Romney's Primary Problem

Last night, as I pondered the reasons for Mitt Romney's victory in the Minnesota caucuses and watched the results roll in from other states, a distinct pattern became apparent: Romney does well in caucus states but not in primary states. Off the top of my head, I could only come up with three primary states that went for him and they all had a personal connection to him; Michigan, Massachusetts, and Utah.

This morning, Byron York confirmed this observation in a post at The Corner on National Review Online:

Last night's results show a curious trend for Mitt Romney: He wins mostly in states that have caucuses instead of primaries. Minnesota, Alaska, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Maine, Nevada, and Wyoming--all caucuses, all won by Romney.

Meanwhile, the only primary states Romney has won are Michigan, Massachusetts, and Utah, all states where he has a personal connection. So why does Romney do better with caucus-goers than with ordinary voters? This morning I asked Romney spokesman Kevin Madden how he read the results. His response:

Caucuses are ordinarily dominated by grassroots party activists who actively follow the race. It's very encouraging that those who are following the race closely and who represent the party's conservative base are actively supporting the governor.

I would agree. though, with the observation that the fact that Romney is still the "new" guy to the race who was an unknown only a few months ago has been a challenge.

Laura Ingraham was trumpeting this as proof that "real" conservatives, those who closely follow the race and actively participate in politics prefer Romney to McCain and using it as her latest stick to beat the Senator from Arizona about the head with. While it's true that this caucus/primary dichotomy does tell us something about the way that the more hardcore conservatives feel about McCain, it also speaks volumes about Romney's inability to connect to what York calls "ordinary voters" as well as his electability problem if he were to be the GOP nominee.

The bottom line is that Mitt Romney was very little appeal for the "ordinary" Republican voter. The people who are too busy raising families, running businesses, working, and pursuing other interests to get too involved in politics at this point. They reliably vote Republican in elections, but are more casually connected with the process than the grassroots activist types who usually attend caucuses.

In any given election, they probably represent more than 60-70% of those who vote Republican. While they may not be considered the "base" of the party, they are its core. If you can't appeal to this core, you are unlikely to win the nomination and even less likely to win a general election.

These "ordinary" voters may not always like John McCain, but I think they understand him. They get him. They also get Mike Huckabee, although they have qualms about him too. I'd even say that most of them get Ron Paul, but think his views are a bit too extreme.

The guy they don't get is Romney. They understand his business experience and most of them probably admire him for it. They understand what he did in organizing the Olympics at Salt Lake City and as governor of Massachusetts. But they don't understand where he fits into the political picture. Is he the true conservative heir to the Reagan Revolution? Is he the "change agent" who's going to clean up Washington? Is he the competent technocrat who's going to use his business expertise to improve the economy?

Frankly, you can't blame them for their confusion. Romney's inability to effectively present (and perhaps even find) his real self brings to mind another candidate who struggled for an identity on the campaign trail: Al Gore. Not the supremely confident, red-carpet strutting, climate change championing Al Gore of today, but the Al Gore of 2000. The Gore who wasn't sure if he was the natural successor in Clinton's "centrist" Democratic Party, the angry populist fighting for the common man, or some sort of new Alpha Male Democrat.

Voters, especially the "ordinary" ones, want to know and connect in some way with the candidate they vote for. Enough of them didn't feel they knew the real Gore to deny him (albeit narrowly) the presidency in what should have been a relatively easy election. Now, despite all the desperate momentum of the "Stop McCain!" movement (largely driven by the conservative elite), the ordinary Republican voters are rejecting Romney for the same reasons.