While Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have had their share of ups and downs in popularity over the weeks and months, neither have bounced about like Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House has gone from potential frontrunner, to running a zombie campaign with zero staff and money, back to frontrunner again, and now back down to the doldrums.
On January 21st, Newt Gingrich won South Carolina and just about took frontrunner status away from Mitt Romney. Two weeks later, the Nevada caucuses on the night of February 4th told an altogether different story.
Coming off a devastating defeat in the even-larger Florida primary earlier in the week, the former House speaker admitted even before the caucus began that he had no chance of winning.
He was instead reduced to an underwhelming fight for second place against libertarian perennial candidate Ron Paul, working to scrape up as many delegates as possible in the proportionally-allocated caucus. Romney nonetheless won half of the states 28 delegates, the former House Speaker snagging only four or five.
As the contest stands now, Romney holds 74 delegates; Gingrich only 26. Santorum and Paul both have fewer than five.
Romney's Nevada caucus victory marks his widest margin of victory yet in the 2012 Republican primaries and caucuses--indeed, the widest margin of victory seen so far by any candidate for the Republican nomination this year.
Governor Romney demolished the former Speaker, 50-21%. Ron Paul collected just under 19%, Rick Santorum about 10%.
Congressman Paul had campaigned hard in the state, in which he had done well in 2008; Rick Santorum not so much; he mainly focused on the midwestern states of Minnesota and Missouri whose primaries come up today. Nonetheless, neither of them were in Nevada on election night, and neither of them made public appearances that evening either.
The focus was on Mr. Romney on Saturday night. He and his picturesque family made their appearance at a Las Vegas campaign party to celebrate their win. He spoke backed by signs reading "NEVADA BELIEVES" underneath the new Romney campaign logo.
It appears his advisers have finally convinced him to inject a bit of the populism into his campaign. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the 2008 Romney exhorting his supporters to do anything as base or populist as "believing." His hair certainly never would have moved or flapped nearly as much as it did Saturday night had that speech taken place during the '08 campaign.
Governor Romney seems very intent on not making the same mistakes he made the last primary season. He has been carefully honing the renewal of his temporarily-discarded 'frontrunner' message from 2011 after the brief Florida spat with Gingrich. Indeed, his victory speech in Nevada very conspicuously avoided any mention of Speaker Gingrich, by name or even by allusion, apart from a passing mention of "the other candidates in this race."
That is not to say Romney's words were positive. The former governor's speech surprised just about everyone with his sudden deployment a very unRomney-like tsunami of platitudes and epithets directed toward President Obama.
Romney declared that the president's inability to bring unemployment below 8% - as Romney argued Obama had claimed he would early in his presidency - constituted a failure on the president's part.
Then, in a statement shocking for just about any Republican candidate--not to mention one as elite and stodgy as Mitt Romney--he announced that, "And if you take into account all the people... who have just stopped looking [for a job entirely], the real unemployment rate is over 15%."
Although Romney noted that unemployment had come down considerably in the past year since its peak in late 2009, he told his audience what they already wholeheartedly believed: that the slight recovery "is thanks to the innovation of the American people in the private sector and not to you, Mr. President!"
His supporters began to chant his name; not "Mitt, Mitt, Mitt," as has been common at Romney's rallies in both 2008 and 2012, but this time "Romney, Romney, Romney." His family name, like Clinton, Bush, and Obama, means something to these people now.
Numerous times in the course of his victory speech the governor leaned into his microphone and raised his voice to a point that his words came through the PA system slightly muffled.
It is a classic rabble-rousing crowd-energizing tactic that President Obama has frequently employed, but which is part of a political and behavioral playbook that Governor Romney, a member of the New England socioeconomic elite, has up to this point been reluctant to employ.
Much of the credit for Romney's transformation has gone to Brett O'Donnell, a veteran Beltway debate coach, famous as the man hired to give Sarah Palin a political crash course after the announcement of her 2008 vice presidential nomination.
O'Donnell joined the Romney camp in time for the Florida debates with Gingrich, and Romney's uncharacteristically feisty retorts toward Gingrich in advance of that state's primary about the former speaker's investments in Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giant, have been credited with Romney's January 31 win in that crucial state.
Although the Romney campaign loudly parted ways with O'Donnell on February 3rd, just one day before the Nevada primary, it was very clear nonetheless that his influence continued to dominate Governor Romney's rhetorical playbook. And, based on Romney's poll numbers lately, it seems to be working rather splendidly.
Unlike Santorum and Paul, Gingrich, on the other hand, was not about to let Mitt Romney have the spotlight by himself for a whole caucus night.
The former House speaker's campaign stated shortly before Romney took the stage at his Las Vegas victory party that he--Gingrich--would be giving a press conference in the aftermath of his defeat.
In his press conference, given from Las Vegas casino owned by Gingrich's top fundraiser and benefactor Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich derided Romney repeatedly in response to the questions posed by the relatively few journalists who showed up.
"I had never before seen a person who I thought was a serious candidate for president be that fundamentally dishonest," Speaker Gingrich said in response to Romney's recent statements on the campaign trail. Few, if any, of Governor Romney's stump speeches since the Florida primary have even mentioned Gingrich, however--which probably infuriates the former speaker more than anything Romney could actually say about him.
Taking the opposite tack, Gingrich focused in on his primary opponent to the point where he could not seem to avoid saying the former governor's name. "Every primary day or caucus day, the Romney headquarters in Boston sends out the rumor that they believe I will withdraw, which is of course their greatest fantasy," Gingrich retorted to calls for him to leave the race. He repeated his determination to take his fight all the way to the Republican convention this summer in Tampa. "I am a candidate for President of the United States. I will be a candidate for President of the United States," he said.
It remains open if any of the reporters among the crowd knew that the next day's New York Times was to report on the front page that Adelson himself has discussed with Newt the possibility that he may not be able to win, and that Adelson was determined to provide his financial support to any Republican thought capable of beating Obama. Newt is quite low on funds and has been so the whole campaign, if he loses Adelson to Romney, his campaign is finished.
About the author: Ian MacIsaac is a staff writer for the Capital City Free Press. He is a history major at Auburn University Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama and former co-editor of the school newspaper, the AUMnibus.
Copyright © Capital City Free Press
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