Candidates facing primary challenges almost always claim that any unwanted criticism from their rivals threatens party unity or gives the opposition ammunition it can use in the general election. Sometimes that’s true; sometimes it’s not; often it’s exaggerated.
But the latest multi-candidate assault on Mitt Romney’s record with Bain Capital is a development that not only raises doubts about the likely Republican nominee that can and should continue to haunt him in the general election, but in fact undermines a central element of conservative ideology.
Take a look, if you haven’t already, at the prototype ad pro-Gingrich Super-PAC Winning the Future, with a $5 million war chest behind it, will apparently use as the basis of saturation ads in South Carolina:

It’s nasty. It’s personal. It’s reasonably specific. And, as Jonathan Chait points out, it’s largely indistinguishable from the kind of case that Democrats would make against the heartlessness embedded in Romney’s much-touted history as a “job creator.”
But aside from its relative value as a weapon against Mitt, do conservatives grasp its value as a weapon against conservative laissez-faire ideology?
Yes, there is a rich right-wing tradition of “producerism,” the belief that the job-creating efforts of virtuous industrial titans (and if they are not unionized, their virtuous workers) are being constantly threatened by “parasites”–usually financiers and those favoring government intervention in the economy, but the paradigm is easily expanded to include “elite” consultants like those from Bain–who must be rooted out to create “true” free enterprise. And that’s the sentiment Newt’s Republican enemies are appealing to.
But today’s conservatives do not have anything like a consistent “producerist” agenda. They may occasionally demagogue against Wall Street financiers, but they violently oppose regulation of Wall Street. And for all the exploitation of resentment of Bain’s activities, they also avidly endorse the “creative destruction” of capitalist adaptation to market conditions that Bain represented, and offer the human “collateral damage” involved absolutely nothing. With some editing, the Winning the Future ad could be run against virtually any Republican candidate for office from coast to coast, and certainly any of Romney’s rivals.
It’s unclear how effective the last-gasp assault on Romney will turn out to be. But it is creating a narrative of Republican indifference to the human costs of a Randian approach to the economy that is a pretty good foundation for Democrats to build on, and not just against Mitt Romney, in the months before November.

It is usually assumed that the invisible primary ends with the Iowa Caucuses, when the party rank-and-file begin to have their say. But thanks to an exceptionally chaotic and unpredictable pre-caucus period, the central dynamic of the invisible primary–Mitt Romney’s wooing of conservatives skeptical of him–has been extended. And now it’s reached a new phase: The internal struggle among conservative opinion-leaders about when it will prove necessary to throw in the towel and settle for Romney.
The most underreported feature of the contest so far is that most conservatives have already reconciled themselves to Romney as the nominee. They may prefer someone else, and in pursuit of that preference–or to keep ideological pressure on Romney–they may continue to raise alarms about the front-runner’s record, positions, or general-election strategy. But it is exceedingly difficult to find a significant conservative figure who has not already pledged to back Mitt fully if he’s the nominee.
As a result, there will be no last-ditch rightwing crusade to deny Romney the nomination. Nor will a discouraged base threaten to throw the general election to Obama. Instead, you can expect to see an increasingly public debate on the right about the costs and benefits of further resistance, until an eventual surrender.
There are powerful arguments for throwing in the towel early, though the factor most often pointed to by the Beltway commentariat–Mitt’s superior electability–is not necessarily the strongest. Yes, some conservatives (along with most Democrats) have embraced the conventional wisdom that successful candidates must be able to move to the center to win and deemed Romney the obvious choice on electability grounds. But these are people largely already in his camp. Though it’s sometimes hard for political pros to accept, most conservatives simply don’t buy the CW. They actually believe what they have been repeatedly saying since they pulled the GOP hard right after two straight general election debacles: This is a conservative country whose electorate responds best to a clear, consistent conservative message. The 2010 results confirmed that in their minds–and neither political scientists nor polls nor pundits can persuade them otherwise.
So if electability is not a clinching argument for getting on board the Romney Express, what might be? The main temptation for conservatives to call it a day is the strong likelihood that an extended nominating contest will become so nasty, divisive, and cash-draining that it will damage the ticket far more than any “base” misgivings about Romney might. Even as Republicans celebrate the general election advantage they expect from Super-PACs, their lethal power in intra-party battles is becoming plainer every day, and now that Gingrich has foresworn positive campaigning, none of the survivors can be expected to play nice.
Just as importantly, “true conservatives” have doubts and divisions about the ideological reliability of Mitt’s surviving rivals. Santorum is regarded by some as an Washington insider and Big Government Conservative. Newt’s heresies were amply aired by those attack ads in Iowa. And Perry, the closest thing to a consensus “true conservative” candidate, greatly upset believers with his position on immigration.
And so, conservative leaders may well be asking themselves: Is the dubious value of nominating Santorum or Gingrich or even Perry instead of Romney worth the risk of creating the foundation for an Obama campaign assault on the eventual winner as a flip-flopping opportunist with the character of a feral cat?
Possibly not. Currently the most important residual reason for continuing the anti-Romney resistance is the feeling that he hasn’t yet paid sufficient deference to movement conservatives (even though, ironically, he was their candidate four years ago) or made sufficient promises to make their priorities his own. These are concerns that should be able to be finessed. There may well be furious behind-the-scene negotiations going on to ensure that Mitt doesn’t emulate his new supporter John McCain by getting all “mavericky” in the general election or implicitly triangulating against the Right. And it could culminate in a sort of political Groundhog Day, when a particularly powerful opinion leader signals the troops to shorten or extend the nominating contest (though the leader best positioned to do so, Sen. Jim DeMint, has indicated he does not intend to make an endorsement at all.)
So the fight could go on for a while, but not for an extended period (unless Romney does something uncharacteristically stupid, or Rick Perry achieves a complete resurrection). In head if not heart, conservative elites have already given their hand to Mitt, and much of what’s going on at the present is simply a matter of maintaining appearances and executing a solid pre-nup.

