Republicans Starting to Rethink Romney?

Republicans Starting to Rethink Romney?

Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker
Feb. 24, 2012

During the 2008 primaries, one of the first signs that early frontrunner Hillary Clinton was in trouble was when elected officials and party operatives began to shift their support from Clinton to Barack Obama. (Among several others, Congressman John Lewis, the civil-rights leader, and George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, switched sides.)

So far, Rick Santorum hasn’t been able to convince many party leaders that he is a better bet than Romney. The only prominent switcher is former Ohio senator Mike DeWine. He endorsed Romney last October, saying, “I stand with Mitt Romney. America needs Mitt Romney.” Last week, he retracted his endorsement and helped Santorum kick off his Ohio campaign, citing Romney’s negative advertisements as the reason. “To be elected President, you have to do more than tear down your opponents,” DeWine said in a press release. “You have to give the American people a reason to vote for you—a reason to hope—a reason to believe that under your leadership, America will be better. Rick Santorum has done that. Sadly, Governor Romney has not.”

DeWine is still an outlier, but we are starting to see a trickle of Romney backers, and Republican operatives whose bosses have backed Romney, expressing misgivings. Yesterday, former Governor Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race last month and endorsed Romney, announced on MSNBC that “the Republican Party is broken,” and he called for a third-party movement as the only way to address what he believes are the big issues of the day. Here’s more of what he said the morning after Wednesday’s debate on CNN:

I was thinking last night as we were watching some of the debate play out, gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff. I thought about Eisenhower and the Interstate. I thought about forty years ago this month when Richard Nixon stepped off the plane in China and changed the world by that balance of power relationship. You think about Ronald Reagan bringing an end to the Cold War. A lot of big bold visionary stuff locked up in the history of the Republican party and I see zero evidence of people getting out there and addressing the economic deficit, which is a national-security problem for heavens sake, and addressing the trust deficit….

I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas. That ain’t going to be me, by the way. I know the next question. I’m not interested in that. But someone’s going to step up at some point and they are going to say, “We’ve had enough of this.” The real issues are not being addressed and it’s time we put forward an alternative vision of bold thinking. We might not win but we can certainly influence the debate.

While Huntsman obviously isn’t considering moving to Santorum, he’s another élite Republican who clearly has deep misgivings about Romney. Somewhat illogically, he went on to say that he still thought Romney was the “best person” to deal with the economy, but he insisted that he wasn’t a surrogate for him. “I’m looking at the political marketplace, and I’m saying this duopoly is tired and we’re stuck in a rut,” he said.

Now today comes this excellent Dan Balz article in the Washington Post in which Balz notes that even if Romney wins both Arizona and Michigan on Tuesday he will not have ended doubts about his candidacy, and the race will continue. What caught my eye was a quote affirming this thesis from Mike DuHaime, a top political strategist for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is perhaps the most significant elected official to endorse Romney. Usually when someone like Christie gets on board, his network of fundraisers and advisers do as well. But DuHaime was surprisingly candid in his assessment of Romney’s troubles:

I think he would remain in the driver’s seat if he wins, but this campaign season has seemed to be momentum-proof, so [victories next week] will only last until Super Tuesday, when he will need another strong showing…. Given his background in Michigan and his family roots, he is expected to do well, which sometimes limits the momentum, as we saw after a convincing win in New Hampshire.

You can’t blame a guy for being honest, but DuHaime’s remarks, as well as DeWine’s and Huntsman’s, suggest the lack of enthusiasm for Romney is getting more pronounced rather than less as the campaign goes on. Victory has a way of suppressing such doubts, but, as Balz notes, even with wins on Tuesday, Romney will be a long way from wrapping up the nomination. Until then, keep an eye on any further erosion of support for Romney from party élites. That’s the canary in the coal mine.