A reader writes asking if I wish to reconsider my past certainty that Mitt Romney is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee? No, not really. This is less a matter of Mr Romney’s strengths as a front-runner and more a question of the impossibility of selecting any of his rivals. Newt Gingrich’s resurrection in South Carolina was startling but scarcely dooms Mr Romney’s prospects. As Daniel Larison says:
I agree entirely, with only this proviso: if the Republican party does choose Mr Gingrich it deserves everything it gets in November. And it will get a thumping. Betting on the conservative movement’s sanity might seem a mug’s game but since the alternatives to Romney are preposterous the party, reluctantly, must settle for the merely ridiculous.Romney can be a dishonest demagogue, but Gingrich is the one who thinks (or pretends to think) the “Kenyan anti-colonialist” theory about Obama makes sense. Many Republicans are unenthusiastic about Romney, but far more people nationwide can’t stand Gingrich. Romney has a record of trying to have things both ways on many issues, but as far as I know he has never been on both sides of a major issue within the same month. Gingrich has that unfortunate distinction. Gingrich isn’t going to be the nominee. The Republican primary electorate can’t be that stupid.
Nevertheless, it is in the media’s interests to do its best to boost Mr Gingrich’s chances. This allows the circus to keep touring America and, besides, the notion of a Gingrich-Obama contest is plainly more entertaining than the dreariness of a Romney-Obama tussle. Could Romney lose? Of course he could but the odds remain in his favour.
Granted, now that Iowa has been redefined as a victory for Rick Santorum, Romney has as many victories as Gingrich (one). Nevertheless, despite his weaknesses (always apparent, even to those who actually vote for Mitt) he remains a more credible candidate than Gingrich. And not just because Newt wants to colonise the moon.
Gingrich’s surge in South Carolina can be explained as a reaction against the general worthlessness of the field that led Republican voters to select the most entertaining candidate and, just as vitally, the man who made voters feel best about themselves. Gingrich’s demagoguery is the rebarbative howl of the (largely) white and male conservative who thinks the rules and norms of contemporary America are grotesquely stacked against the dominant culture that made the United States the greatest nation in the history of mankind. It is a statement of cultural affiliation not of politics. Or, to put it another way, politics is culture not policy.
And what is Gingrich’s campaign actually about? Apart from typically loopy notions such as colonising the moon, nothing more than a declaration of independence from a contemptuous (and contemptible) liberal media and an anti-American elite that’s notionally happy to embrace American decline. It is a brand of politics that bathes in the warm, comforting waters of victimhood but that has nothing useful to say about the actual challenges the United States faces. If this is so then it is about poking people in the eye, not about problem-solving. Indeed, while defeating suspiciously-cosmopolitan opponents is dandy, losing to them is also acceptable. For defeat reinforces the suspicion that all that’s good and holy is under attack. To the Alamo, my friends!
Gingrich offers a politics of the laager. Is there more to American conservatism than this? Of course there is and must be. I still think voters will appreciate this in sufficient numbers to prove Gingrich wrong but perhaps this is too optimistic a view. Romney, desperate and dire as he is, may be a fake but in this instance the fraud is better, that is less grim, than the real thing.
And, anyway, one defeat does not mean it is over for Romney. As Jonathan Bernstein reminds us, no-one has ever enjoyed a clean sweep: John McCain lost 19 states, George W Bush 7, Bob Dole 6, George HW Bush 9 and even Ronald Reagan lost 6 primaries in 1980. So we should be wary, especially in this tumultuous contest, of pronouncing Romney dead on the back of one defeat (in which, mind you, he doubled his 2008 share of the vote in South Carolina).
Nate Silver thinks Florida will be close but cautions that Gingrich’s momentum may have stalled. Perhaps. There is, god help us, another debate tonight and perhaps this will be the occasion for another lurch in favour of one candidate or another.
Finally: Republican voters are plainly unimpressed with the choices available to them but they deserve better than to be teased by the idea, entertaining though it be, that some valiant knight could enter the race at this late stage. Not with filing deadlines having closed in so many states (controlling something like 900 delegates) they can’t.
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