The latest polls show a Huntsman surge, and Santorum tanking in NH, so Santorum’s 15 minutes may be up sooner than later. But we shouldn’t let this political moment pass without a comment on the ‘Santorum as working-class hero’ snowjob.
Google Santorum +”working-class,” and you’ll pull up headlines like “Santorum fits working class bill,” “Like Rocky Balboa, Rick Santorum is a working class hero” and “Santorum: The Blue-collar Candidate – The former senator touts his working-class roots” etc. The conservative echo chamber is parroting the meme with impressive message discipline. Top conservative pundits, including Brooks, Will and Krauthammer have jumped on the Santorum as working-class hero bandwagon.
It’s not hard to understand why. One of the largest swing constituencies, the white working-class has trended toward the GOP in recent elections. According to Wall St. Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel

…Barack Obama did better than John Kerry or Al Gore with these voters, though even he earned just 43% of their vote…That was Mr. Obama’s high point. In 2010 a record 63% of this bloc voted for the GOP. And there are signs that, whether out of calculation or desperation, Team Obama may be abandoning them altogether–instead looking for 2012 victory in a progressive coalition of educated, socially liberal voters, combined with poorer ethnic voters, in particular Hispanics.
The white working class will make up as much as 55% of the vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Front-runner Mitt Romney knows it, as does Mr. Santorum. Their fight in New Hampshire and beyond will increasingly be over who can earn more points with this group. Their styles are very different, if equally damaging to the conservative growth message.

Santorum is making a hard-sell pitch for the blue collar vote, as Strassel reports:

Mr. Santorum surged in Iowa as the “I’m One of You” candidate. On the stump, and in his victory speech in Iowa, he’s highlighted his working-class roots. He kicked off his campaign near the Pennsylvania coal mines where his grandfather worked, and he talks frequently of struggling steel towns…He’s the frugal guy, the man of faith, the person who understands the financial worries of average Americans. He’s directly contrasting his own blue-collar bona fides with those of the more privileged Mr. Romney.

In reality, however, Santorum’s working-class creds are awfully thin. His father was a clinical psychologist and his mother was an administrative nurse — clearly more of an upper middle-class upbringing than a blue collar culture. Yeah, he had a grandfather who was a miner, but it’s not like he grew up in a mining family as the GOP meme-propagators would have us believe.
Worse, much of his career in public office has been dedicated to serving as an eager bell-hop for the wealthy. More recently, as the Washington Post reported,

Santorum earned $1.3 million in 2010 and the first half of 2011, according to his most recent financial disclosure form. The largest chunk of his employment earnings — $332,000 — came from his work as a consultant for groups advocating and lobbying for industry interests. That included $142,500 to help advise a Pennsylvania natural gas firm, Consol Energy, and $65,000 to consult with lobby firm American Continental Group, and its insurance services client.

