The comeback kid: Romney?

Mitt Romney is a flip-flopping, pandering idiot. (Hat tip: Sully.)

But he may yet win New Hampshire. It seems Mitt is mounting a rally.

If he does win, I guess we can put to rest the notion that Granite Staters have some special talent for spotting a "phony" by "ask[ing] tough questions and see[ing] through the baloney." (Though perhaps John Kerry's win on the Dem side in 2004 should already have debunked that notion.)

Anyway... predictions? Let's see. Here are mine: On the Dem side, Obama 41%, Clinton 27%, Edwards 21%, others 11%. And on the GOP side, Romney 32%, McCain 31%, Huckabee 16%, Giuliani 7%, Paul 7%, Thompson 5%, others 2%. (There are a whole lot of "others" to choose from.) Of course, I haven't been doing too well with predictions lately, so take those with several grains of salt... and, with regard to Romney, I fervently hope I'm wrong...

Comments

[Joe Mama]

Michael Barone makes an excellent point today re Clinton losing in Iowa to Obama by a wide margin among younger women:

Interestingly, it was Hillary Clinton's husband who, in my view, sapped the morale of boomer feminism. One of its great tenets had been that sexual harassment was an offense that could not be excused. The high moment came in the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas, when feminists insisted that Anita Hill's testimony must be believed. But when considerably more serious (and in my view more credible) charges of sexual harassment were made against Bill Clinton, boomer feminists rallied to his defense. The Clintons were more important than the Cause. Hillary Clinton came out a winner from those episodes, with a Senate seat in New York from which she could run for the presidency. But now she is perhaps paying something in the nature of a price for the tarnishing of the boomer feminist ideal by her husband in which she was a participant and enabler.

[yea]

id love to see romney win. it does two things.

1. makes a mccain nomination less likely therefore giving obama (assuming he gets the nomination) a better chance at winning over the unlikable romney and the crazy huckabee

2. mccain not getting nominated increases the chance of a bloomberg presidential run. bloomberg and obama in the same presidential race would be great. best two candidates in a long time.

[Tbone]

Despite all of the talk from the various punditry on the ground, the polling data still suggest that McCain is headed for a 3-4 point win. Granted, that is slim enough for an upset, but I will be surprised if Romney comes away from this on top.

Romney has so many of the pundits on his payroll (especially Hugh Hewitt and NRO) that they make it sound as if he is resonating with the voters much more than he actually is.

He will hang in the race for a long time regardless of his performance based on money alone.

[Brian Foster]

Interestingly, the two links provided in support of the notion of a Romney comeback fail to cite any poll data, and everything I have seen/heard last night and this morning suggests that there has been no dip in McCain's surge. Many of the pundits I heard on the radio acknowledged the CW that McCain was fading on the campaign trail, but that the numbers told a different story.

Accordingly:

GOP Prediction

McCain 34%

Romney 27%

Huckabee 13%

Giuliani 10%

Paul 9%

Thompson 6%

Others 1%

Dem Prediction

Obama 44%

Clinton 26%

Edwards 19%

Richardson 7%

Kucinich 2% (ARAGORN!!!!)

Others 2%

[4-7]

I don't think Romneys so bad. Now you all signed the "cares what I think" document so adjust your opinions accordingly.

[Derek]

McCain 34, Romney 29, Huckabee 12, Paul 9, Giuliani 9, Thompson 4

Obama 38, Clinton 29, Edwards 18, Richardson 5, Kucinich 1

[yea]

predictions

reps

mccain 34%
romney 32%
paul 12.1%
huckabee 12.09999999%
rudy 6%
thompson 3%

dems

obama 40%
hillary 31%
edwards 24%
richardson 4%

[Joe Mama]

Romney has so many of the pundits on his payroll (especially Hugh Hewitt and NRO)...

Complete nonsense (assuming this commment was not tongue-in-cheek). I don't know about HH, but NRO's endorsement of Romney (which, BTW, is as muted as an endorsement could be, as any regular reader of NR will tell you) most certainly does not mean NRO is on Romney's "payroll."

[Aaron]

I'm guessing (hoping?) the "payroll" comment was tongue-in-cheek.

I'm a fan of NRO (especially Ponnuru, Derbyshire, and Stuttaford) and their endorsement was indeed muted. There's a lot of disagreement among their writers, which is to their credit. Only a small hand-full of them actually prefer Romney as a first choice. (including, for what it's worth, K-Lo... far and away their dumbest regular contributer.)

I only ever read Hewitt when someone else links to him, usually pointing out another example of his Hackitude. So my sample set is biased. That caveat made, I'll say this: I'm sure Hewitt isn't actually on Romney's payroll, but he might as well be.

[Aaron]

I'm guessing (hoping?) the "payroll" comment was tongue-in-cheek.

I'm a fan of NRO (especially Ponnuru, Derbyshire, and Stuttaford) and their endorsement was indeed muted. There's a lot of disagreement among their writers, which is to their credit. Only a small hand-full of them actually prefer Romney as a first choice. (including, for what it's worth, K-Lo... far and away their dumbest regular contributer.)

I only ever read Hewitt when someone else links to him, usually pointing out another example of his Hackitude. So my sample set is biased. That caveat made, I'll say this: I'm sure Hewitt isn't actually on Romney's payroll, but he might as well be.

[Tbone]

Joe Mama - The months of breathless fawning at NRO every time Mitt blows his nose started long before their official endorsement.

Nonetheless, it's tough to stay unbiased when the candidate starts throwing around $5k here and $10k there at you. I guess I'll just let K-lo tell it herself:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTJjZTFkMTI5Mzg1YzU4MGY5NGZjY2MwYmQwZTk4ZmY=

Hey, if Mitt wants to throw $5k my way I'll write just about anything he wants!

