/2 million for fucking up a back alignment and on whose behalf he testitifies on why 500K is a good amount as oppsed to the 18K of actual follow on medical costs.
Whereas I agree (hard swallow) with EOS that Jeb Bush would make a better candidate – won’t happen. Too much baggage from his retarded brother.
O’rielly was saying this morning that it doesn’t matter who the republican nominee is because gas prices will hit $6 a gallon and Obama will lose no matter what. That’s my only fear, really, that our next president will be whoever th oil companies pick to do their bidding once they’ve rigged the game, which could be Jeb @ a brokered convention like eos said. I’m not worried about any of these clowns beating obama on their own merits.
I suppose if Jeb Bush got the nomination he could select Dick Cheney as his running mate. That way, they could take office just in time to invade Iraq … er, I mean IRAN.
We should alternate every year between big banks and big oil as to who gets to choose the President.
Don’t forget the insurance companies.
An interesting side note about Santorum. He wouldn’t be our nation’s first Catholic president. Kennedy has that distinction. He would, however be our first never nude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnophobia
Did Romney say in his ad, when making the case against the auto bailout, that Obama has done things that the liberals have been trying to do for years? Is he suggesting that the liberals have been longing for decades for an opportunity to bail out the auto companies? That’s one hell of a conspiracy theory.
As for who I’ll be voting for, I’ll be writing in “The rotting corpse of Charlton Heston tied to the front of a black smoke-belching, gas powered raping machine”.
If the camera was another five feet back in the Romney ad, you’d be able to see the dog on the roof of his car.
I agree, all of these guys are clowns. But I feel I should point out that what was left out of this post entirely was any mention of Ron Paul. I’m curious where he stands in all of this. (And I’m not a “RON PAUL 2012” kind of guy, I’m honestly just curious.)
The candidate with the greatest number of votes in each of the 14 Congressional Districts will receive two delegates. The two remaining delegates will be given proportionally.
Well, this is interesting. Mitt could crush Santorum in Oakland County and even narrowly beat him in the state overall and still get almost none of the delegates.
Oops, I meant to put that first part in a quotey thing. How do I do a quotey thing like Eel did up there?
From Sam Stein:
The rest can be found here-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/rick-santorum-michigan-super-pac_n_1284359.html
You’ll find the answer to your coding question here, Mike.
http://www.ncsu.edu/it/edu/html_trng/basic_commands.html
Scroll down till you come to “Blockquote”.
“Romney co-chair resigns after allegations of same-sex relationship with immigrant.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/pvpsb/romney_cochair_resigns_after_allegations_of/
Bob Lutz responded to Romeny’s claims.
http://www.freep.com/article/20120218/BUSINESS01/202180355/Lutz-U-S-auto-bailouts-were-necessary
Romney calculated wrong. When he wrote that “Let Detroit Fail” piece for the New York Times, he clearly never thought that his Presidential prospects would all come down to the Michigan primary. It’s funny how karma works.
Think Progress has a cool info graphic on why the bailout was the right thing to do.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/21/429291/infographic-auto-industry-rescue/
Romney pulls ahead in Michigan.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/mitt-romney-polls-michigan-ahead-arizona-lead_n_1300073.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
Of course, scenes like this make one think that he’s still having a problem connection with the men and women of Michigan.
http://img.ly/em2N
Oh yeah!
Romney has one thing that Santorum doesn’t…… the support of Kid Rock!
http://canton-mi.patch.com/articles/kid-rock-joins-mitt-romney-on-stage-at-royal-oak-music-theatre
Romney: ‘I’ll take a lot of credit’ for saving the auto industry
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/08/romney-ill-take-a-lot-of-credit-for-saving-the-auto-industry/
We desperately need this man to be the Emergency Manager of Detroit. He clearly “gets” us, and what we’re about.
One Trackback
[…] vote for Santorum tomorrow in the Republican primary?By Mark | February 27, 2012A week or so ago, when discussing the Michigan Republican primary, some of you indicated that you intended to cross party lines in oder to vote for Rick Santorum. […]