DEMOCRATS FOR ROMNEY. A few weeks ago, while chatting with Garance at the sort of Beltway cocktail party that is all the sneer in post-blogger America, she confidently asserted that Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee. I scoffed, but now I’m starting to think she may be on to something. A point I made to her at the time was that, even if her prediction came true, I would still be surprised because of the evangelicals' Mormonism issues which, all else equal, should make life tougher for Romney in a primary, where Republicans and conservative Independents have greater proportional sway than in the general election. In case the "Mormon issue" is news to some, check out Amy Sullivan's definitive piece on the matter, which she concludes by saying, "The tragedy--or, depending on your point of view, the irony--is that Mitt Romney may just be the most appealing candidate Republicans can field in 2008…[but] to put it in evangelical terms, it might be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination." Though I still think Amy's right, for the sake of argument let's assume Garance is: Does the GOP really want to nominate Romney? As I suggested to Garance as she pretended to listen to me while eying the mini-bruschetta, GOPers should take a gander at head-to-head match-ups between the three "tier 1" Republican and Democratic nominees. If you look at the six match-ups on Pollster.com that involve either John McCain or Rudy Giuliani -- who, respectively, were the first and then second GOP frontrunners, at least until recently -- the Arizona senator and former NYC mayor run more or less even with Jillack O'Clintwards. (Yes, I just made up that name, to counter the brilliant and far easier to amalgamate "Rudy McRomney.") Ah, but notice that when Romney is paired with either Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards, his numbers are much worse; for the moment, Democratic landslide worse. Maybe it's an issue of lack of name identification, but if that were true, wouldn't that mean Fred Thompson ought to be trailing by similar lengths? (I realize Thompson is a Hollywood star, but hell, he's not even running and he's ahead of Romney in these head-to-head match-ups.) I don't have these polls' underlying demographics, but I wonder if white evangelicals are indicating they'll vote for McCain, Giuliani or even Thompson against the Dems' Big 3, but when they hear Romney's name, a significant share drop off. Given that the GOP has lost the popular vote in three of the past four presidential cycles, can Republicans afford even the slightest defection from their evangelical base? Presuming no, every Democrat in America ought to send Romney a small donation. --Tom Schaller