[Brendan Loy]

I learned everything I need to know about Hewitt in the aftermath of Katrina, when he cherry-picked quotes from one or two of my blog posts and baselessly concluded that I was unfairly focusing my criticism on Bush and the federal government, and that this proves I don't understand that federalist structure of our government. As I recall, I believe he took a swipe at me personally in that regard, along the lines of "his law-school education clearly isn't serving him well." (That's a paraphrase from memory, not a direct quote.) More to the point, however, he completely distorted my message, which -- as regular readers will recall -- was very clearly that all levels of government had committed massive blunders (and that the local government, specifically Ray Nagin, was MORE to blame than anyone else). He made it sound like I was some sort of BDS-infected liberal railing exclusively against the feds.

Nevermind that the overwhelming CW consensus, advanced even by such liberal Bush-haters as Michelle Malkin and Andrew Long, was in accordance with what I was writing. Hewitt nevertheless felt it was appropriate to single me out, quote me out of context, and use me as a foil to -- in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- defend President Bush.

And that's really what I'm getting at, personal pique aside: in the Bush Administration's darkest hour, when even its staunchest supporters were forthrightly admitting that their guys had screwed this one up badly, Hewitt was still in the trenches, fighting partisan warfare as if nothing had happened -- as if nothing could ever happen -- to change his opinion of his beloved president.

To call him an ideologue would be too kind. He's not principled enough for that. He's just a blind partisan. I'm not at all surprised that he's a Romney supporter.

Yeah, I hate it when one personality on the internet forms an opinion of another personality on the internet based solely on taking one or two isolated incidents out of context instead of employing a broader, more holistic approach.

[Joe Mama]

The months of breathless fawning at NRO every time Mitt blows his nose started long before their official endorsement.

The "months of breathless fawning at NRO every time Mitt blows his nose" -- an obviously unfair caricature that cites only their web editor and ignores the pluthera of disagreement among their writers, which Aaron rightly credits them for -- also started long before Romney's alleged "payoff" (another highly dubious characterization), as Tbone's own link clearly points out, so the purported quid pro quo is yet to be seen.

Tbone, I wouldn't be waiting around for Mitt to throw $ your way for your services if I were you.

Heh. Touche, anon @ 2:21. But it isn't the mere fact that Hewitt "form[ed] an opinion of [me] ... based solely on ... one or two isolated incidents." It was that he took my comments completely out of their immediate context, to a degree that can only be described as dishonest. In other words, I'm not saying he should have taken "a broader, more holistic approach" by, say, thoroughly reading more of my posts. I'm saying that his characterization of the specific posts that he was responding to was unsupported by those posts themselves.

And in any event, as I said, the bigger issue ("personal pique aside") is not that he quoted me out of context, but that he demonstrated, in his response to Katrina, an unfortunate willingness to put partisanship and loyalty to President Bush ahead of rationality. And nothing I've seen from him since suggests that this was anomalous.

[Tbone]

I never said that K-Lo received any money personally. And my caricature of NRO's Romney coverage is a reflection of my own perception as a regular reader of The Corner.

I agree with Aaron that there has been healthy debate at NR on Romney's ever-changing policy positions. But the sheer volume and tone of their coverage (again, my perception) coupled with the fact that he and his supporters threw some money their way right before he announced his candidacy has led me to the opinion that NR had their man picked long before the race ever started.

So, it was no big surprise to me when he received NR's endorsement, however muted. And it continues to be no surprise that various pundits keep trying to keep his candidacy afloat, contrary the evidence at hand.

I didn't intend for my flippant "on the payroll" comment to be so inflammatory. But the fact is that the NR Institute received a donation from Romney and his supporters. This was followed by enthusiastic coverage of his campaign and ultimately an endorsement.

Right or wrong, it has tainted my perception of National Review's Republican campaign coverage.

[Joe Mama]

I never said that K-Lo received any money personally.

No, you accused NR as a whole of selling its endorsement (on the cheap, I might add) to Romney by merely citing its online editor's explanation that The Nation's description of a "private reception" she supposedly got which "yielded" a "softball interview" was misleading and inaccurate, and that her admittedly pro-Romney tendencies were there for all to see well before any alleged "payoff", thus disproving your theory of a quid pro quo.

As someone who reads NR as much as anyone who comments here, I don't know what "volume" or "tone" of NR's "coverage" you're referring to besides the aforementioned K-Lo and the magazine's muted editorial endorsement that leads you to believe that "NR had their man picked long before the race ever started." And even if they did, that falls way short of establishing a quid pro quo.

It was no big surprise to me either when Romney received NR's muted endorsement, since they presumably had to endorse somebody, and his conservative positions -- however fluid -- are at present more in line with their editorial positions than any of the other Republican candidates.

I didn't intend for my flippant "on the payroll" comment to be so inflammatory. But the fact is that the NR Institute received a donation from Romney and his supporters. This was followed by enthusiastic coverage of his campaign and ultimately an endorsement.

Correcting the record does not make one "inflamed", but you would do well to be more careful with your choice of words. K-Lo notwithstanding, NR's coverage of Romney as a whole has hardly been "enthusiastic" given the magazine's conservative bias and many of its writers' sharp disagreement over Romney, nor is there anything more than conjecture or innuendo to support the inference that NR's muted endorsement of Romney has anything, anything at all, to do with a very meager donation it received from Romney and his supporters (which the evidence plausibly indicates was meant to defray the costs of a NRO 10th Anniversary event hosted by Romney supporters).

Tbone, you are obviously welcome to your perception of one of the leading conservative periodicals being bought off for $10K, but it remains rather unsupported by the facts.