And, as Marcus Stern and Kristina Cooke recently reported for Reuters,

As a senator, Santorum went further, playing a key role in an effort by Republicans in Congress to dictate the hiring practices, and hence the political loyalties, of Washington’s deep-pocketed lobbying firms and trade associations, which had previously been bipartisan.
Dubbed “the K Street Project” for the Washington street that houses most of these groups, the initiative was launched in 1989 by lobbyist Grover Norquist, whose sole aim, he said, was to encourage lobbying firms to “hire people who agree with your worldview, not hire for access.”
…Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal government watchdog group, named Santorum among three “most corrupt” senators in 2005 and 2006, accusing him of “using his position as a member of Congress to financially benefit those who have made contributions to his campaign committee and political action committee.”

Santorum has won some blue collar support by promoting his message of “industrial renewal,” and supporting protectionist measures, as John Nichols reports in The Nation. But, as Nichols, says, “There is no reason to overplay Santorum’s commitments. He is an economic conservative who would side more often with Wall Street than Main Street.”
In 2002, for example, Senator Santorum received a 15 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. Not many Senators had a lower score.
Republican strategists are so desperate for a candidate who can relate to the blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” that casting an arch conservative, silk-stocking lawyer like Santorum as a working class hero seems a reasonable stretch. If Santorum does recover from his latest poll dive, it shouldn’t be too hard for Dems to expose his policy agenda as more anti-worker than not.
Note from James Vega:
Using exactly the same, utterly and shamelessly idiotic “grandfather’s history plus general geographical area” theory of social class, Mitt Romney can claim to be “the authentic descendent and representative of Mexican-American autoworkers” – his grandfather lived in Chihuahua, Mexico most of his life and Romney himself grew up “in the shadows of the automobile factories of Detroit”
Newt, on the other hand, can polish his credentials in the African-American community by claiming to be “a scholar of African society whose congressional district was a short distance from Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement”

The much-trumpeted ‘turnout gap’ favoring the GOP turns out to be more illusion than reality regarding key pro-Democratic constituencies, according to a new survey reported by Dean Debnam, CEO of Public Policy Polling (crosstabs here) :

The group of voters most excited about voting this year, tied with the Tea Party, is African Americans. The thought that black voters are going to stay home and let the country’s first black President lose for reelection because everything hasn’t gone perfect is wishful thinking on the part of Republicans. I will be surprised if there is any dropoff in turnout from African Americans this year.

As for another key Obama constituency, young voters, Debnam adds:

The group tied for the third most excited out of the 18 we looked at here? Young voters. And when you take a deeper look at the folks under 30 who say they’re ‘very excited’ about voting this fall, they support Obama by a 69-31 margin over a generic Republican opponent. Those folks are going to be out again this fall as well.

But Republicans do have an overall edge, though it’s not insurmountable, Debnam cautions:

There’s plenty of good news for Republicans on the enthusiasm front as well. Tea Partiers tie with African Americans for the highest level of enthusiasm. There are more Republicans (54%) who are ‘very excited’ about voting than Democrats (49%).

As Debnam concludes:

The desire to dump Obama may give GOP voters more of an incentive to get out to the polls than they had in 2008. But it’s kind of a given that Republicans come out and vote. Democratic constituencies tend to be the harder ones to engage and mobilize. But as much speculation as there’s been that they won’t be there for Obama this fall the way they were in 2008, our numbers disagree. If the GOP wins it’ll because they flipped independents and brought back out dormant 2008 voters, not because the Obama coalition stayed at home.

