Race for the Republican Nomination: Updated Analysis

About a month ago, I wrote a three-part series analyzing the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination.  You can read it here, here, and here.

I just finished watching the debateoftheweek on CNN, and here’s my updated assessment of the state of the race:

MITT ROMNEY: Romney remains the front-runner through his strong debate performances and his well-run campaign.  He consistently demonstrates a strong command of the issues and a skillful ability to articulate his views convincingly.  Conservatives (including myself) have been looking for an alternative to Romney due to his opportunistic nature and history of changing his positions to suit the needs of whatever campaign he is running at any given time.  However, Romney’s consistently strong performance as a candidate while his opponents each have risen and fallen in turn is instilling confidence that he can defeat Obama.  His aura of electability is a factor that could make him acceptable even to reluctant conservatives in a year in which defeating Barack Obama is seen as imperative.  Because of Romney’s consistently strong performance, as contrasted with the lack of consistency by his opponents, an air of inevitability is beginning to attach to him.

RICK PERRY: In part 3 of my aforesaid three-part series, written immediately after Perry entered the race, I wrote that the race was Perry’s to lose.  At that time, he had enormous wind at his back because he appeared to be a viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.  Since then, however, Perry has succeeded in losing the race through his weak debate performances and failure to run a strong organized campaign.  The race was his to lose:  Note that the base didn’t abandon Perry.   Perry lost the base through his weak performance as a candidate.  It is conceivable that he could recover given that there are no other strong conservative candidates in the race, but to do so he will need to dramatically improve both his debate performances and his overall campaign.  And his opportunity to recover is growing short.

HERMAN CAIN: Now that Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry have faltered as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, the conservative base is now giving Cain his shot.  Unlike Bachmann and Perry, Cain has acquitted himself reasonably well.  He is charismatic and even charming, articulates his conservative views well and with conviction, and has an ingratiating ability to clean up his gaffes by candidly admitting them.  For those reasons, Cain might have staying power as the conservative challenger to Romney.  However, with due respect to my colleague Brian Kirwin’s analysis, it’s hard for me to imagine that Cain can beat Romney.  His centerpiece 9-9-9 plan is both bad policy and easy to demagogue.  More importantly, though, Cain’s lack of experience could cause some conservatives to worry that he would have difficulty defeating Obama.  (Yes, I know, Obama also lacked experience when he ran in 2008.  But Obama had the benefit of running against John McCain, which was tantamount to running virtually unopposed.  Our nominee in 2012 will not have that luxury.)

NEWT GINGRICH: Gingrich is a great debater, and he usually delivers the best lines, but he has nowhere near the overall charisma or campaign organization to emerge into the first tier of candidates.  He helps focus the race on serious policy matters, but I don’t see him having any realistic chance of winning the nomination.

MICHELLE BACHMANN: Bachmann had her fifteen minutes of fame as the conservative challenger to Romney back in July and August, but conservatives fled from her as soon as  another apparently viable conservative entered the race (Perry).  Since that time, Bachmann has made gaffe after gaffe and has run a campaign of cheap one-liners and embarrassing misstatements of facts that has proven that she does not deserve to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.  And that’s why conservatives have not returned to her in the wake of Perry’s implosion.  Picture Bachmann in a leather jacket on water skis headed up a ramp adjacent to some carnivorous fish.

RON PAUL: Paul is the perennial candidate who has a strong and faithful cult following but no chance of actually winning the nomination.  That said, his articulation of well-informed and highly principled libertarian views often keeps the other candidates honest, and in that manner he has played an interesting and constructive role in this race.

RICK SANTORUM: Santorum is a conservative former senator who has never gained traction despite the hunger among the Republican base for a conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.  That fact speaks volumes about his lack of appeal as a national candidate.  There does not seem to be any real rationale for his remaining in the race, although I guess he’s hoping that if Cain falters he’ll get the next look from the base and peak at the perfect time.  Sorry, Rick, it ain’t gonna happen.

JON HUNTSMAN: Huntsman apparently thinks he can win the nomination by being the only moderate in the race.  He’s wrong.  There is no appetite among Republicans for moderation in the wake of the last three years of leftist radicalism from the current president.  The base is demanding principled proactivity to undo the statism that has been imposed on us, and no one believes that Jon Huntsman would provide such leadership.  More problematic for him is that nothing distinguishes him from frontrunner Mitt Romney other than that he is an even less dependable conservative than Romney.  Huntsman has never gained traction in this race and never will.

GARY JOHNSON: Johnson has not gained any traction and has no chance of winning.  His goal seems to be to succeed Ron Paul as the libertarian standard-bearer after this year.  His failure to gain any traction in this race will probably result in him failing in this objective – and the fact that Paul’s son is now a sitting U.S. senator could also impede that goal.

BUDDY ROEMER: Buddy who?  I included him in this post just so he can get excited that one more article will pop up when his name is Googled.

BOTTOM LINE: At this point, for better or for worse, it seems clear to me that Romney is the strong favorite to win the nomination – especially since he has strong leads in the early primary states.  Personally, I’m not excited about him (as I’ve previously written), but I am impressed with his skills as a candidate and with how well his campaign is being run.  If I become convinced that Romney’s victory is inevitable, then I may jump on board with him in the spirit of wanting the nomination contest to be wrapped up quickly so our party can unify behind our nominee and get to work going after Obama.  I’m not there yet, but that air of inevitability is growing stronger around Romney every day….

For more analysis of the Republican nomination race, see the latest issue of Bearing Drift magazine here.

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About the author

Ken Falkenstein

Ken Falkenstein has been a staffer in the United States Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates. He has managed political campaigns. He was a military intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in West Germany during the Cold War. He is currently a civil litigation attorney with Poole Mahoney, P.C. in Virginia Beach. But his concern for his kids' future is what most informs his writing.