SC PrimR: Rasmussen: Romney and Thompson tied for 1st, Huckabee and Paul rising

[muon2]

The concentional wisdom is that a candidate gets on a winning streak and gains the momentum and sweeps to victory.  That is the Romnney battle plan obviously.  He wants to copy what happened with the Kerry experience in '04.

Here's the difference this time.  Democrats suddenly realized in 2004  that Kerry would be a much better candidate than Howard Dean in the general.  Hell, they read the polls showing Dean a sure loser to Bush.  Democrats wanted to beat Bush and happily jumped on board the Kerry express to insure a competitive general election.

Romney doesn't have that "I'm the most electable candidate" thing going for him that Kerry had over Dean.  Quite the opposite.  Republicans can read the polls.  In state after state he is getting clobbered by Hillary.  In my own state for example, he's down 1 to Hillary according to Rasmussen.  This is in Texas for crying out loud.  Same poll has Rudy and McCain up 11.  It's like that in every state.  Look it up.

Republicans aren't going to climb on board with a candidate who guarantees Hillary and Bill are back in the White House.  If you think that, you are completely ignoring Republican feelings about Hillary.  Democrats proved to be pragmatic in 2004 when it came to finding someone they thought could beat their arch enemy Bush.  Republicans will do the same in 2008 when it comes to beating their dreaded enemy, Hillary Clinton.

BTW, they won't turn to Huckabee either, another sure loser.

I think there's a lot to what agcatter says. Here in IL the GOP base seems to only agree on one thing - how much they dislike the idea of Pres. HRC. The schedule creates an opportunity for the candidates who poll well against HRC to let the field shrink going into the big states. That sets up a smaller field in February where the case can be made to consider electability.

Giuliani is organizing here in IL in a big way as he is in the other large states with 2/5 primaries. McCain is also quite active here, but Romney has had a smaller presence. Thompson still has a following with conservatives, but that's faded in the last few weeks, and it's not clear where they will go.

[muon2]

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it now.

People here are too influenced by 2004. The nomination isn't always decided by the first states. The fact that every winner except Clinton has won one of the early states is misleading, because in many of these cases the race went on for a long time afterwards.

For instance, Carter won both Iowa and New Hampshire in 1976 but still had to fight for the nomination all the way to the end. Ford in the same year also won both but had an extremely close battle with Reagan into the actual convention. When you have a situation where one candidate is extremely strong in all the later states and they're coming in one big shebang closely after the other states things may be different. While I'm the first to agree that Guliani has a problem in being so weak in the early states I think calling him done because of it is overdoing it.

I think Gustaf is fundamentally correct. For every nomination decided by early primaries there was another where they didn't matter. The mix of candidates and the primary calendar have to be looked at as a whole. This is a very different field from 2004, 2000, or 1992. There might be some resemblance to the Dem field in 1988 (look up jokes about the seven dwarfs, or given the way some fell by the wayside, the seven deadly sins.) Even if there is a resemblance there is a very different calendar in 2008 and that will impact the field as well.

There are voters in the big states on 2/5 who will watch the earlier states, but I think it will focus more on gaffes and collapses, not on specific placing in the early states.