In other words, Republicans counting on a limp turnout of African Americans and young voters this year are very likely to be disappointed.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The results of the Iowa caucuses illuminate the basic structure of today’s Republican Party and offer clues about what’s to come between now and the end of January.
Pew’s “political typology,” the latest iteration of which appeared last May, provides the best point of departure. That report used a statistical technique known as cluster analysis to identify four major pro-Republican groups: Staunch Conservatives (11 percent of registered voters), Main Street Conservatives (14 percent), Libertarians (10 percent), and “Disaffecteds” (11 percent). The Iowa entrance polls showed that Staunch Conservatives–the sorts of people most likely to identify with the Tea Party–preferred Santorum to any other candidate; Main Street Conservatives, who may be anything from Rotarians to country-clubbers, went for Romney; and of course Libertarians found a stalwart champion in Ron Paul.
But who are the Disaffecteds? According to Pew, they are both anti-government and anti-big business. They are social conservatives with a deep antipathy to illegal immigration. But they are also the most financially insecure of all the groups–among Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans–and perhaps for that reason, less averse to a government that extends a helping hand to the downtrodden. For the most part, they are whites with no more than a high school education. Many report personal or family struggles with unemployment.
The Disaffecteds are, in short, the kinds of blue-collar workers who became untethered from the Democratic Party during the 1970s and found a new, not wholly comfortable home among Republicans. While they form a relatively small share of the Iowa Republican electorate, Pennsylvania is full of them, as are industrial states throughout the Midwest, and Santorum did reasonably well with them in his two successful races for the Senate. They are not the kinds of people who tend to identify with the Mitt Romneys of this world.
What does this typology portend for the next three contests? By and large, Santorum-style candidates don’t fare well in New Hampshire, in part because the state doesn’t have all that many religiously-based social conservatives. In 2008, Mike Huckabee came roaring out of Iowa with 34 percent of the vote (almost 10 points better than Santorum this year). When the dust settled, Huckabee finished a distant third in New Hampshire, with only 11 percent of the vote. I doubt that Santorum will do much better than Huckabee; indeed, he may finish fourth, behind Paul and Huntsman as well as Romney.
Santorum would seem to have a much better shot in South Carolina, as did Huckabee in 2008. But look at what happened: The strongly conservative anti-McCain vote split between Huckabee and Fred Thompson, allowing McCain to win the state with only 33 percent of the vote. History could end up repeating itself, with Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich dividing the anti-Romney vote with Santorum. (Perry’s surprising decision to continue his campaign in South Carolina despite his miserable showing in Iowa is good news for Romney and bad news for Santorum.)
Paul has no chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee. More to the point, his influence on the process will wane once the race heads south. Libertarianism has never been an important element of southern conservatism, which embodies not only religiously-based cultural conservatism but also a strong pro-defense tradition that does not shy away from the use of force. In 2008, Paul received only 3.6 percent of the vote in South Carolina and 3.2 percent in Florida, versus 10 percent in Iowa and 7.7 percent in New Hampshire. Even if he doubles his support in the two early southern contests this year, he won’t be a large factor.
That leaves Gringrich. His brief surge reflected his appeal to both Staunch and Main Street Conservatives, but the orgy of negative advertising directed against him in Iowa severely damaged his standing, especially among the former group. Now Gingrich is returning the favor in New Hampshire with advertisements that challenge Romney’s conservative credentials–a charge that the pro-Gingrich Manchester Union-Leader will no doubt echo in its famous front-page editorials. It remains to be seen whether these tactics will help Gingrich refurbish his own credentials as a conservative champion. But unless they also wound Romney, their overall effect will be to strengthen the three-way split of the anti-Romney vote in South Carolina. (Recall that Romney and McCain received a combined 49 percent of the 2008 primary vote in that state.)
So there you have it. No wonder a group of movement conservatives has called an emergency meeting for next weekend in an attempt to find a “consensus” candidate. Many of this group’s leaders attended a similar meeting with Rick Perry last summer. This time around, they may try to pressure him to withdraw before it’s too late and divisions in the ranks of arch-conservatives end up easing Romney’s path to the nomination.
If the Staunch Conservative vote coalesces in time to keep Santorum alive after Florida, the tempo will slow considerably in February, and the race could take an interesting turn as the large Midwestern states begin to weigh in at the end of that month. In principle, anyway, Santorum appears well-positioned to unite anti-Romney conservatives and downscale “Disaffecteds.” But it’s still early, and we can’t yet know how well he’ll withstand the scrutiny and attacks that will inevitably come his way.

