Catch 2012: Romney’s identity crisis

In the grueling process of presidential primaries, there is often a "last man standing wins" arc that prevails in order to determine a party's nominee. Following a bruising and lacerating series of town halls, debates and stump speeches, one candidate eventually attains enough momentum to propel him or herself above the fray of intraparty combustion. The other fringe candidates subsequently peel away, returning to their radio talk-show posts and million-dollar speaking tours, as the lone surviving political warrior picks up the remains of the party's enthusiasm and gears up for the general election. This candidate is the last one standing, and, by default, declares a humble victory as the nominee.

But what precedes this nomination—i.e. the battle between the party's candidates—can be so mired in intemperate name-calling and Super-PAC bulldozing that the ultimate nominee is less the "last man standing" than he or she is the only one left with a foot to stand on.

Indeed, the vagaries of the 2012 Republican Primary process have left the current field of candidates with their fair share of bruises and lacerations. It has been marked by unbridled Tea Party fervor and anti-Obama vitriol; we have all witnessed the budget-cutting acrimony, the God-fearing contempt, the warmongering jingoism and, at times, the downright scatological commentary(see: Santorum)—which together have come to define the modern Republican Party. During this primary season, these ingredients have found an ephemeral embodiment in the forms of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, with each candidate offering some fresh iteration of the freedom-loving Tea Party populism and riding it to the top of the polls. Each of their stints atop the perch of the GOP primary was short-lived, however, as further media scrutiny unearthed some unbecoming details. The sequential rotation of front-runners must have addled the former Massachusetts governor and media-proclaimed "inevitable nominee" Mitt Romney, who had maintained steady support from about one-fifth of Republicans but failed to crack a 25-percent ceiling in the polls, despite all the volatility surrounding him. Meanwhile his rivals have frequently cast aspersions on the spirit of his conservatism. They have seized on Romney's center-right record as governor to characterize him as a "Massachusetts moderate" and attacked his background as a private equity heavyweight who enjoyed big bonuses as CEO of Bain Capital, branding him a "vulture-capitalist." Although he has been able to incrementally raise his polling roof following strong performances in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Romney's campaign has endured a constant struggle to convince his fellow candidates and many primary voters of his conservative credentials.

Of all the nominees, Romney most conspicuously fails to deliver the piercing rhetoric and passionate charisma that many Republican voters have used throughout this primary. As a candidate who has continued to rake in a sizable sum of campaign donations and big-name endorsements while comfortably floating atop the polls, one could argue that Romney's strategy should be to simply avoid the temptation to indulge in deranged indictments against President Obama's socialist, gay, secular, anti-American agenda so he might better position himself as the sane alternative in the general election. But winning a primary contest is not that straightforward. Republican voters' flirtations with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry's homophobia, Herman Cain's half-baked tax policy, and Newt Gingrich's petulant fundamentalism are indicators of the party's noncommittal stance on Romney. This has presented Romney's campaign with a tricky paradox to confront—one that can have profound consequences should he ultimately nab the nomination.

Throughout the primary, Mitt has tried in vain to reconcile his moderate core with the extreme orthodoxies of the party, attempting to sell himself as the paragon of modern conservatism. He has cajoled audiences with a repertoire of Republican platitudes, promising to cut the federal budget and cap spending at 20 percent of GDP, to continue to slash taxes for the wealthy, saving the top one percent of earners $82,000 a year, to push for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman, to deny a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have been raised in this country, and to wage war with a potentially nuclear Iran, to name a few. To an audience of carnivorous Tea Partiers, this stuff is red meat. Yet, as Romney continues to dish out these easy applause lines and proceeds to veer to the far-right along the campaign trail, his appeal to the broader American public—the ones that will actually decide who becomes president in 2013—will shrink precipitously, as these Bush-era policies are demonstrably out of favor with a majority of Americans. The more he panders to the narrow-minded interests of Republican primary voters—interests that are, in my opinion, far out of sync with the rest of the country—the less appealing he consequently appears to the general population. A recent defeat in the South Carolina primary can only compound this predicament, as Romney will have to double down on the extreme positions he has adopted in order to survive.

I think Mitt Romney is still likely be the last man standing in this Republican primary race, but when he campaigns before the entire country come the fall, Americans are not going to like what he has had to do and say in order to stay on his feet.

—Jack Mullan '14 is a political science major.