Neither Huntsman nor Paul has a realistic chance of winning the Republican nomination
FIVE REPUBLICAN presidential hopefuls packed their bags yesterday and flew to South Carolina, which will hold the next primary on January 21st.
Mitt Romney moves south fortified by his resounding 39.4 per cent victory in New Hampshire. “It’s a good boost going into South Carolina, which is going to be an uphill climb,” he told MSNBC yesterday.
Romney made history by becoming the first non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. It has become increasingly difficult for rivals to refute his twin doctrine of electability and inevitability. If he wins on January 21st, and again in Florida on January 31st, he will have virtually tied down the Republican nomination.
Though it will be technically impossible for Romney to obtain the 1,144 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination before April, funding for his rivals’ campaigns will dry up if he wins South Carolina and Florida.
The three socially conservative candidates, Newt Gingrich (9.4 per cent), Rick Santorum (9.3 per cent) and Rick Perry (1 per cent), were the big losers in the New Hampshire primary, but hope to recover some of their lost momentum in South Carolina, which has a strong evangelical presence and an unemployment rate double that of New Hampshire.
But as Romney pointed out yesterday, he won a majority of social conservative and evangelical votes in New Hampshire. “They’re looking for a commander-in-chief, not a pastor-in-chief,” he said.
Gingrich is broadcasting an advertisement in South Carolina detailing Romney’s shifts on abortion, in the hope of turning social conservatives there against him.
One or more candidates are likely to give up after South Carolina, because of the high cost of competing in Florida. The main questions in South Carolina are whether Perry can revive his campaign, and how much Gingrich, who has just received a $5 million donation from a Las Vegas casino owner, can hurt Romney.
Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who came second and third in New Hampshire, with 22.8 per cent and 16.8 per cent respectively, provide a cushion between Romney and the social conservatives. Paul, at 76 the eldest candidate with the youngest following, was ebullient at his celebration in a packed banqueting hall in Manchester on Tuesday night, joking that “We are nibbling at heels” and boasting that “We are dangerous to the status quo of this country.”
But the majority of Paul and Huntsman voters are independents outside the Republican party, and neither has a realistic chance of winning the nomination.
Surrounded by his wife and sons, Romney took on a presidential aura as he delivered his first scripted speech from a teleprompter. Unlike the other candidates – or even the White House – Romney’s campaign transmitted the text to journalists as Romney began speaking.
“Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we go back to work,” Romney said. Prefiguring his strategy between now and the November 6th election, Romney accused President Barack Obama of failing to keep the “lofty promises” he made four years ago and recited a woeful litany of unemployment, falling incomes and jobless veterans.
In Romney’s victory speech, Obama was the pessimist; himself the optimist: “Americans know that our future is brighter and better than these troubled times . ... The president has run out of ideas. Now, he’s running out of excuses,” Romney said.
In a country where capitalism is sacred, Romney seems to be turning the dispute over his record at Bain Capital, where he bought struggling companies and fired thousands of employees, to his advantage. The attacks continued on election day, when Perry, already campaigning in South Carolina, called firms such as Bain “vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick. And then they swoop in, they eat the carcass... and they leave the skeleton.”
Right-wing opinion-makers, including the radio host Rush Limbaugh and the conservative National Review, have rushed to Romney’s defence. The Romney campaign says the attacks validate his business experience, and that it is better to air the subject now than later.
In his victory speech, Romney accused Obama of “wanting to put free enterprise on trial” and took aim at Gingrich, alluding to “desperate Republicans” joining forces with Obama. “This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation,” Romney said. “This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.... I will offer the American ideals of economic freedom a clear and unapologetic defence.” Twice, the Republican frontrunner held Europe up as a negative model. Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society,” he said. “This president takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America.”
Romney said he wanted supporters “to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become”. He accused the president of “adopting an appeasement strategy” and promised that if elected, he would “insist on a military so powerful no one would think of challenging it”.
Ann Romney, Romney’s wife of 42 years, is often used to warm up audiences before his speeches. Radiant in a white suit, Mrs Romney introduced her husband at the victory party. At one rally before the vote, she teared up and her voice choked when she recounted asking her husband, “‘Mitt, can you save America?’ And his answer was Yes.”