Romney’s tax return could be a game-changer, and not in a good way for Republicans. Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler explains why Mitt is extremely reluctant to release it.
Liz Novak sounds the call at In These Times: “Occupy the Electoral Process.” Yes, it’s important to have a non-electoral protest track to push forward a progressive agenda. But now the tea party is mobilizing its resources to elect right-wingers from the white house to the court house, and the Occupy Movement can make the difference that prevents a reactionary takeover.
The Occupy Movement will find lots of useful data for the campaign against inequality in a study, flagged by Jim Hightower, of social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The survey ranks “each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty rate. The overall performance by the U.S. – which boasts of being an egalitarian society – outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, even three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the U.S. on the prevention of poverty.”
Dems interested in upgrading their campaign blogs should have a gander at Andrew Clark’s “The five best campaign blogs of 2011” at Campaigns & Elections.
The Forum has a special issue out on “Governing through the Senate,” which ought to be of interest to U.S. Senate candidates and campaign workers. Abstracts and guest passes are free. “…Charles O. Jones considers its inherent peculiarities as the institution meant to ‘go second’ in a separated system; Sarah Binder argues that the modern Senate is moving away from its constitutional role; Frances Lee considers the role of party competition in shaping senatorial behavior; Barry Burden asks about the influence of senatorial polarization and party balance within the bicameral context; and Daniel DiSalvo contrasts partisan polarization with divided government as influences on senatorial behavior. Randall Strahan observes one particular senator negotiating this complicated framework; Wendy Schiller and Jennifer Cassidy consider the dynamics of cooperation (or not) among same-state senators; and Andrea Hatcher contrasts a majority leader who lost re-election with another who won. Ryan Black, Anthony Madonna, and Ryan Owens examine a very private form of senatorial obstruction, ‘blue slip behavior’; Gregory Koger examines what is surely the best-known form of obstruction, the filibuster; Eric Schickler and Gregory Wawro argue that, whatever its collective impact, senators have multiple reasons to protect this filibuster; and James Wallner closes with a substantive realm, budgeting, where the absence of policy action by the Senate is critical. In book reviews, Joseph Cooper uses Matthew N. Green, The Speaker of the House: A Study in Leadership, to think about the study of Congress more generally, and Matthew Green responds; Amnon Cavari reviews B. Dan Wood, The Myth of Presidential Representation; and Philip Brenner reviews Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.”
The Monkey Cage has a revealing chart that displays the racial demographics of New Hampshire in stark contrast to that of the United States.
Get up to speed on “Racial Profiling, Republican Candidates, and Rights Violations: the Immigration Debate at Year’s End” by Kari Lydersen, from In These Times via Alternet.
Nick R. Martin has a post at TPM Muckraker on “Report Says ALEC Wields Disturbing Level of Influence’ In Virginia.” Martin explains “The Virginia General Assembly introduced at least 50 bills since 2007 that appear to be near carbon copies of legislation first imagined by the American Legislative Exchange Council, more widely known as ALEC, the report found…The report also said taxpayers spent more than $230,000 to send state lawmakers to ALEC conferences, where they then met with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors. Of the bills apparently drafted by ALEC, three became law, the report said.”
Brad Reed has a good Alternet post, “8 GOP Primary Moments That Would Make Jesus Weep” that Christian voters should find of considerable interest.
Please sign The Democratic Governor’s Association petition to stop voter suppression in the state of Florida. “Now that they control a majority of statehouses across the nation, Republicans are attempting a bold power grab to disenfranchise voters and repeat the Florida election debacle of 2000…Right now, states with Republican governors or new GOP majorities are ramming through bills designed to make it harder for people to vote. They’ll stop at nothing to steal the Presidency. We have to act now to stop these bills from becoming law. The Democratic Governors Association is the only organization devoted solely to electing Democratic governors who will veto any and all attempts to limit voter rights…Stand with the DGA and demand that Republicans stop their politically-motivated attempts to suppress votes.”
In a saner nation, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s post on “Saviorism” at The Atlantic would be the last word anyone would need to read about the warped credo of Rep. Ron Paul.

