A quick post. I am in Alamogordo, New Mexico right now about to leave my hotel here for another city on my national tour, but it needs to be said:
Barring some huge political event, the GOP nominee WILL be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Why?
1. A series of new polls show Romney is way ahead of the others nationally.
2. A new poll shows that if Romney runs against Barack Obama the President will beat him by one point. Yes, I know the GOP has been accused of having a death wish, but this would be a painful death wish. Their best bet is Romney.
3. You just have to check Google after a few hours and you can easily see how Republican establishment types and members of the Republican infomachine (Fox News, talk show hosts, establishment politicians) are rallying to Romney’s side. Romney looks like Big Mo; former house Speaker Newt Gingrich looks more like Big Shmo.
4. Various news reports note that the Republican establishment wants this over ASAP so they can get on to raising money and starting to seriously campaign as a unified party against Obama. And forget what you’ve heard: all the folks who went on about how Romney is not really a conservative will be defending and praising him to the hilt once he looks like The One and once Rush Limbaugh starts promoting him. Which. He. Will.
Still, this is good news for independent voters, centrists and moderates. Some don’t like hearing it but the bottom line truth is this:
Many centrists, independents, moderates and former Republicans (as in moderate Republicans who were exiled from their old party) feared that in 2012 the GOP option would be too Twilght Zone-ish for them to vote for. So they’d have to stay home, not vote for President or hold their noses and vote for Obama. Not everyone worships the Tea Party or would vote for candidates that Tea Party members totally agree with.
But Romney would indeed be a tougher candidate for Obama. Some voters may fear he is not conservative enough, or that he’s now too conservative, or that he will move to the center once elected. But no one has accused Romney of being a Twlight Zone president. He’s more traditional Republican. To many voters, he’s more mainstream and more accessible than some of the other GOP alternatives (Jon Houseman was like that, too, and look what happened to him).
So if conservatives don’t stay home, he will be the strongest candidate for Obama in the fall.
And the trending now makes it clear he is poised to get the nomination.
Of course, “poised” isn’t the same as having gotten it.
But it looks like its in the cards and tea leaves. The Tea Party and social conservative groups look like they won’t get thei candidate they really wanted — which is why Romney will have a chance with voters who don’t want candidates that totally agree with social conservatives or the Tea Party.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.