One of these days, the media may succeed in puffing Mitt Romney up into a major candidate. It is clear, however, that such a day has not yet arrived.
In a Diageo/Hotline poll of Republican candidates, Romney's still at 8% which puts him behind Giuliani (26%), McCain (17%), Newt Gingrich (10%) and Fred Thompson (9%). Despite five months of campaigning, Romney still hasn't made himself as compelling a figure to Republican voters as either Gingrich or Fred Thompson.
Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the two first tier Republican candidates but neither of them is actually increasing their votes. In particular, Giuliani seems to be coming back to the pack. I had previously guessed that Newt might enter the race if his own numbers got up to 20%. I'm still convinced that Gingrich will run, but I'm beginning to wonder if Giuliani slipping down to 20% might be Newt's trigger.
I still believe that Newt's basic chance of winning the GOP nomination comes from the likelihood that Mitt Romney is going to unleash a barrage of negative advertising against McCain in an effort to become Giuliani's main challenger. My bet would be that Newt would benefit more from Romney's money than Romney himself.
There is also a real possibility that there will be no clear Republican front-runner at the end of the primary season. The conventional wisdom is that candidates who win Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina establish an irreversible momentum going into the big state primaries on Feb. 5, sweep the big states, and coast from there. There is some chance though that nobody is going to sweep the big states and that the Republican presidential race will be a hard slog right through to the end.
If that's the case, I still see Newt as a potential winner because he's the most "natural" conservative among the top five candidates.
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You see him as the potential winner because that's what you are hoping for. Romney is leading (or second) in Iowa and polling on average at 10.6% nationally ahead of Thompson and Newt. I'm not saying I want Romney to win, I'm just saying you pick and choose the info you want to support your point. Next time you talk about polls why don't you talk about all the ones. Let me direct you to them:
www.realclearpolitics.com
It's a big stretch to say that I want Newt to win the Republican nomination. I'm interested in his candidacy primarily because I think he's got an oddball shot at winning the nomination. Actually, I don't have a favorite among the Republicans because I see Obama or Hillary as handily beating any of them. I saw the RealClearPolitics average and it doesn't make any difference to my argument. Romney is a second tier candidate. If he wants to become a first tier candidate, Romney is going to have to go negative on McCain (and he already is), but there's reason to think that Newt (or Fred Thompson) might benefit more from that than Romney himself.
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