The following essay by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
To maximize their odds of reclaiming their hold on the White House, the Republican establishment believes they need two things:
• To nominate Mitt Romney;
• To effectively end the Republican nominating process as soon as possible.
Last night’s results from Iowa lower the odds they will get either.
In fact, what we saw in Iowa last night was the Republican base gagging on the Presidential candidate the Republican establishment is trying desperately to cram down their throats.
Romney – and Republican Super Pacs – spent millions of dollars trying to convince Republican caucus-goers that Romney should carry the Republican banner next fall. But in the end 75% said no. MSNBC’s Chis Matthews went so far as to argue that Romney is being rejected by the Republican electorate the way a body rejects foreign tissue.
In fact, most rank and file Republicans are so repulsed by Romney that they have test-driven virtually every possible alternative in the show room. Rick Santorum’s turn came just at the right time to catapult him into the position of the “anti-Romney” – giving him the right to carry the anybody-but-Romney banner in the battle ahead.
Here are the reasons why the Iowa results are such bad news for Republicans:
1). Sometimes when a candidate has a hard time winning the support of his base, the reasons actually make him more electable in a general election. That’s not true of Romney. The major factors weighing on his candidacy are just as toxic with persuadable General Election voters as they are with voters in the GOP primaries.
In interviews and focus groups, anti-Romney voters use words like “phony,” “fake,” “robotic,” “cold.” They think Romney has no core principles – that he will say anything to be elected – that he’s a flip-flopper. One Republican went so far as to say, “He’s Kerry without the medals.” That, of course, is an insult to Kerry – who has strong core principles – even though Karl Rove’s consistent attacks on his character gave a not-so-popular George Bush a second term in 2004.
And it doesn’t help – even with rank and file Republicans – that Romney is, in fact, the candidate of the Republican establishment – which, let us remember, is basically Wall Street and the CEO class. Romney is the poster boy for the 1%. He is the cold, calculating guy who made his fortune dismantling companies and laying off workers. He is a guy whose painted-on smile is set in concrete as he hands you your pink slip. Mitt Romney is about as empathetic as a rock.
2). The fact that one anti-Romney contender consolidated enough votes to fight him to a virtual tie in Iowa was a big blow to Romney’s chances for a quick victory. His forces had hoped to keep his opposition divided and appear as the obvious front runner even with 25% of the vote. Instead, Rick Santorum comes out of Iowa with the “big Mo.”
Santorum will carry that momentum into New Hampshire where he will begin to pick up the votes of the “also-rans.” Most Perry and Bachmann votes simply aren’t going to Romney. Since everyone thinks that Mitt is way ahead in his adopted home state of New Hampshire, Santorum is under no pressure to win. Romney is left competing with his own expectations – anything but a blowout will be considered a defeat.
If Santorum’s numbers materially improve from his pre-Iowa single digits – as they most certainly will – he will continue to carry that momentum into South Carolina where he should win handily. That’s particularly true if Perry officially drops out of the race and Bachmann continues to fade.
3). Gingrich as much as announced last night that he would be playing blocking back for Santorum. He will attack Romney viciously in the coming debates – while having nothing bad to say about his apparent rival for the “anti-Romney” mantel. A wounded Gingrich could be a great deal more dangerous to GOP prospects than frontrunner Gingrich was a few weeks ago.
4). Ron Paul has every incentive to continue his crusade to reshape America in Ayn Rand’s libertarian image. Paul probably hit his high water mark in Iowa, but he certainly has no reason to leave the race anytime soon and shows every inclination to continue to use his platform to promote “Austrian” economics and the gold standard. He has plenty of money and a solid core of activist support.
5). Much of Romney’s pitch to voters has been premised on his “electability” and “inevitability.” At the very least the “inevitability” argument is now gone.
Politics and momentum are often about self-fulfilling prophesies. The argument that “Romney is bound to be the nominee, so get with the program” is now toast – at least for the near term.
6). The new Republican delegate selection rules make it more likely that the nomination process will drag on for some time. Many states that used to have “winner take all” primaries now allocate delegates in proportion to the percentage of each candidate’s votes.
If Romney continues to top out at 25% or 30%– which nationally seems to be his ceiling – it’s hard for him to wrap up the nomination in the near future. You need 50% plus one of the delegates to seal the deal. If Paul and Santorum continue in the race – not to mention Gingrich – that isn’t going to happen any time soon. And if Santorum continues to surge, all bets are off.
7). From the Republican point of view, nothing good can come from a long, drawn-out nominating process.
His opponents will continue to pound Romney for being a phony flip-flopper – a charge that will devastate him in a General Election.
Romney will continue to tack to the right to compete for base voters. That will lead to more and more positions that disqualify him with big chunks of the electorate – like his recent statement that he would veto the DREAM act.
The DREAM Act is an iconic issue for Hispanics. According to a recent Pugh Poll, ninety-one percent of Hispanic voters support the DREAM act and 51% consider a immigration the most important issue facing their community. In a general election, Romney – or any other Republican – simply can’t win a majority of electoral votes without states with heavy Hispanic voting populations. Yet to win primary votes from Perry, Romney positioned himself as the most anti-immigration Republican candidates in recent American history.
Santorum has positions on reproductive rights that are way outside the American mainstream. Not only does he oppose abortion in virtually any circumstance, he wants to give states the right to ban contraception. That’s right, contraception – which is used at one time or another by 98% of American women. A long primary fight with Santorum will inevitably require Romney to tack in his direction on these issues as well.
8). Before it’s over, the Republican race will inevitably get more negative. Romney and his Super-Pacs used a fusillade of negative ads to stop Gingrich in Iowa. Presumably they will try to do the same to Santorum – and maybe even Paul. Santorum, with the help of his lead blocker Gingrich in the debates – will inevitably have to fight back.
In fact, the odds have just increased that the Republican nominating circus is about to become a vicious, no-holds-barred dog fight.
No, Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” and the other Republican poobahs cannot be pleased with the outcome of last night’s caucus in Iowa.
One thing is for sure, it’s not time to take down the GOP “Big Top.” This show will be in town for some time to come.

