Mitt Romney is the only candidate with the financial wherewithal to challenge Obama, writes LARA MARLOWEin Manchester, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, a presidential candidate whose handicaps include a wooden persona, a reputation as a “flip-flopper” and a heartless capitalist, and his Mormon faith, appears to be the inevitable Republican nominee.
Though the Libertarian candidate Ron Paul is likely to place second in today’s New Hampshire primary, the Romney machine is more focused on bringing down the ultra- conservative former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum, who virtually tied with Romney in Iowa last week.
Polls indicate Santorum may come in fifth in New Hampshire, but he will be a formidable opponent in socially conservative South Carolina next week. The Romney campaign has in recent days secured the support of five former US ambassadors to the Vatican – Santorum is Catholic – and a host of conservative leaders. It issued a press release asking “Who is Rick Santorum?” and accusing him of “repeatedly siding with Democrats and labour unions over American employers”.
Seeing the Romney campaign in action is a bit like watching the US army roll into Baghdad. The Romney machine has seemed almost too big for little New Hampshire. Other candidates cannot compete with the number of placards, posters, advertisements, rallies, phone calls. Between December 28th and January 3rd, Romney and his “Super Pacs” broadcast 253 television announcements in New Hampshire, 374 in South Carolina and 339 in Florida. No one else came anywhere near.
Other candidates campaign in serial fashion, from one state to the next, in order of the caucuses and primaries. Romney is running a simultaneous, nationwide campaign. He spent $52 million of his own money in past failed campaigns for the US Senate and White House, and with a personal fortune estimated at $250 million is the only candidate with the financial wherewithal to challenge Barack Obama.
Romney also secured endorsements from just about everyone who is anyone in the Republican establishment. His rallies are invariably opened by a Republican heavy-hitter, including some from the Tea Party. The previous Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey have all campaigned for him in New Hampshire.
For hardline conservatives, Romney's greatest weakness is ideological. "Conservatives believe you are conservative by conviction," says Drew Cline, the editorial page editor of the Manchester Union Leader, which endorsed Newt Gingrich.
“Romney has shown a great ability to study an electorate and memorise and tell them what they want to hear. He approaches it as a manager. It’s a problem to be solved. At no point does he give the impression he is acting out of conviction.”
Cline says a Romney presidency “would be more competent” than the Obama presidency and “would lean more to the right. But the question is: how much more? That’s what primary voters are struggling with. There’s the cliche of the dog chasing the car. If he actually caught it, what would he do with it? What would he fight for?”
To judge by attendance at Romney’s rallies, business people relate best to him, because they believe he understands the economy and will turn it around. But for the average voter, Romney’s life has been almost too perfect.
The son of George Romney, who was chief executive of American Motors, governor of Michigan and a cabinet minister, Mitt earned degrees in business and law simultaneously at Harvard. He amassed his fortune at Bain Capital, which he co-founded, then served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 until 2007.
Romney’s attempts to be an ordinary American often fall flat, despite the blue jeans and legendary frugality, which leads him to fly low-cost airlines and eat fast food. He is a control freak who almost never takes questions from journalists and hates unpredictable situations.
While campaigning in Manchester, recounts Cline of the Union Leader, Romney visited Chez Vachon, a working-class diner. “He sat down next to a gay veteran, who asked him about same-sex marriage. Romney mumbled his stock answer about marriage being between a man and a woman, but he was sitting beside the guy and he couldn’t get away.”
Meeting supporters on Sunday, Romney claimed “there were a couple of times I wondered if I was going to get a pink slip”. The idea that the multimillionaire presidential candidate once feared losing his job went down like a lead balloon, like his joke to a group of unemployed men in Florida last summer that “I’m also unemployed”. At an earlier rally in New Hampshire, a woman asked Romney for advice for her four children, who are struggling to repay 8 per cent interest on loans for their college education. Romney suggested they join the National Guard, to benefit from the GI Bill. He couldn’t have known the woman’s nephew lost a leg in Afghanistan after joining up to finance his education.
Likewise, Romney’s aides cringed when he engaged in a conversation with supporters in New Hampshire about estate planning, saying he had changed his mind and would leave his fortune to his 16 grandchildren rather than his five sons.
Such vignettes help strengthen the Democrats’ strongest argument against Romney: that he personifies the heartless “one per cent” at the top of the US economic pyramid.
A group called Americans United For Change last month issued a mock campaign poster saying "Greed is Good! Romney – Gekko 2012" featuring a photograph of Romney and his fellow directors at Bain Capital posing with banknotes stuffed in their hands, pockets and mouths. The so-called "Gordon Gekko" photo, based on the Michael Douglas character in the film Wall Street, was taken in 1987, to celebrate an investment that raised $37 million.
In 2007 Romney said that in the private equity industry, “Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter, but it is necessary to save the life of the patient”.
He claims Bain created far more jobs than it destroyed. Left-leaning groups are broadcasting interviews with some of the thousands of people who lost jobs when their companies were taken over by Bain.
Gingrich has adopted the same line of attack, enabling the Romney campaign to accuse him of opposing free enterprise and being in league with the left.
At a Sunday night rally, Bruce Perrault, a retired teacher, explained why he wholeheartedly supports Romney: “We have become a redistributive society, and I think we should be a competitive, self-reliant society . . . I don’t mind helping people who are needy, I just don’t want to help people who are clueless, who have never made any effort. It’s incredibly scary that 42 per cent of the people in the US don’t pay income tax.”
Like other voters, Perrault says Romney’s ability to beat Obama is his main reason for supporting him. “If we have four more years of Obama, we’re going to be a socialist country,” he predicted. “You can give all the money you want to the poor. They are not going to make the economy better.”
The role of government in the economy will be front and centre once Romney and Obama are alone in the ring.
“I respect Barack Obama. He’s a nice guy,” Romney said. “I just don’t think he understands who we are. He thinks government is the answer. As Ronald Reagan used to say, government is not the answer; government is the problem.”