Primary states

SUMMARY

The candidates may split up a bit in February. The evangelicals in Iowa may get a hard look at Pawlenty and perhaps Bachmann and Palin. Meanwhile the fiscal conservatives like Huntsman and Romney may downplay Iowa, or skip it entirely, breaking the hearts of hotel owners across Iowa, in their haste to go to New Hampshire and fight for the more moderate voters there. The rubber match may be South Carolina, where the survivors of the Iowa and New Hampshire voting will shamelessly woo Governor Haley and Senator DeMint, king of the teahadists. The Republicans would dearly love to go into Super Tuesday having a clearer idea of who the top one or two names will be. Click on one of three links below, if you want to jump to a particular section.

Iowa
New Hampshire
South Carolina and Nevada
Super Tuesday and beyond

DETAILS

Iowa

Iowa. A late May 2011 poll shows Romney leading with 21 percent support, followed by Palin and Cain at 15, and then Gingrich, Bachmann and Pawlenty all bunched around 10-12. Romney was weakest among men, and among the far right; Pawlenty, interestingly, does best among those who are conservative enough to hate Romney but not so conservative that they're willing to embrace a doomed purist like Bachmann. If the Iowa far-right vote was united behind one candidate, Pawlenty as the far-right candidate could compete with Romney, but Cain and the ladies could not.

So with Huckabee out of the race Romney leads in Iowa, as he does in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. You would think he would want to win both and nail down the nomination right at the beginning, but so far he has shown great ambivalence to competing in the Iowa caucuses. Will Romney compete in Iowa, and if so, how energetically? This depends on at least five factors.

First, do Iowans want him there? Many Iowans do, because if Iowa attains a reputation as the caucus which is open only to wingnuts, and particularly if they give the 2012 caucus win to some circus freak who flames out in the primaries which follow, then candidates who don’t drink tea may begin skipping Iowa in future races. Romney wants to know: do the Iowans like him enough to actually vote for him when he comes? But they are asking the obverse question: why is it taking him so long to commit to truly contesting Iowa, particularly since he seems to be in the lead there? And if he seems to be fleeing the tea-drinkers in Iowa, how will tea-drinkers in other states view that?

Second, how strong are the evangelicals and tea party? There are in fact fiscal conservatives as well as social conservatives in Iowa: the split was close to 50-50 during the 2008 race, Romney ran passably there, and Iowa donors want to hear candidates talk economics too, before cracking open their wallets. The Iowa governor is more of a fiscal politician than a tea drinker (although even he questioned Romney's health care policy); he was forced to publicly assert that Iowans do indeed care about jobs and other non-social issues out there, so fiscal conservatives should come there to campaign, and social conservatives should come there ready to talk economics. But the evangelicals may have gained the upper hand, energized by the same-sex marriage controversy there and new battles over abortion. If they dominate Iowa, Romney is more likely to skip it.

Third, how united is the tea party, behind one candidate? The sooner they unite behind one pick, the worse Romney will do in Iowa. If a single candidate like Pawlenty is obviously wrapping up the Iowa vote, Romney may move on to New Hampshire, but if two evenly-matched tea-drinkers are killing each other in a fratricidal war, Romney could come in and shoot for an upset. Pawlenty called for an end to ethanol subsidies, and is still scrambling to make any headway with evangelicals; Palin has strong support in Iowa, and Rachel Maddow is one of many who expect Bachmann to do very well, but neither woman has announced.

One thing that may help him is that Bachmann and Pawlenty didn’t get along in Minnesota and don't get along now. Pawlenty aides say she was hard to work with: when she attacked his proposed cigarette tax, she was stripped of her leadership post. Pawlenty is irritated that Bachmann is trying to shove ahead of him on the path to the White House; his aides, who include a former Bachmann chief of staff, are peeved that even in Minnesota the tea party prefers her to him, and they worry that her participation in the race will split the tea party and give the nomination to Romney. Bachmann returns the ill will: she happily pointed out Pawlenty’s praise of Romney’s health care plan and warned that voters wouldn’t like it; she refuses to commit to campaigning for him if he gets the nomination.

Generally speaking, the weird thing about the civil war in the race right now, is that the candidates are already running attacks against each other, which accuse opponents of “crimes” that are appalling to teahadists but sound like a big nothing to sane people. One ad accuses Huntsman of, gasp! winning support from independents and Democrats, supporting John McCain, promising to put people first, calling health care a right, supporting carbon pricing, and criticizing excessive partisanship.

The horror.

