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Romney benefits from being hated

James Forsyth

Tuesday, 5th February 2008

One of the defining features of the race on the Republican side has been just how much the other campaigns dislike Mitt Romney. After the ABC New Hampshire debate where they had all taken it in turns to lay into him, their surrogates in the spin room didn’t event try and disguise the fact that this animus was as much personal as it was political. It also helps explains why Mike Huckabee is always taking shots at Romney not McCain and why the other candidates have not gone nuclear on each other. But this week, the contempt in which he is held by his fellow candidates might actually have helped Romney.

If McCain had spent Sunday and Monday stumping in California with Governor Schwarzenegger he would probably have locked down the state. Instead, he spent a large chunk of these two days in Massachusetts trying to humiliate Romney in his home state--the McCain camp would have just loved to have beaten Romney in the state which he governed. Meanwhile, the race in California is now too close to call and Romney might well pull off a win there that he can use to justify staying in the race and ramping up the negative attacks on McCain.

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Richard

February 5th, 2008 10:05am

Contrary to most reports it looks as though Ron Paul came in as a strong second ahead of McCain in Maine. It seems his campaign is still growing. ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – While most reports about this past weekend’s Maine Caucus focused on the purely symbolic presidential preference poll, in the meaningful race to secure delegates to the state convention Ron Paul is primed to finish second with likely 35 percent of the total delegates. Delegates to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis are elected by the state delegates. Internal results from 10 of 16 counties, including the largest cities of Portland, South Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Augusta, Waterville, Bangor, and Brewer, show Ron Paul picking up 215 of 608 State Convention delegates so far reported, or 35%. “Ron Paul’s strong second place finish in Maine, in which he beat John McCain, is proof that this race is far from over,” said Ron Paul campaign manager Lew Moore. “We’ll continue to battle for every delegate in this wide-open race for the Republican nomination.” In the presidential preference poll, with 70 percent reporting, Ron Paul is in third place just two percentage points behind John McCain. However, the Maine preference poll is purely a beauty contest, and in the actual election of state delegates the so-called “frontrunner” McCain is far behind Ron Paul.