One week 'till the general begins?

Sources: Huntsman to drop out of 2012 race tomorrow, endorse Romney - POLITICO.com

I didn't blog the day after the New Hampshire primary about the results because there was little to say. It was too early to see the effects on South Carolina. Romney emerged strong, the Gingrich and Santorum muddied the waters for people looking for the far right alternative to Romney. Congressman Paul came in second, which has little meaning in terms of who's going to get the nomination. Huntsman came in third, which is what led to the story I begin this post with. And Governor Perry came in last.

A few things can be seen now, though. Number one, Romney is in good position to take South Carolina and end the nomination fight. There are two debates over the coming week, but I doubt anything substantial will happen in either one. It's possible, of course. It can't be counted on though. Congressman Paul is having trouble making headway there. That'll likely be because of the influence of military voters, evangelicals, and the establishment in South Carolina. All three are important and entrenched there. And he isn't the favorite of any of the three groups. The Tea Party, for sure, has power and influence there as well (their governor is a tea party type). However, it also shows the power of the GOP establishment there that Governor Haley would endorse Romney rather than any of the more preferred tea party types in the race (there probably is also an element of self-interest there, as Romney is almost guaranteed the nomination and Governor Haley is almost equally certainly on his VP shortlist).

The evangelical conference in Texas that voted for Santorum will probably have some influence. The indications are, though, that that influence will be relatively small. Governor Perry performed extremely poorly in New Hampshire and Iowa both. South Carolina is definitely his last stand. And he'll probably have to bow out afterward. Gingrich and Santorum will likely split the vote of the non-Ron Paul tea partiers and the evangelicals and perhaps even some of the military voters as well. If they have a result that looked like New Hampshire, they could both attempt to stay in. Which will dry up their funding pretty fast and cause them to keep splitting the far right vote. One of them needs to drop out before Saturday, ideally. The day after, at latest. What with the delegate allocation this cycle being what it is, there could be a theoretical capability yet still for someone other than Romney if the far right consolidated behind the one or the other. Especially because New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida all had their delegate counts halved (to 12, 25, and 50, respectively). The nominee will have to get over 1,100 delegates. That leaves Romney technically a long ways off. It won't happen, Romney will win if he wins South Carolina, but it's their best shot.

The results will tell all, of course. The most recent polling I've seen has Romney in the lead, followed by Gingrich, followed by Congressman Paul and Santorum, followed by Rick Perry, and then Huntsman in last. Hunstman's support will probably either not show or go overwhelmingly to Romney. If Santorum can pull off a second in South Carolina, and that's followed by Gingrich and Governor Perry dropping out, that'll be a big help to him. But can he get the organization and money together and pull off a national campaign? Without as much time in each state as he had in Iowa, it's hard to see how. Can Gingrich? Yes. But he has lots of baggage and is staggeringly vulnerable to negative ads, as Iowa made clear.

After playing around with a delegate calculator in a highly unofficial and unscientific way, I tried to come up with a plausible path to the nomination for Gingrich or Santorum or Governor Perry. The only one I see is through a brokered convention caused by the proportional allocation of delegates rules in so many states (and which states have proportional versus winner-take-all allocation) in conjunction with the continuing presence of Congressman Ron Paul, siphoning off delegates from all parties in question and keeping anyone from that 50%+1. Oh, and only one of the three can continue on past South Carolina. If more than one does, it's hard to see how even a brokered convention could end up in their favor. Romney maybe wouldn't get 50%+1, but he'd have a hell of a lot more than any of his competitors. In fact, if more than one of the three stays in the race, Congressman Paul could wind up in second in number of delegates going into the convention. He obviously won't be chosen. It would be bad for the party, bad for Romney who would come out of it the nominee, and great for President Obama.

My guess is that I won't feel any sort of pull to blogging about the nomination fight again after this unless something unexpected happens in South Carolina, so I'll likely write any future post on the 2012 US presidential election under the assumption that the general election has begun between President Obama and Romney. I lean towards President Obama at this point, but Romney is a possibility (albeit a relatively distant one) for me to vote for. I have been reading quite a bit on him, especially those who like him better than I, and their writings have convinced me to moderate my stance on him (among the writers to whom I refer are Michael Gerson and The Economist). I still think President Obama will have a decent enough chance of beating him in November. But the right VP choice, and world/national events (mostly out of the president's control) could give Romney the White House. And maybe give Republicans the Senate and allow them to keep the House. It'd be interesting, if nothing else, to see how the relatively far right House would work with the relatively moderate Senate and the decidedly non-ideological Romney and what they'd do and accomplish (some of that would depend, I suspect, on the presence or absence of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate). Also, if President Obama is in fact given the power he's asking Congress for regarding the streamlining of the executive branch, it'd be interesting to see how a President Romney would use that power with the influence of the tea party being as strong as it is (though not strong enough to unseat him as the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, obviously). President Reagan was elected promising to cut the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. Congress took away the power President Obama is now asking to have back in 1984. It's possible he meant to. But he had three years to do it and didn't. That makes me doubt it. Will Romney? Maybe. Will they actually repeal Obamacare? Perhaps most of it, certainly not all of it. Will his foreign policy be noticeably and significantly different? Problem about as different as President Obama's has been from President Bush's, which is to say not much. Will they balance the budget? I'm not holding my breath. And then we'll see what happens to the tea party in 2014 and 2016. That could be reason enough to hope Romney wins this November. To watch that movement die.