Frank Campisano
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| Mitt Romney's Florida primary logo and Ron Paul's 2012 campaign logo. |
With the primary season well under way, the Grand Old Party’s field is rapidly narrowing in the race to the 2012 Republican National Convention in August. Although past electoral trends indicate that there should be a clear nominee by May, it is still anybody’s race. The early January primaries and caucus have cleared the field of all except four serious contenders. The candidates have begun battling it out in heated debates as the campaign takes new twists and turns with each passing week.
Business savvy Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has been the frontrunner for the past few months, despite an increasingly narrower lead. The media has attacked Romney for his frequent flip-flopping on key conservative issues, on some occasions offering a complete ideological reversal on a position in a span of less than twenty-four hours. Romney’s record as a successful governor of Massachusetts is a double-edged sword in the race; some of his political actions, including his healthcare reform, have been labeled as too moderate, even too liberal, for a supposedly conservative candidate. Romney has also been criticized for being too rich to relate to middle class voters, with political pundits labeling him as a Wall Street politician. With the perspective that Romney had a relative income of $57,000 a day in 2010 and 2011; his $10,000 ‘bet’ with former candidate Rick Perry is not so funny anymore.
Diehard Constitutionalist Dr. Ron Paul, current Congressman from Texas, has managed to build up a strong support base for his libertarian views. Paul teeters between a solid second or third place in major polls, although he placed fourth in South Carolina. A CBS poll conducted in the first week of January 2012 showed only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul had the polling numbers to go head to head with President Barack Obama in November. Paul’s edge in the race is the strong support he enjoys from the young voters, Democrats, and Independents, and active duty military servicemen and women, four demographic groups where he consistently beats out his fellow G.O.P. contenders. Unfortunately for Dr. Paul, his strategy of slowly taking down second-tier candidates to level the playing field between himself and front runner Mitt Romney has caused much of the mainstream media to dismiss his candidacy as fruitless. Paul has focused his campaign away from winner-take-all primaries and on to smaller, non-binding caucuses where he fares better.
Dark horse Rick Santorum’s post-Iowa Caucus surge seems to have already fizzled out, despite the fact that the Iowa results have been amended to award the former Pennsylvania Senator an early victory. Santorum has since fallen flat in New Hampshire, coming in fifth out of six candidates, and in South Carolina, where he placed third out of four major candidates. Santorum’s controversial views on homosexuality, a potential war with Iran, and abortion led to his defeat in his 2006 Senate reelection race, and the same skeletons in his ideological closet have become targets for his opponents. Without a strong victory on the horizon, Santorum’s fund raising is slowing and he may soon be left with no choice but to suspend his campaign.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich enjoyed a resurgence in the polls after his victory in the South Carolina primary, though his second-place performance in Florida’s primary may be the end of his momentum. The mixed results of Gingrich’s Presidential campaign are due in part to a muddled past including his position as the only Speaker of the House to be investigated for ethics violations and twice divorcing a sickly wife. Despite initially dismissing accusations from his second wife in an interview with ABC that Gingrich requested an open marriage, his own campaign has now backed down from the statement that the interview consisted of falsehoods. Gingrich has also been called a ‘chickenhawk’ by other candidates for advocating war with Iran, despite not fighting in wars himself.
Without a strong string of victories or flowing supply of capital on which to run a campaign, Santorum and Gingrich may be bowing out after March 6, ‘Super Tuesday’, when ten states will hold their earliest elections for the Republican nomination. Both Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the money and support base to keep a campaign running full steam ahead to November, though it is unlikely either candidate will pursue a third party run. Both candidates continue to poll within the margin of error of Barack Obama; no matter whose name ends up on the ballot, the 2012 Presidential election is sure to be one of the most exciting races in years.
