Mitt Romney and Pundit Idiocy

The first two Republican contests, a caucus and a primary, are now over and my candidate, Mitt Romney, who I have supported since the day he announced, did not win either but came in a fairly close second. In Iowa, Mike Huckabee came out of nowhere, spent almost nothing and beat Mitt by 9 points. In New Hampshire, John McCain took a lead and held it to win by 5 points. Romney had planned to win both and then cap those wins off with a third in Michigan, which is next week. Since this plan has completely come apart, every political pundit on TV and radio is writing off the Romney campaign completely, especially if he doesn't win in Michigan, where he grew up.

These people are idiots. To me they all sound like people whose job it is to prognosticate and in the situation we have today, which is a pretty wide-open race, they don't have much they can rely on and so they just make these big pronouncements without thinking them through. Dick Morris has never given Romney any credit. Robert Novak is now out there writing him off with comments like, "a loss in Michigan probably ends his run," and referring to his campaign as being "on death's door." Both of these guys have regularly referred to his "checkbook" and made other derogatory comments about the amount of money he has been able to spend on his campaign, as if he were trying to buy the nomination.

They appear to be relying on the tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire predicting the election results. On its face this is just stupidity anyway. But especially this election cycle, it makes zero sense. In Iowa, Huckabee clearly did well because the evangelicals came out in droves for him. Great for him. In New Hampshire, McCain has won that state before, in 2000, and he's easily the strongest candidate on the Iraq war and foreign policy, which plays well there. Great for him. But in both cases, those candidates lost badly in one of the two states, while Romney did well, posting a second place twice. Since he also won Wyoming (which no one has bothered to report or consider), he now leads all the candidates in delegates, with 30 to Huckabee's 21 and McCain's 10. And even if he doesn't win in Michigan, he'll certainly do well enough to pick up a substantial portion of those delegates and stay in the lead.

Rudy Giuliani got beat by Ron Paul, of all people, in Iowa, and no one has written him off. Why the ridiculous comments about Romney? McCain gets slammed in Iowa and Huckabee loses badly in New Hampshire, yet no one suggests they are at the end of their ropes. Instead, McCain is now, all of a sudden, the golden boy, set to win the nomination. This, after one win in the tiniest of states. Give me a break.

One other point: New Hampshire has a ridiculous rule allowing "Independents" to vote in whichever primary they choose, Democrat or Republican. How does that make any sense at all? Why should people not in my party get to have any say in who my candidate is?? Make a commitment to the party and then you can have your say. Worst case, you could get a campaign of Independents intentionally making the weakest candidate in a party win so as to make the general election easier on the opposing party. The whole thing is just stupid. Michigan has the same system, so watch for similar results there.

Mitt Romney has the most stable and broad support of all the candidates. We're already seeing that in every race so far. He may not be winning every state, but he's doing well consistently, which is something none of the others can say. He has plenty of money, both from his own fortune and from donations by folks like me. He also has business acumen that makes that money go far. Translation: He's in it until Super Tuesday, no question. Don't believe what you hear from genius "pundits" who write anyone off at this point. The race is wide open and we won't know who the candidate is until February 6th.