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Mitt Romney Speech Before CPAC Considered Make or Break As Conservatives Ponder Alternative

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It’s High Noon for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney when he talks before the Conservative Political Action Conference: CPAC’s largely young attendees will have a chance to compare the currently sagging Romney with his other GOP Presidential wannabe rivals who have painted themselves as real versus pretend conservatives, including the on-the-ascent Senator Rick Santorum.

Can Romney convince them he’s a conservative? To many conservatives, Romney may (today) talk but when he walks the walk he walks to the middle. Romney vows that when he speaks his conservatism will shine through.

It is truly a political drama moment and if Romney doesn’t rise to the occasion his battle for the 2012 Republican nomination will get even more difficult — at a time when some analysts are even now suggesting seriously for the first time that he’ll fall short of the numbers to be nominated. For instance, Jonah Goldberg (one of many) calls the GOP race a “mess” and notes he had said Romney was the inevitable nominee, notes how quickly things change, praises Santorum, then writes:

The single biggest factor in this campaign remains the fact that the base of the GOP is uncomfortable with Romney and refuses to believe that it can’t do better than the guy who invented RomneyCare and talks to conservatives like he’s reading from a right-wing Berlitz phrasebook. He rails about “Washington politicians” — which looks great on paper but sounds somewhat ridiculous coming from Romney, given that he seems more like a Washington politician than any of the Republican opponents left in the field.

The irony is that, in a weird way, Santorum has many of the same problems Romney has. Superficially, he looks like an anti-Romney when it comes to personality. Romney often sounds like HAL refusing to open the bomb-bay doors in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” while Santorum overflows with passion and emotion.

But simply having an authentic personally doesn’t necessarily mean you have a presidential one. All too often, Santorum looks like he has a thumbtack in his shoe that he presses down on to fool the polygraph. He can be dour and resentful.

Likewise, on substance, if you were going to design a GOP candidate to fit the moment, it wouldn’t be Santorum. The difference between him and George W. Bush: Santorum’s deadly serious about compassionate conservatism. He is honestly and forthrightly committed to using government to realize his moral vision for America. That’s his prerogative, and he has many good (and some very bad) arguments on his side.

But, suffice it to say, he is not the one the tea partiers have been waiting for..

AND:

And while I would happily vote for either in a contest against Obama, I honestly have no idea who would be more electable. Frankly, I find the prospect of any of them becoming the nominee worrisome and hard to imagine. A brokered convention seems ever more plausible — and desirable.

But “a brokered convention” is a phrase heard often in both parties but hasn’t been seen in a while.

How serious is Romney’s situation? The Huffington Post:

The angst within the Republican Party about Mitt Romney’s candidacy has risen to such levels that some of the most experienced, influential members of the party are still talking about a late entry into the GOP primary.

And here is why Romney faces a huge task today:

  • He can’t afford another fumble or where he comes across as merely vomiting up red meat talking points to the right. He has to be authentic or — do a terrific job of faking authenticity.
  • He was the conservative alternative to John McCain four years ago, but many don’t remember that talk show hosts lambasted Romney until it looked like McCain could run away with it. Then, suddenly, many of them turned on a dime and became big Romney supporters (as did many of their listeners who will adjust their attitudes depending on how their best bud talk show hosts feel and make a talk show host’s arguments their arguments that they say or write.). So it is WRONG to suggest he was everyone’s favorite conservative four years ago. He was not at the beginning of the primary race.
  • The media and political talking head narrative now is highly dangerous for Romney. As Goldberg notes, the conventional wisdom can be totally shattered within one day and a new one quickly slides into place. Now it is that despite his funding and organization Romney is on the ropes. He could still beat up his opponents by drowning them in PAC money funded negative ads and win but he risks turning off big chunks of his own party and handing a political gift to Obama & Co.
  • Analysts note the youth of CPAC. This underscores a perhaps flawed Democratic assumption: that they can count on young voters. In fact, many college age voters cannot find jobs and find it harder to find jobs than their parents or even older siblings did. It is a given that they’ll vote for Democrats or even vote. Each young CPAC conservative activist will be fanning out to influence other young voters. Which could be a problem for the Dems — and for Romney should his speech flop but his money decimate his competition and allow him to get the nomination.
  • Romney needs to win hearts and minds of conservatives and he has done he is not doing either. But if he does that can he also move back to the center in the general election?

    • John Hinderaker of the prominent Republican blog Powerline doesn’t like what he sees about how Republicans are handling their seemingly golden opportunity to retake the White House.

    For a long time, I was confident that Republican voters would oust Barack Obama in 2012, hold the House and, in all likelihood, take the Senate. Obama is a weak incumbent, who has been chronically unpopular since early in his term. His re-elect numbers are weaker than historically have ever worked for incumbent presidents. On paper, he is ripe for the picking.

    Nevertheless, if you are a Republican, the vibes are very bad. The presidential primary season has turned into a disaster, in my view. Mitt Romney has shown a discouraging inability to appeal to the party’s base, while the race has damaged both Romney and the party. Newt Gingrich, in particular, sacrificed the party to his own ego by launching left-wing attacks against Romney. Gingrich is gone as a Republican contender, but we will see more of him in the fall, in Obama ads. What a swan song for someone who once led the conservative movement!

    Rick Santorum is a bright guy who has performed well in the debates, and he is hot, this week, in the Republican base. But he doesn’t have the chance of a snowball in Hell of being elected president. He couldn’t even get re-elected to the Senate in his home state of Pennsylvania in 2006. The 2012 election will be almost entirely about the economy, although national security is always relevant to a presidential contest. It would be suicidal for the GOP to nominate a candidate whose signature issues are gay marriage and abortion. At the end of the day, the party won’t be that dumb. But the fact that the party’s base is flirting with Santorum manifests a lack of seriousness that may prove fatal in November.

    After some analysis of tidbits such as Obama’s likely huge campaign money war chest, how he feels the media is falling into line behind Obama, and how the GOP primaries have been candidates destroying each other but not educating the American public on the Republican Party’s case on the economy and foreign affairs, he writes:

    So, do I think the 2012 election is slipping away from conservatives, Republicans, and the American people? Yes, I do. This is a year in which it was incumbent on conservatives to pursue, soberly, the overriding goal of evicting Barack Obama from the White House. We didn’t do that; in fact, it wouldn’t be far off the mark to say that we made fools of ourselves by chasing one will o’ the wisp after another. I fear that in November, we will pay the price.

    Romney’s task today will be to make this bit of conventional wisdom as imperative as so many other bits of conventional wisdom were quickly deep sixed during this campaign season.