Shortly thereafter an ad accused Pawlenty of promising to spend stimulus money, admitting that the recession caused deficits, promising to get his constituents enrolled in health coverage, and endorsing the facts on climate change.

The blackguard.

Fourth, will he have the center to himself? Huntsman is skipping Iowa, and that just leaves the man from Minnesota. Is Pawlenty making any headway with fiscal conservatives?

Fifth, could Romney just dip in his toes, entering the Iowa race but downplaying his effort there? Possibly. He still has contacts in every county, but he will have a smaller presence there than he did in 2008, and he will skip the August straw poll in Ames and in other early-state sites. Even his fans in Iowa are keeping their powder dry, trying to figure out whether he's coming there. Recently he visited Iowa and sent very mixed messages: on the one hand he's committed to the caucuses and will visit the state, but he's not sure he'll put effort into the state. One bad sign for Iowans: Romney announcing his candidacy in New Hampshire; he has a home there and launched his exploratory committee there. 

So, if Iowans really try to bring Romney into the state, if the tea party is weak and divided, if Huntsman is out of the picture, then Romney will wade in more deeply. But if he sees a hostile environment, with a tea army united behind someone like Palin, and Pawlenty shooting at him from the left (unlikely), then it’s off to Manchester.

Recently a group of Iowa political observers discussed the field in Iowa and the consensus seemed to favor the safe-looking Pawlenty, who is working hard there, and the very popular Bachmann. Bachmann has cleverly toned down her rhetoric and hired rightwing hero Kent Sorenson, and is expected to get the critical endorsement of Rep. Steve King, although they think Bachmann's fate depends on Palin. They have doubts about Gingrich, Cain and Paul, particularly after Paul's comment on the bin Laden raid, and they’re not sure whether Romney is even coming. Interestingly, recent Iowa press coverage of the caucus was all about Bachmann and Palin: Pawlenty seemingly couldn't draw an audience if he stripped naked and set himself on fire. 

A new indicator of who is serious about Iowa: a group of candidates is planning a two-week tour through Iowa. Pawlenty, Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain, Johnson and probably Santorum are going. Romney and Huntsman are not.  Some observers suggest that Romney and Huntsman, as well as Gingrich to a certain extent, are wary of Iowa because of Bachmann. But the fact remains that neither Pawlenty nor Bachmann has caught fire in Iowa polls yet.

New Hampshire

In the New Hampshire primary, many of the voters on the GOP side will be independents: seeing who they vote for may be an indicator of what they want to hear from both parties in the general election. Romney is miles ahead of everybody in state polling: he is now at 32 percent, followed by Paul at 9, Gingrich and Giuliani at 6, Palin at 5, and a whole lot of people at 4: Pawlenty, Bachmann, Cain, Huntsman.

Huntsman really needs to bloody Romney here, because unlike Pawlenty he seems to have little chance to score big in Iowa or Carolina; Huntsman is already up there politely drawing contrasts between himself and Romney, although he is focusing on debt while Romney focuses on jobs so he may have a little trouble penetrating that market. Giuliani is already fundraising there, and joined Palin in smacking Romney around on the day of Romney's campaign announcement; about the same time tea-party favorite Joe Miller was walloping Romney too (Ron Paul started whacking Romney a couple of days later in an email). The trick with bashing Romneycare is that a lot of Republicans, back in saner times, spoke favorably of Romneylike health policies. 

Bachmann has begun planning a New Hampshire schedule and hiring staff. Santorum is hiring also. Watch to see who shows up for their June debate; weirdly Huntsman won't be there, but Bachmann will go.

If anyone is to catch up to Romney, they will seek the endorsement of the all-important Manchester Union Leader. The paper slaughtered Romney in 2008 and in 2011 published an op-ed slamming RomneyCare; the publisher said an endorsement of Romney was unlikely, but will they pound him over and over like last time? Here's a bad sign: the day Romney announced his candidacy, he was blown off the front page entirely, not only by Palin's incursion into New England, but also by by a half-dozen other local news stories. So the Leader hasn't forgiven Romney.

New Hampshire voters are still undecided; a New Hampshire poll shows that the primary voters aren’t all that angry at Romney over health care, but he is not someone people warm up to. Romney has been making more effort in New Hampshire than in Iowa, keeping his 2008 team mostly intact, visiting, fundraising.