As my last two posts indicate, I think Mitt Romney’s nomination is finally “inevitable” (though it did not have to be that way, and conservatives have nobody but themselves to blame for having to accept a nominee they really don’t much trust or like). Yes, the nomination campaign will continue for a while, probably through Florida on January 31, or perhaps longer, at least formally (it will take Mitt a while to actually win a majority of delegates; Ron Paul, and perhaps Newt Gingrich, won’t get out until the bitter end). And so long as there is some doubt about the outcome–and in a cycle like this one, it would not be prudent to ignore such doubts–progressives will richly enjoy the hijinks of Mitt’s rivals, who are either a bit unhinged to begin with, or will put on the clown costume in order to posture for the Tea Party crowd.
The spectacle of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum becoming Mitt’s most serious rivals is especially wonderful. Paul’s long history of obnoxious and bizarre beliefs and utterances, of which the desire to destroy the entire New Deal/Great Society legacy is by no means the most objectionable, is becoming well-known all over again, largely shaming into silence those leftbent folk who warmed to him for his anti-interventionist foreign policy views or his opposition to violations of civil liberties (those, that is, which do not involve a woman’s right to choose).
But a lot of folks don’t know much about Ricky Santorum, aside from his eternal fame in inspiring a a sexual neologism. In some respects, Ricky is kind of the new version of Pat Buchanan, without the old falangist’s isolationist or borderline anti-semitic tendencies. He draws on a rich if disreputable tradition of right-wing European Catholic social and political thinking, which often moves him towards positions of support for reactionary government activism that dismay more conventional conservatives. TDS Co-Editor William Galston penned a fine review of Santorum’s book It Takes a Family for the Washington Monthly back in 2005, and it (the review, not the book!) is well worth a fresh read during Ricky’s fifteen minutes of national prominence.
But philosophy aside, Santorum had distinguished himself most prominently as among the hardest of hard-core social conservatives. Aside from his attacks on GLBT rights that earned him his neologism, Santorum has regularly walked the far boundaries of the anti-choice movement, which he made his signature during his Iowa campaign even as the other anti-choicers in the race (i.e., the entire field) talked more about limited government or the economy. And he really can’t stop himself from making sure no one is to his right on these issues: even as he basked in new attention after running even with Romney in the caucuses, Santorum chose to let it be known that it was aces with him if states sought to outlaw contraception.
If that’s all there was to him, Ricky might be dismissed as a misguided but honest crank like some of his supporters. But Santorum also has his really nasty side, beyond his interest in using government to regulate everyone else’s sex life. It’s been largely forgotten now, but Ricky was the guy in charge of the legendary K Street Project, the sinister Bush-era scheme to force lobbying organizations to fire employees who were not solid Republicans in order to create jobs for former congressmen and staffers and create a monolithic money machine for the GOP. It was at about that time Ricky reportedly started seeing the Next President of the United States in his bathroom mirror every morning, and dutifully published the book which Galston reviewed. But a disastrous re-election defeat in 2006 put that plan on hold until the current cycle.
The man is an all-around piece of work, and I’d be a bit frightened of him if I thought he had a serious chance at the Republican nomination. Unless Mitt Romney develops a sudden case of the stupids, or the conservative movement gets behind Santorum en masse, it ain’t happening. But it says a lot about the 2012 Republican field that social conservatives in Iowa wound up having to choose between Ricky and the truly deranged Michele Bachmann as their champion–and chose Santorum.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As of this writing, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are very nearly tied for first place in the Iowa caucuses, and Ron Paul is close enough to make it a functional three-way tie. But no matter who eventually “wins,” Mitt Romney has already won in terms of Iowa’s impact on the overall nominating process.
