Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Governors, House, Polls, Progressives, Race, Senate | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Michigan, Primaries, Republicans
Mitt Romney needed a win in MI, and he got one. MI was his home state, where his father served as a popular three-term Governor; plus, Romney pulled all of his money and manpower out of NV and SC and dumped it into Michigan. Without a victory tonight, the Romney campaign would have bee sunk.
Who propelled Mitt to victory? According to Daily Kos:
Well, the exit polls say it was a bunch of white (96%) guys (56%) who think Bush is doing a great job (53%) and Iraq is awesome (62%).
Not necessarily the people I–or much of the country–would be inclined to agree with.
As we can see, what’s good for Romney is bad for the GOP. Just look at the layout of the race–now there are three Republican candidates who have won major contests: Huckabee has Iowa, McCain has New Hampshire and Romney has Michigan (yes, Romney did win WY, but their delegation was cut in half and Romney was the only major candidate on the ballot).
A Romney loss in MI would have all but eliminated him as a candidate and set up a McCain-Huckabee showdown. Now that there are three viable candidates, the GOP is farther from a front-runner than perhaps at any time since Iowa. Worse still, the three leading candidates all have staying power since each of them appeals to a different GOP constituency: Huckabee appeals to social conservatives, Romney to business conservatives and McCain to the foreign policy hawks.
Where do we go from here? Well, I still predict that Huckabee will win anywhere there is a large Christian conservative population, since he is their anointed candidate. Still, attacks from McCain and a re-energized Romney could dent his support and expose new skeletons in his closet. It’s likely that McCain and Romney will be fighting over the same GOP constituency–conservatives who are focused less on social issues and more on other issues such as the economy and foreign policy. Thus, a Romney win makes the GOP primary longer and bloodier, overall.
In terms of the media, who will successfully spin tonight? Romney won, despite the fact that McCain seemed to be gaining support in MI. Does that prove that NH was a fluke, and that Romney is the natural GOP front-runner? Or did Romney only win because he pulled out all the stops in a state where he has significant family ties, thus making Michigan the fluke and vindicating McCain’s victory? I suspect that which narrative takes effect will have a lot to do with who wins the next two Republican contests.
Those would be South Carolina and Nevada, both on the 19th. South Carolina isn’t much of a mystery–it’s likely that Huckabee will pick up his second win there. Nevada is more of an enigma–there isn’t enough viable polling coming out of Nevada to make a good prediction either way, so we’ll just have to wait and see. With three strong representatives from the three major GOP factions running against one another, it will be interesting to watch how the rest of the primary plays out.
On the Democratic side, the only major candidate on the ballot was Hillary Clinton and there were no delegates at stake. Yet, the way the MI primary played out is still raising some eyebrows:
According to the Fox exit polls, in the Democratic primary tonight, Clinton took 25% of the African-American vote and “uncommitted” is getting 69% of the African-American vote. Now remember, Hillary is only major candidate on the ballot. The others, and even Hillary to a degree, boycotted the primary because Michigan got crosswise with the national Democratic party over the date of their primary. Rep. Conyers (D) is an Obama supporter and he pushed for the state’s African-American community to vote “uncommitted.” There’s too much screwy about the Democratic primary in Michigan tonight to draw too much from this; but it is suggestive.
Chris Bowers frames these results as a win for Barack Obama, and I can’t say that I think he’s too far off. If African-Americans in Michigan are overwhelmingly willing to vote for a non-candidate over Clinton — particularly at a significantly higher rate than White voters — it’s not beyond the realm of imagination that they will have trouble voting at a much higher rate for Obama than for Clinton. While a lot of folks within the Beltway establishment may have chalked up the kerfuffle over past week and a half between the two leading candidates over issues of race as a win for Clinton, at least in the short term it looks like the fracas is having a seriously deleterious effect of Clinton’s support among African-Americans.
[Emphasis Added]
Nevada is next for the Democrats–it will occur on the 19th, while South Carolina will be on the 26th.
With many of the front-running candidates having won one contest by now, soon we’ll see who has staying power and who will be a one-hit wonder. All of this, though, seems little more than preparation for Super Tuesday, which is when both primaries could very well be decided.
