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Decision time for Mitt

James Forsyth

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

Tonight’s Republican debate at the Reagan Library in California is Mitt Romney’s last best chance to stop John McCain. Romney needs a powerful, game-changing moment if he is to prevent McCain from pretty much wrapping things up on Super Tuesday.

The problem for Romney is that there are several obstacles to this. First, the debate comes just a day after he has lost the most important primary so far. Attacking McCain aggressively, could just look like sour grapes. Second, McCain has a defender on stage in Mike Huckabee. Throughout this contest, McCain and Huckbee have worked together against Romney—both needed to beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively—and Huckabee says that there is a “bond” between the two men. If Romney launches a full frontal assault on McCain, he could find himself outnumbered in the ensuing fight and there are few people in politics better at wielding a verbal knife than Huckabee. Finally, there is the Reagan element. McCain has far better Reagan creds than Romney. McCain can talk about how Reagan’s words inspired him and his fellow POWs in Vietnam and his role in the Reagan revolution in the 1980s. By contrast, Romney famously said when running for the Senate in Massachusetts that he was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush and that he didn’t want to go back to the era of Reagan-Bush. If Romney tries to attack McCain’s Republican creds, expect McCain to liberally invoke Reagan’s name and throw Romney’s words back in his face.

I’ll be live blogging the debate which starts at 1am UK time and 8pm eastern.