That’s the case no matter what tomorrow’s spin on the Caucus results suggests, for the simple reason that Paul cannot win the nomination, and Santorum is a very long shot. The candidate with the resources and positioning to challenge Romney in later states, Rick Perry, is finishing a fatal fifth in Iowa, behind Newt Gingrich, whose reservoir of support in the South will likely dissipate once the negative attack ads on his conservative credentials that destroyed his lead in Iowa spread elsewhere.
In some respects, a Paul or Santorum “victory” in Iowa would almost be better for Romney than an outright Mitt win. Paul’s strong performance will generate endless, fatuous hype about the strength of his revolutionary ground troops, and his alleged appeal to independents, Democrats, “moderates” and young people. Entrance polls from Iowa showing his strength in these demographic categories will gain attention. But that only creates an easy illusion for Romney to shatter in states with less unusual primary electorates. Combined with the nuclear attack Paul will soon face over his foreign policy views and his history of association with racists and other beyond-the-pale extremists, whatever buzz a strong Iowa showing creates will simply detract attention from candidates who have an actual prayer of beating Romney.
Santorum is theoretically someone who could inherit the strong anti-Romney vote in the GOP. But he’s not very well-equipped to do so. Having spent virtually all his time in Iowa, he has no organization elsewhere, and whatever money he can raise on the basis of winning, placing or showing in that state will be dwarfed by Romney’s resources. And despite his apparent victory in the “true conservative” subprimary, he has little natural appeal in the southern states where any challenge to Romney must emerge and thrive. For all his success with Iowa evangelicals, he’s a Catholic, with none of the One-of-Us pull in South Carolina and Florida that 2008 Iowa winner Mike Huckabee had. And as recent diatribes by RedState proprietor and southern conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson showed, Santorum’s record as a longtime congressional insider and supporter of “Big Government Conservatism” is going to be a real problem for him when the campaign goes South.
It’s an open question as to whether Gingrich or Perry can survive their terrible showings in Iowa, but it’s hard to imagine they’ll be raising much money or getting much earned media. And neither showed during the final crucible in Iowa that they can overcome the handicaps that destroyed their once-formidable candidacies. In particular, Perry threw his money and time into a last-gasp effort to resuscitate his candidacy, and succeeded only in beating the doomed Michele Bachmann. To call him the Fred Thompson of 2012 is an insult to the Tennessean.
Once Mitt Romney wins in New Hampshire over an overrated Ron Paul and an overmatched Rick Santorum, the anybody-but-Romney forces in the GOP will likely begin to slink back into his camp, some because they sincerely prefer Mitt to his remaining rivals, and some because his nomination is finally, truly becoming inevitable. If Gingrich or (less likely) Perry can somehow build a southern redoubt, it will only take votes away from the other flailing anti-Romney prospects. And the final conservative surrender could come earlier: say, with an endorsement of Mitt by Jim DeMint in South Carolina or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush in Florida.
Romney’s likely nomination was originally nearly as unlikely as John McCain’s four years ago. But as the Iowa results indicate, the conservatives who could have stymied him couldn’t find another Goldwater or Reagan, and couldn’t even convince Iowa’s savvy caucus-goers to unite on an alternative. The fact that all three “tickets out of Iowa” ultimately belonged to Mitt is a sign that the GOP’s ascendant hyper-conservative wing has lost altitude and will likely find itself anxiously supporting a nominee it does not want or trust.