G.O.P. to Mitt: We Still Don’t Really Like You
G.O.P. to Mitt: We Still Don’t Really Like You
Posted by John Cassidy
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So much for the theory I rehearsed yesterday that Romney might effectively wrap it all up on Super Tuesday. At about ten-thirty last night, I was thinking of taking the Delta shuttle up to Logan this morning and throwing myself into Boston Harbor along with Mitt, who, at that stage, was still about seven thousand votes behind in Ohio. With Santorum having already picked up victories in Oklahoma and Tennessee, it was looking like South Carolina and Colorado all over again for America’s least favorite leveraged-buyout tycoon. The only places he had won were his own state of Massachusetts; Virginia, where his sole competition was Ron Paul; and Vermont, where his victory margin appeared to be smaller than expected.
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton et al., could hardly hide their smirks. The filmmaker Michael Moore didn’t even try to. “What does it say about Romney that he can’t even beat the guy who couldn’t file the papers,” he asked, referring to Santorum’s failure to get on the ballot in Virginia and complete all the necessary forms in Ohio. “This is the biggest clown show.” Over on CNN, Paul Begala, an equally objective judge, opined: “He’s just not very good at this. He’s just not a very good politician.”
The late surge in Romney votes in the suburban precincts around Cleveland and Cincinnati saved me an airfare, and saved Romney a lot more than that. But nobody outside the battalion of consultants, fixers, and flacks who are on the former Bainie’s payroll could say that Super Tuesday turned out to be anything like the knockout blow he had been hoping to land on his opponents.
Yes, when the final tallies are in, Romney will have accumulated more delegates than anybody else—about two hundred and thirty, according to the Wall Street Journal—and his slow but remorseless march to the nomination will still be on track. That is what Romney was referring to in his distinctly lackluster victory speech, when he said, “Tomorrow, we wake up and we start again.” Unless Newt Gingrich drops out quickly and endorses Santorum—not much chance of that: see below—it remains virtually impossible to see how Mitt can be denied the nomination. But, oh, what a painful victory march it is turning into.
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/03/mitt-romney-after-super-tuesday.html
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