Mitt Romney’s romp to the Republican nomination has not been without its troubles but Romney’s difficulties are as nothing compared to those facing a press corps determined to string the primary season out for as long as possible. A Romney victory in South Carolina is bad news for the media. It will ruin the fun. So, with that appalling prospect looming, it’s necessary to get creative. Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum wins today’s gong for his intriguing theory that Romney is in trouble because he keeps winning.
Pity Mitt Romney. It’s hard to imagine anyone else who could do what he’s just done: become the first non-incumbent Republican to win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary since 1976, when Iowa began to matter, and still manage to seem somehow in trouble. Why should such good news still sound bad? Because while Romney far outperformed his nearest rival here in his almost home state (and a state where he, in fact, owns a home), that’s just what he was supposed to do, so the market had already discounted the victory before the last polls closed. And because he still faces a field full of angry and unpredictable rivals, at least some of whom are willing to spend money and time attacking him bitterly in the coming South Carolina primary—and perhaps well beyond.
Each victory seems to complicate Romney’s situation—not quickly clarify it, as should be the case. His fellow contenders who fancy themselves the true conservatives in the race are ready and willing to attack Romney as a “vulture” capitalist (as the trailing Rick Perry did) in ways that surely help Barack Obama most of all. There is anti-Romney material ricocheting around in cyber-space that will never, ever go away.
The good news, of course, only sounds bad if you’re an idiot. Or a pundit. Even if you want to play the Expectations Game, any sensible observer should have little difficulty in appreciating that Romney exceeded expectations in Iowa and met them in New Hampshire. What a disaster!
Being a pundit, however, Purdum cannot allow this. Hence this pretence that Romney’s campaign is “complicated” by victory. Indeed it is! Think how much simpler Romney’s task would be if he kept losing! Why, he’d be much better placed then, would he not?
Purdum appears to think – or pretends to think – it surprising that Romney’s rivals are attacking the front-runner. Again, a non-idiot might think this evidence that Romney is winning. But that reckons without the infinite sagacity of the pundit class for whom the increasing desperation of the attacks on Romney are evidence of his weakness, not that his rivals are flailing away in the Last Chance saloon.
Even Purdum can’t keep this up forever, however. He admits (and you can sense the frustration here) that “Romney still stands poised to do well in South Carolina”.
Quite. But think of the complications that will ensue from this! For his own sake Mitt needs to start losing. And fast. Otherwise he is doomed.
Sometimes, on the other hand, a front-runner is in a pretty favourable position and the presumptive nominee must be thought more likely to become the actual nominee than candidates who are not, actually, the front-runner or presumptive nominee. This, naturally, is disappointing but it’s also pretty simple stuff.
Could something still happen to derail Mitt? Sure. But who is actually going to beat him? Not just in South Carlonia, but across the country?
[Hat-tip: Jack Shafer]
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