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January 16, 2008

Romney Win Clouds GOP Race

Rick Moran
Republicans made it three for three on Tuesday night; three major nominating contests, three different winning candidates.

There have been so many frontrunners for the GOP nomination over the last year, you can be forgiven for losing track of them. McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain again and now perhaps Mitt Romney have all ridden the tiger and been thrown off - unceremoniously dumped as the GOP electorate can't seem to make up its mind who it wants as a leader.

Romney came through last night with a vitally necessary victory for his campaign:

Romney's triumph in the state where he was born and where his father served as governor further scrambles a GOP field in which no candidate has been able to win more than one major contest.

McCain captured first place in the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8 and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee topped the Iowa field five days earlier. The race now shifts to South Carolina, where a tough three-way contest is expected in the first Southern state to vote this primary season. McCain and Huckabee flew to the Palmetto State before the voting in Michigan ended, and Romney will head there Wednesday for a bus tour through the state.

With 89 percent counted, Romney had won 39 percent of the vote to McCain's 30 percent. Huckabee trailed with 16 percent. The surprisingly easy win in Michigan by a candidate whom many had written off vaults Romney back into contention and reaffirms the sharpened campaign message that he debuted several days ago: an attack on Washington and an emphasis on the need for dramatic change in the way politics is practiced.
Romney is at least the second candidate that the MSM had "written off" who has now come back and surged into contention. It makes one wonder why anyone listens to anything they have to say about this campaign. In fact, being declared dead by the MSM might be a candidate's ticket back into the race judging by the results.

We'll have a chance to test that theory in South Carolina on Saturday. Former Senator Fred Thompson has also been written off and left for dead by most of the media. But Thompson's campaign has revived thanks to an electrifying debate performance that has energized South Carolina voters. He is playing to overflow crowds and has raised a million dollar war chest to buy ads and sharpen his ground game in the state. He is also surging in the polls, currently in a virtual tie for second place, trailing John McCain.

But McCain's balloon has been deflated slightly as a result of his disappointing loss in Michigan. McCain didn't even come close to Romney and what's even more troubling to his campaign is that only 27% of Republicans in the state supported him.

South Carolina is a four way race and there is a chance that a fourth straight contest will see different winner. If Thompson can pull off a miracle win in the state, the pundits and prognosticators will once again have to go back to the drawing board and invent new adjectives to describe what is happening in this, the wackiest primary season in quite a while.



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