Anything Can Happen

Let's start by acknowledging the inevitable: Mitt Romney will win the New Hampshire primary. I'll be stunned if he doesn't win by double digits. Having already placed first in the Iowa caucuses, Romney should have the nomination sewn up after a decisive win in New Hampshire, yet Pundits, pollsters and political junkies are buzzing about "the battle for second place" (as well as 3rd and 4th, if it's close). What I find especially interesting is that the air of mystery surrounding the first-in-the-nation primary this year is just as strong, if not more so, than it's been in previous years, despite Romney's incredibly strong poll position going into tonight and the paucity of doubt that he'll win by a sizeable margin. It's anyone's guess what order the runners-up will finish when all the N.H. votes are tallied. Ron Paul has consistently been polling in 2nd place since Newt Gingrich's collapse, but just like in Iowa, he seems to have plateaued. It's also worth noting that, while Santorum and Romney both outperformed their poll numbers in Iowa, Ron Paul's 21% of the vote was much closer to his position in the polls leading up to the caucuses. (A similar phenomenon occurred in 2008, where Romney and McCain both finished well ahead of their positions in the RCP average, while Paul underperformed.) For you empiricists out there, this portends and underwhelming finish for Paul in the Granite state, but he'll no doubt plod along.

The most exciting thing may be a last-minute surge by Jon Huntsman, who's arguably got the most to lose tonight (except for Mitt Romney). I pondered this possibility in a post last week, but by this weekend I was convinced that that ship had sailed. I may have spoken too soon; a spate of polls out of New Hampshire show real momentum for the even-tempered Mormon Sinophile. Rasmussen Reports has him at 15%, up from 12% in their previous New Hampshire survey. Public Policy Polling, which also had Huntsman polling at 12% the last week of December, released the results of a poll that pegged him at 16%. Perhaps most telling is the candidate's surge in the Suffolk University/7News tracking poll, in which Huntsman has doubled his share of the vote in the last week.

All of these polls have Huntsman in 3rd place, behind Romney and Paul, but a poll released over the weekend from American Research Group has him in 2nd place at 17%, followed by Ron Paul at 16%. Today the two are separated by three percentage points in the RCP average of N.H. polls, which for some reason does not include the ARG survey results; just five days ago, that gap was twelve points.

Huntsman won't win the New Hampshire primary, but there's a very real possibility that he could come in a strong 2nd. That would effectively quash Rick Santorum's momentum coming out of Iowa, and with a 10-day interim between today and the South Carolina primary, just about anything can happen.

Can Huntsman make a Santorum-style surge in New Hampshire?

The biggest story to come out of last night's Iowa caucuses last night--apart from Mitt Romney's unprecedented eight-vote margin of victory--has to be Rick Santorum's amazing (and, for most, unexpected) performance. The former Pennsylvania senator had been polling in the single digits in Iowa and barely registering nationally. Then, about a month ago, his poll numbers in the Hawkeye state began creeping up, and by last week, he was nipping at the heels of Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, who were locked in a virtual dead heat atop most surveys. In no poll did Santorum register more than 18% support, however, making the 25% of the vote he pulled in last night's caucuses all the more impressive.

Never taken seriously by the media and most primary voters, Santorum long ago decided to focus almost exclusively on Iowa, and he still had to stretch his miniscule campaign treasury pretty thin (as evidenced by the pickup truck he traveled the state in). He didn't have much, but he had a message--and an m.o. (Sorry for the alliteration; I can't help it.): visit every county; talk to anyone who will listen; speak from the heart; perform the occasional exorcism. (I might not have that exactly right, but I wasn't there. This is all being relayed secondhand.) It's a strategy reminiscent of Mike Huckabee's 2008 campaign, which peaked when the former Arkansas governor won the Iowa GOP caucuses, only to flame out like a supernova.

It's also strikingly similar to another candidate's strategy this year. Jon Hunstman, Jr., the former Utah governor and veteran diplomat, is trying in New Hampshire what Santorum tried (successfully) in Iowa. He's devoted more time to the state than anyone left in this race (which, as of this morning, does not include Michele Bachmann), but he still lags way behind Romney in the polls there. (Even worse, he hasn't even gained as much support in the state as Ron Paul.)

This is not to say that all of Huntsman's time and effort in the state has been for naught. As is so often the case, the numbers tell the tale: Eight weeks ago, Huntsman and Gingrich were tied in the RCP average of polls in New Hampshire. As Gingrich began to gain steam, he pulled away, and soon moved into a firm 2nd place behind Romney in the Granite State. One month later, the former Speaker peaked at 24.3% in the RCP average. (Romney was at an even 36%.) Huntsman, meanwhile, crept up to 11.8% by Christmas, by which time Gingrich was down to 20%. Since then, however, Huntsman hasn't gained much traction; he's actually down slightly, at 10.3% as of today. (Gingrich sits at 11.3% and will probably sink even further before next Tuesday's primary.)

Today, the media's primary focus shifts from Iowa to New Hampshire, and the results of a Suffolk Tracking poll did not provide welcome news for Huntsman, who I maintain is the best candidate we've got. He registered only 7% support in the survey of 500 "likely GOP primary voters," a distant 4th behind Romney, Paul and Gingrich. That's actually his worst showing in a New Hampshire poll in nearly two months. If Huntsman is hoping to pull off a Santorum-style surprise, then he's going in the wrong direction.

Huntsman's best argument against the plutonian picture painted by the polls (There's that alliteration again! Damn!) may be that all polls taken in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses greatly underestimated Santorum's performance there, by anywhere from seven to ten percentage points. He may also want to point out that, six days before the caucuses, Santorum was at 9.8% in the RCP average of polls there, half a point lower than Huntsman's current position in the New Hampshire poll average.

