FROM NOW on, like it or not, Mitt Romney is fighting on two fronts. Despite the reality that his three primary victories on Tuesday, in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC, all but make his opponents’ task mathematically impossible – Romney now has more than half the 1,144 delegates needed to win – the Republican frontrunner simply can’t shake them off.
Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul remain determined, it appears, to stay in the race to the end, ensuring that Romney’s electoral message will continue to remain distinctly two-faced.
Romney is starting to climb out of the “severely conservative” hole he has dug for himself, but with difficulty. Having banged the Republican anti-immigrant drum for months he told voters in Wisconsin on Sunday with complete sincerity but little plausibility “We are not anti-immigrant. We are pro-immigrant. We are the party that loves people coming into this country as immigrants.” He has some selling to do ...
And now President Obama has stepped decisively into the field, opening his general election campaign with a broadside against the severe Republican House budget and its architect, new intellectual darling of the right, budget committee chair Paul Ryan, a potential Romney VP candidate. Romney insisted the budget, labelled by Obama “social Darwinism”, wouldn’t necessarily harm the most important programmes, “but just how would he cut $3.3 trillion over a decade?” the New York Times asked.
Just as importantly as the upping of the political rhetoric from the White House is the impressive evidence of Obama’s organisational machine cranking up in crucial swing states. Obama For America has already opened and staffed some 200 offices, with massive fundraising and social media campaigns under way, and some 4,200 election events are scheduled between now and June.
At the same time, still preoccupied with the internal war in his own party, Romney’s own campaign is closing offices as individual primaries recede – while no Republican since Calvin Coolidge has won the White House after losing Florida, Romney closed all three offices in the state after the January 31st primary.
Obama currently leads Romney 48 to 39 per cent in a dozen battleground states which could swing to either party in the general election, according to a Gallup poll on Wednesday. But their head-to-head duel is just beginning, the phoney Republican war still raging. There is still all to play for.