South Carolina and Nevada

South Carolina Governor and tea-party leader Nikki Haley has closed the door to joining the GOP ticket as a running mate, but she has every intention of playing Primary Cop and kingmaker: everyone wants her endorsement. Romney endorsed her during her 2009 gubernatorial run and gave her $63,000; she supported Romney last time when she was in the Legislature, but is remaining neutral so far, for 2012. Haley actually delighted Romney’s opponents by saying his health plan was problematic; the state party chair said the same. Romney calls Haley on the phone: the closer they get to the primary, the greater his desperation will be.

If you really want to scrutinize Haley like one of those Kremlinologists watching to see who was closest to Brezhnev during the May Day parades, then watch to see who she is hanging around with the most. One of her allies, Nathan Ballentine, is a Romney fan, while Jon Lerner is a Pawlenty man.

Haley seemed to boost Gingrich by warning against personal attacks that have nothing to do with policy, and then slammed Gingrich for his stance on the Ryan budget.

Romney really, really would like Haley's backing, because he is unlikely to get the backing of the other big playmaker in South Carolina, Senator DeMint, a key tea-party leader. DeMint already said he won't back Romney unless he renounces his health care plan, which Romney seems unlikely to do. In such a case, DeMint could support the tea candidate, possibly the Iowa winner, who could then parlay that into a strong Super Tuesday campaign.

In 2008 social conservatives seemingly ran Romney out of South Carolina because he was a Mormon, and some say the hostility to Mormons hasn't abated; likewise, not long ago they were slapping Lindsey Graham around for talking electability instead of purity in candidates, but now they’re warming up to the idea of finding a candidate who can compete with Obama. Although social issues are big down there, fiscal conservatives like Romney will also get a hearing since state unemployment is rising and the state is working to cut unemployment coverage: in fact non-tea fiscal conservatives may seriously contest South Carolina because Iowa and Nevada are heavy with social conservatives and New Hampshire will probably go strong for Romney. After Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina could be the key tie-breaker.

Nevada. One observer insisted that Huntsman must win Nevada because it is Mormon-heavy, but of course he's not the only Mormon in the race.

Super Tuesday and beyond

Then Super Tuesday for all the marbles. Romney did terribly last time. It could very well be that the tea party will get their choice for nominee simply because the early contests are mostly down south where men like Romney are about as popular as revenooers and Billy Sherman.

But there's another force at work. As we noted in another article, the Republicans changed their rules for primaries and caucuses for 2012, decreeing that states which dole out delegates on a winner-take-all basis will have to wait until April or later. The biggest impact of this change will come on Super Tuesday, which generally falls early in the process: in 2008 21 states held GOP primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, and most if not all were winner-take-all, so they will need to either change their rules or give up that attractive early primary slot. For 2012, it is very unclear which states will opt to keep their Super Tuesday slots.

Although the original intent of the Super-Tuesday system was to give southern states a bigger say in picking presidential nominees, Party watchers think the 2012 Super Tuesday lineup may be more geographically balanced, with the south represented by Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee, while the rest of the country will vote in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Utah. These are just guesses, of course, but if the lineup looks something like that, then someone like Romney has a shot. A traditional southern-heavy Super Tuesday would have been loaded with evangelicals who think Mormonism is a half-step away from the Branch Davidians, but if the Super Tuesday lineup looks like the 14 states enumerated above, then Romney could round up quite a few non-tea-drinking fiscal conservatives, and donors, in New York, New Jersey and California.

The trick, of course, is that local politicians across the country can read the calendar themselves. They know that if Romney manages to stumble through Super Tuesday without a lot of southern harpoons in his carcass, then he could rumble all the way to the nomination and make all their tea-party fantasies evaporate. So they could very well go to their legislators and say “let’s give up our winner-take-all system so we can stay in the Super Tuesday system and build an anti-Romney firewall in March.” 

Such a stop-Romney strategy could be very effective, particularly if Super Tuesday is tilted toward southern states. A spring 2011 Georgia poll showed that 26 percent of Georgia Republicans preferred favorite sun Herman Cain, followed by Bachmann at 13, Gingrich 12, Palin 11, Romney 10, Pawlenty 1, Paul 1. A number of eye-openers in that poll: the top two vote-getters in Republican Georgia are a black man and a woman, Gingrich gets crushed by the black guy two to one in his home state, and Pawlenty's not catching on down south. But the big deal here is that the top four vote getters are all hardline bomb-throwers who love the tea party, even if the tea party may have soured on Gingrich: if those hardline votes all unite behind someone like Bachmann or Cain, then Romney gets crushed 62 to 10. And if it goes like that for Romney all across the south...Yikes. What does he do then, go north and seek delegates in the Rust Belt after he advocated letting the auto industry go bankrupt?