Who Will Take Out Mitt?

The campaign was formally “engaged” (as we political junkies like to say) on August 21, with the Thompson-Giuliani gun battle, and Mitt launching ads implicitly attacking “sanctuary city” New York. The combination of paid advertising, the candidates themselves attacking, and the frontrunner actually hitting back makes this qualitatively different than the earlier McCain-Romney skirmishes, or second tier sniping at the top.

The field may have finally realize that — holy crap — they need to attack Giuliani, and that he won’t go anywhere from atop the polls until they do. Paradoxically, this comes at a point when Romney is on the move and Romney-bashing is falling out of favor, a felicitous combo for the crowd in Boston.

In other words, they needed to be attacking Giuliani a month ago and didn’t. And they need to be attacking Romney now, and aren’t. If you’re a Romney hater, now (or post-Labor Day, at least) is the time to act. Don’t, and Romney’s Iowa and New Hampshire leads get set in stone.

Why? Look at the RCP chart. Romney’s growth nationally has been steady-as-she-goes, without the ups and downs that characterize a mature base of support. (It kind of reminds me of Dean’s growth in 2003.) His rise in IA and NH has been dizzying and remarkable, clearly helped by his unchallenged early ads. What happens when someone starts dropping 1,000 points on flip-flops in WHO-TV in Des Moines? (…”another flip-flopper from Massachussetts?”…) Isn’t Romney especially vulnerable to this? As we’ve seen in the myriad YouTube clips, his inconsistencies are easily channeled on video in a way that parsing Fred’s NRTL rating is not.

And consider that establishment-minded voters have one or two fallback options, unlike in previous years. This is not 2000 with the hated John McCain followed by seven dwarves. Fred Thompson is a perfectly logical alternative, and it’s still surprisingly difficult for a lot of conservatives to get upset about Rudy. That may make it less risky to strike early.

None of the candidates will do this — it’s not in their interest to get drawn into a one-on-one battle with anyone. A 527 would have to, forcing Romney to double down with his own money. And then the perception of Romney as a self-funded candidate will further set in.

Furthermore, the fundamentals are starting to point south for Romney — in a little bit the same way they were totally out of whack for McCain. His problem is how does he product-differentiate from Fred? Yes, there is the “laziness” factor and the fact that Romney does six events a day in Iowa, but do non-political junkies care? Are all those events and all those ads simply buying him a nodding assent from Iowa conservatives not on the payroll, or a crawl-over-broken-glass type fanaticism that will be difficult for others to overcome. I’d argue the former.

But those concern pale in comparison to the evidence that’s starting to align for Romney as a bad general election candidate against Hillary. To begin with, he starts with higher negatives than Hillary (I know. This shocked me too). And a series of battleground state polls confirm it too:

PRESIDENT - NEW MEXICO

Hillary 49%
Giuliani 43%

Hillary 52%
Thompson 40%

Hillary 53%
Romney 38%

PRESIDENT - MISSOURI

Giuliani 47%
Hillary 46%

Hillary 48%
Thompson 46%

Hillary 49%
Romney 43%

PRESIDENT - OHIO

Hillary 48%
Giuliani 45%

Hillary 50%
Thompson 43%

Hillary 51%
Romney 40%

In these three states, Thompson runs 4.33% behind the Giuliani margin — and Romney runs 9% behind. If you’re a conservative who’s rolling the dice anyway by looking for a Giuliani alternative, which looks like the safer bet? How much of this is Romney’s lower name ID (which should be less and less of a factor as time goes on), and how much is just his plain high negative ratings?

So, I repeat, when do the ads begin? (NB: The typical November timeframe for this type of stuff seems too late given the accelerated calendar.)

Tagged: fred thompson iowa mitt romney

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