It's highly unlikely that anyone other than Mitt Romney will win the 2012 New Hampshire Republican primary, but there's still a very good chance that Jon Huntsman will finish a strong second. The days ahead will be critical; if no one even comes close to Romney in the polls and he wins the primary by double digits, then he'll be in very good position going into South Carolina, with a ten-day buffer to shore up his support there.

To the anybody-but-Romney crowd, I say: you've gone through everyone else; if you don't want to vote for Mitt, then your only choices are Santorum, Huntsman or Dr. Paul. (C'mon, do you really even need to think about this?)

The Margin-of-Error Guy

Take Mitt Romney, subtract the curate’s egg that is Romneycare, replace it with a few successful conservative reforms, add some serious foreign policy credentials, take away most of his name recognition and positive/negative press, and what do you get?

Answer: Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Okay, that’s a little too simplistic. Huntsman never rescued an Olympiad, and he doesn’t have near as much private-sector experience as Romney does. And, while Jon Huntsman, Sr.’s net worth dwarfs that of Romney, his eldest son is barely a tycoon by Republican standards. Then again, Huntsman’s background as a corporate executive isn’t nearly as ripe for distortion and attack. He’s also 13 years younger than Mitt and, in my opinion, is more charismatic. Maybe the better description would be: imagine a taller, younger Mitch Daniels with foreign policy experience.

Look, I’ll level with y’all. I normally avoid selling people on someone I don’t know personally, but the more I learn about Huntsman, the more bullish on him I become. I started touting him as a great potential candidate for president two years ago, which is why I was so mystified/disappointed when he accepted Obama’s appointment to be Ambassador to China. I remember thinking, What is that job going to consist of for the next four years, other than begging them to buy up more of our T-bills? On the plus side, it bolstered the former Utah governor’s already-impressive foreign policy creds. (In addition to running his family business's overseas operations in the Pacific Rim, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore under the first President Bush and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative in the last administration.)

So, in a situation where I don’t know any of the candidates personally, I evaluate them on their records first, then on other factors, such as each one’s viability as the potential nominee. Huntsman clearly stood out from the rest of the pack on that first criterion, but should he decide to enter the race (as he is widely expected to do), he’ll have a lot of catching up to do before he attains "top-tier" status. He’s registering very little support (anywhere from 1 to 4 percent) in all of the polls I’ve seen. This is almost entirely due to his low name recognition, so we’ll have to see how well he does at introducing himself to most of the American public.

Of course, most of those polls have Sarah Palin, who I’ve repeatedly said will not run for president in 2012, and Rudy Giuliani, who isn’t even close to running, rounding out the top tier. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain are the only other candidates to draw double-digit support. Once the Republican primary electorate knows that Palin is out, there will be a wide opening for somebody to move up in the polls and rival Romney’s frontrunner status. Trouble is, that opening is already pretty wide, and the “Palin void” – as I’m going to call it – is likely to get jammed up with several candidates making an incremental rise in the polls, rather than one contender who breaks away from the rest and surges into the lead, or at least a statistical dead heat, to close out the year. There’s also the chance that Romney could see a sharp drop in his support, like Giuliani did in '07. Recall that the early 2008 primaries actually turned out better for the GOP than many where expecting, with the race quickly boiling down to a three-way tie between Huckabee, Romney and McCain, while Obama quickly caught up to and overtook Hillary on the Democratic side, throwing what was supposed to be a cakewalk into a prolonged, increasingly nasty fight that lasted until June. (I don’t want to get too far off topic, so let me just cut off this tangent by saying that I don’t expect Gingrich to mount a comeback like McCain did, and that means Romney will become the heir apparent to the Republican presidential nomination in short order.)

A few people on the right are already speaking out against a Huntsman candidacy. Last month on Hannity, Michelle Malkin said she was “not looking for McCain-Lites, like Jon Huntsman,” the folks over at Verum Serum produced this video mocking Huntsman as a RINO ... with an actual rhinoceros. The Conservapedia article on Jon Huntsman, Jr. describes him as “a RINO who was born into an extremely wealthy family in Utah.” When last I checked, that entry had gone unedited since June 4th.

Still, you have to admit that, on paper, Huntsman looks to be a formidable contender. He has a more conservative record than any of the ex-governors currently running. (It helped that he had a cooperative, overwhelmingly Republican state legislature to work with, but so did Tim Pawlenty during his first term, and I defy anyone to compare Pawlenty’s record with Huntsman’s.) He flattened the state’s income tax, taking it from one of the most steeply graduated progressive rate schedules in the country to a flat rate of 5%. He signed legislation protecting unborn children from abortion, red meat for social conservatives. Maybe the most impressive achievement during his governorship was the establishment of the first statewide school voucher system in the U.S. Nothing drives the Left crazy like wildly successful Republican policies that Democrats and their union cronies fought tooth-and-nail. During his tenure, Pew Research Center dubbed Utah the "Best Managed State in America", and last year Forbes Magazine recognized the Beehive State as having the "Best Financial Situation in the Country" and being "America's Best State to Live In." Also, he averred his unequivocal support for the Path to Prosperity before any of the declared Republican candidates did the same. (In fairness, Gary Johnson has advocated some arguably more austere entitlement reforms, as has Michele Bachmann, who voted for the plan when it came before the House, but she was not yet a candidate at that time.)

If Huntsman joins the fray, then I will probably vote for him, but I’ll vote for the Republican in the general election no matter who it is. As for those of you who aren’t sold, let me ask you this: who else can you think of that has Mitt Romney’s managerial finesse, Newt Gingrich’s intellect, Michele Bachmann’s conservative bona fides and Tim Pawlenty’s disarming, down-to-earth demeanor? Before you answer, consider that this should be someone willing to run, with a comparable degree of foreign policy experience. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?