Thoughts on the Republican nomination

 As the circus known as the 2012 Republican presidential nomination continues, it is beginning to look more and more like the Democratic nomination in 1980. In that year, incumbent President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, with California Governor Jerry Brown also in the mix. Early in the campaign, Carter won a string of victories, largely thanks to the effects of the Iran hostage situation, making it mathematically certain that he would have a majority of delegates at the convention. Not quite ready to give up his quest for the White House, Kennedy stayed in the race, and towards the end of the primary season he romped home with a series of strong wins.

Going into the convention, Carter had the numbers, but Kennedy looked the winner because of his superior momentum. (Consider that the American media emphasises the winner of each primary held, and buries the details of how many delegates each candidate scored down the page.) Kennedy attempted to find a way around the fact that most delegates are legally pledged to their candidate, in the hope of prising away enough Carter delegates. Of course, he wasn’t successful, and ended his presidential aspirations with the famous ‘the dream shall never die’ speech.

The comparisons with 2012 thus come easily – Romney as Carter, the presumptive front-runner and favourite of the party establishment who mathematically wrapped up the nomination; Santorum as Kennedy, the insurgent who fell behind the front-runner early on but who finished strongly and monopolised key demographic components of the party’s base; and Gingrich or Paul as Brown, the interesting sideshow who was ultimately squeezed between the two main contenders.

Even if Romney has a majority of delegates in Tampa and is comfortably nominated in the first round of voting, his lack of control over the party could manifest itself in three ways:

• First, if John McCain couldn’t force his preferred running mate down the party’s throat in 2008 (he wanted Joe Lieberman but got Sarah Palin), it’s difficult to imagine Romney being able to do so. Instead of a Marco Rubio or a Cathy McMorris Rodgers (the obscure Spokane-area congresswoman who has recently crept into the lists of potential VP nominees), Romney could be saddled with someone far to his right, possibly inexperienced, and gaffe-prone.
• Second, weak nominees often have difficulty controlling the agenda of the convention – for example, in 1968 the Johnson/Humphrey delegates were forced by the RFK and McCarthy supporters to accede to the reforms which were pursued by the McGovern-Fraser Commission, and which completely changed the presidential nominating process. A more recent, and Republican, example is 1992, when George H. W. Bush felt it necessary to give a speaking spot in prime time to his primary opponent, Pat Buchanan, who went on to scare independents away from the ticket with his ‘culture war’ speech. Does Romney have enough clout to stop Rick Santorum, or someone similarly conservative, from making a prime time convention speech attacking whatever ideological bugbear is flavour of the month among conservatives? (As a corollary to this, does Romney have enough clout to ensure that the convention floor is not filled with birther/truther/deather signs and rhetoric?)
• Third, there’s the question of third-party breakaways. Although this comes up every election cycle, there are a few factors which might make it more likely this time around. Romney’s inability to close off the Santorum challenge, and the fact that Santorum’s victories have been won with much less money and with hardly any big-name endorsements suggest that the party establishment has little control over some elements of its base. Also, the combination of apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding the Obama administration’s ‘agenda’ and the perceived illegitimacy of a Romney nomination (due to his fundraising advantage and Santorum’s late surge) could spell trouble.

All in all, Romney’s victory is unlikely to be as clear-cut as he would like it to be. The Santorum surge, the use of proportional representation to allocate convention delegates, and the long, drawn-out, and nasty campaign will ensure that the Santorum/Gingrich forces (though perhaps not Paul, since he and Romney seem to be such good friends) will have the opportunity to extract their pound of flesh from the presumptive nominee. Romney should win the nomination, will have less control over the party than John McCain did in 2008.