Mitt Romney’s impressive 14-point victory in the Florida primary gave the GOP frontrunner more votes than Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum combined. After an exciting detour, this nomination race seems back on the track that analysts anticipated several months ago.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “whirlpool” as “a quickly rotating mass of water in a river or sea into which objects may be drawn, typically caused by the meeting of conflicting currents.” It is also “a turbulent situation from which it is hard to escape.” After three straight wave elections in 2006, 2008, and 2010, strong crosscurrents might be an appropriate way to think about
The ABC News/Washington Post and CNN/Opinion Research national polls released this week that show Congress’s job-approval rating dropping to record low levels are barely creating a ripple—because the news is not new.
The Republican presidential race has turned out to be a series of tag-team matches. Different candidates mount challenges to Mitt Romney in different states. This may delay the inevitability of the former Massachusetts governor finally securing the nomination, but these challenges really don’t affect the end of the game.
Iowa culled the unwieldy herd of Republican presidential contenders but raised some new questions about what will happen next. To use the NCAA basketball tournament analogy, third-place finisher Ron Paul advances to the next round as winner of his own libertarian/isolationist bracket. Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania wins the more conservative bracket, while former Massachusetts Gov.
A little less than 11 months from now, Americans will decide whether to renew President Obama’s contract for another four years. Unless an event or a set of circumstances suddenly makes national security the focus, the outcome will ride on the economy and whether a majority of Americans possess sufficient hope that the state of the nation is changing for the better.
The national and state polls are pretty clear: Newt Gingrich has moved into the top position for the Republican presidential nomination. Other candidates have surged in the past several months, first Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, then Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and, more recently, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain.
It really doesn’t matter if Herman Cain drops his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In the wake of accusations of marital transgressions, he will not be the conservative alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the primary race.
After three consecutive partisan “wave” elections, the congressional elections next year may be more like “exposure” elections than partisan ones. In 2006 and 2008, many Capitol Hill Republicans got swept out to sea, while most nonincumbent candidates, even if they ever had a chance, were pulled under by the fierce undertow.
The 2012 presidential election is less than a year away, but we still can’t be sure what it will be about. Just 19 percent of Americans tell NBC News/Wall Street Journal pollsters that the country is headed in the right direction; 73 percent say it’s on the wrong track.
