Those who think Gov. Mitt Romney is the more threatening candidate to President Barack Obama should take heart from this week’s results in Michigan. On paper, Romney looks more electable, but in the flesh, the GOP’s own electorate just doesn’t like him. Many Republican voters – possibly most – voted strictly on electability, not because they’re excited about him becoming the president of the United States.
On the other hand, there’s Sen. Rick Santorum. EVERY fundamentalist evangelical Christian in America would come out to vote for a candidate who they see as one of their own. Some estimates put the number of evangelical voters in the tens of millions. Remember, George W. Bush won re-election not with a traditional “win-the-moderate-and-independent-vote” strategy. Bush won by turning out his base – neoconservatives and evangelicals, as well as big-business elites. Santorum could conceivably win the 2012 general election similarly, with an energized, highly motivated base turning out in droves, combined with the anybody-but-Obama vote. (Add to that the impossible-to-measure racist vote.)
Then there’s the almost impossible to overstate likability factor. On a personality level, Santorum has the advantage over Romney, who suffers from an unlikability level just a few points better than Montgomery Burns (Homer Simpson’s boss at the Springfield nuclear power plant).
Then there’s the fact that Romney’s win in Michigan was so close – 38-41 percent in favor of the governor. Combined with the wellspring of negative ads Santorum, former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich and Congressman Ron Paul have, and will continue for the foreseeable future to hurl at Romney, he is doomed to enter the general election as badly “damaged goods.”
Thom Senzee
Editor
