As I posted yesterday, conservatives have finally started mobilizing at the highest levels to back Mitt Romney's campaign in its struggle to get the 2008 GOP nomination over John McCain. McCain is still ahead in most states, but Romney has pulled to within striking distance in many of them (California), and is far ahead in a few others (Colorado). He also won the Maine caucuses yesterday, something no one appears to be reporting. He won there by a gigantic margin, too. People are finally starting to Rally for Romney.
But will it be enough? The surge didn't start until last Thursday, and Super Tuesday is 30 hours away. Hugh Hewitt pointed out in a post yesterday that other recent fights by The Base have taken a few weeks to come together, but their speed has been increasing, and their power once aggregated has been powerful.
The fight against McCain-Kennedy in the spring and summer took about two weeks
to first organize and then gather overwhelming strength.The battle against Harriet Miers (yes, I backed the president on the losing side of that one so I recall it well) took a week or so longer.But once the conservative voice begins speaking as one or nearly one, it is very effective, and that began to emerge on Thursday after the Reagan Library debate. When Rush declared on Thursday that a "vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain," the focus became very, very clear for conservative voters --who heard it. That message has been repeated a few times by others from Laura
Ingraham to Mark Levin and most of us in between, as well as by folks like Rick Santorum and Denny Hastert. Messages take a while to get delivered, but they eventually get there.
Hugh's point is that the "new media" - blogs and radio shows - has finally embraced Romney and this impact should be felt soon enough. He hopes but doesn't necessarily believe that this will happen adequately by Super Tuesday, but that enough momentum will have been gained that it will propel the Romney campaign into the convention in St Paul, which I'm hoping to attend as a delegate. It will be an interesting couple of days...
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