Good For Mitt

We've taken such pleasure in attacking Mitt Romney here at The Redel Traub Report that we might as well tip our collective hat to him after his wins in Michigan and Arizona. In Michigan, the Romney campaign faced its Waterloo. Romney overcame his inability to act like a human being, and managed a 4 point win his home state. Romeny's victory isn't exactly a "quality win" as they say in College Basketball parlance. It came in a state he won easily in 2008, though he increased his share of the vote slightly, his margin of victory was much smaller. Romney received a good amount of his votes in early voting, before Santorums surge. Romney was always expected to win his home state until a poll showed him down big last week. That poll may well have been the best thing that happened to the Romney campaign all election, it drastically changed expectations. Expectations, of course, are the name of the game in the primary, campaign spin machines can turn wins into losses and vice versa in the strange alchemy of politics.

But Mitt can hang his hat on the fact that he received 70,000 more votes in Michigan than he did in 08 and 30,000 more than in Arizona. Arizona had a slightly smaller turn out in 08, but Michigan was a good bit larger. These results buck the trend of lesser turnouts this time around. It remains to be seen if Mitt can get the party to coalesce around him. Apparently he has been asking his donors for more money in recent days, because he expects a long fight. Mitt's small donor base is smaller than Santorum's, but he can always cut himself a big check whenever he wants, and he has many friends in the fabled 1%.

Mitt got a boost last night, but the outlook for Super Tuesday isn't great. I'll have a more thorough breakdown of the various races in coming days, but suffice it to say a lot of the states have potential advantages for the other candidates.

The speeches last night gave a fairly good illustration of political game theory. Gingrich and Paul, non-entities in last nights races, gave their speeches before the polls even closed in either state. Neither mentioned the races and instead gave standard campaign speeches. Santorum went onstage seconds after calling Mitt, but before the Networks had projected a Romney win. Santorum began his speech by stressing the fact that he has had many strong women in his life, clearly to counteract the prevailing opinion that his ideas about contraception and abortion make him a raging misogynist. At one point I'm pretty sure that Santorum pledged to end all federal entitlements. I was unaware that Santorum was running on a platform of ending Social Security and Medicare, but apparently he is. Romney's speech was classic Romney, he said a whole lot without saying anything. He regurgitated platitudes, phrasing them slightly differently. I'm pretty sure he said every possible combination of the words: restoring, Americas, promise. The frozen faced Romney barely emotes, and his speaking style, bland optimism, is hard to engage with. Republicans blast Obama for only talking about hope and change in his 08 run, but at least he did it excitingly. Romney offers the same vague message in a way that could lull an insomniac to sleep.