The leapfrogging strategy was a brainchild of his campaign manager, Mike Biundo. After three straight finishes near the bottom of the pack, Santorum was running out of cash. The media was writing him off. Nevada was a lost cause. (Vegas isn’t my town, thought Rick.) If he didn’t win something, somewhere, somehow, Santo was finished.
Biundo believed that victory was readily obtainable in Missouri, where Gingrich had failed to qualify for the primary ballot, and that the electorate in Minnesota’s caucuses would be conservative enough that Santorum could prevail in them, too. While Colorado would be a dicier proposition, pulling off a shocker there wasn’t out of the question. Though all three contests were nonbinding in terms of delegates, Biundo reckoned that if Santorum brought home two wins, the media narrative might shift to Rick’s reemergence as the anti-Mitt. If he pulled off the trifecta, all the better. It’s time to make a stand, Biundo told his boss.
Santorum sensed a new kind of energy when he returned to the hustings. In Colorado Springs, he made a surprise appearance with James Dobson, the prominent evangelical leader whose organization, Focus on the Family, was based in the state and influential with politically active conservatives. In Colorado and Missouri, he was accompanied by Foster Friess, the multimillionaire mutual fund manager who had emerged as Santo’s super-PAC sugar daddy.
But it was the outpouring of concern over Bella that most inspired Santorum. His retreat from the trail to tend to his girl received wide media coverage, and now he was regularly being approached on rope lines by voters asking after her—especially by those with special-needs kids of their own. At one event, he noticed a father standing with his young daughter, who had Down syndrome, holding up a sign reading I’M FOR BELLA’S DAD. Santorum’s momentum in the February 7 states seemed to be growing every day. He wondered if he would have chosen this path if he hadn’t been pulled abruptly off the trail and compelled to take stock of his campaign. Everything happens for a reason, he thought.
Before Nevada, Team Romney did next to nothing to counter Santorum’s moves. Missouri was as hopeless for Mitt as Nevada was for Rick—and Beeson and Weber agreed that Minnesota was a goner as well. But the campaign was confident about the outlook in Colorado, which Romney had carried in 2008. Having spent a ton of dough in Florida, Boston wasn’t eager to pour dollars or Romney’s precious time into a contest with no delegates at stake that Mitt was likely to win in any event. Beeson was a native of Colorado, knew its politics backward and forward. Don’t worry, he kept saying. Santorum and Gingrich will split the evangelical vote, and we’ll run right up the middle.
But Newt’s tour de farce Vegas press conference, and the full-scale collapse it epitomized, had an unexpected spillover effect. On Super Bowl Sunday, February 5, Newhouse’s polling started picking up a migration of Gingrich voters to Santorum in Colorado. Suddenly Boston’s decision to have Romney camp out in Nevada was looking iffy—though Mitt remained unworried. Arriving in Colorado on Monday, he was greeted by big crowds; three thousand showed up to see him that night in Centennial.
Romney woke up the next morning to snow on the ground—the first bad sign of many he would encounter on February 7. The weather made him late to his first event. (Nothing rankled Mitt more than being off schedule.) His body man, Garrett Jackson, had picked up a stomach bug and stayed behind in Nevada—leaving Romney without his human security blanket. The Santorum-friendly polling trend from Sunday had accelerated Monday. The staff was bickering. Beeson’s confidence was ebbing.
That morning, the political director sent out a preemptive memo to the press dismissing the importance of the three races that day because they would award no delegates. “John McCain lost 19 states in 2008, and we expect our opponents to notch a few wins too,” Beeson wrote. But “it is difficult to see what [they] can do to change the dynamics of the race.”
In Denver, Romney retreated to his hotel room to rest up for his election night speech, telling his traveling team he wanted an on-time departure. But when the hour arrived, Mitt was still in his suite. He’s watching the early returns on TV, Stevens told Charlie Pearce. He’s spooked.
“Have you seen these numbers?” Romney asked Stevens a few minutes later in the suite.
“They suck,” Stevens replied.
“We’re going to lose Colorado,” Romney said.
“Yeah, we are. It’s not going to matter in the long run, but it’s gonna be a pain in the ass.”
The numbers, in fact, were extremely close, but the closeness only infuriated Mitt. “Why didn’t I come here more?” he asked. “We could’ve won.”
Before his speech at the Tivoli Student Union, Romney stood three feet from a giant plasma screen backstage, still glued to the cable coverage. He had lost Missouri and Minnesota, as expected, but the final results weren’t in yet for Colorado. As Pearce alerted him to the two-minute warning, a CNN reporter, broadcasting live from the event, appeared on the monitor and remarked on the meagerness of the crowd on hand.
Shooting daggers at Pearce, Romney snipped, “Did you hear that?”
“Guv, we’ve got as many as we’re gonna get,” Pearce said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Back at his hotel afterwards, Romney learned from Beeson that he had in fact lost all three contests. For the first time, Beeson entertained the possibility that Mitt might not be the nominee—that GOP voters might be about to cast aside electability in favor of purity, driving the party off a cliff.
“This thing could be about to go Thelma and Louise on us,” he said to his war room colleagues.
Up in his suite, Romney was equally funked. Rick will surge now—he’s far less damaged than Newt, Mitt thought. And I’ll be starting all over again. Romney puzzled through the potential reasons he had been swept: We didn’t visit or spend dollars in these states. Rick did a great deal. My “poor” statement. The Mormon Thing, Romneycare, unanswered attacks. I’m seen as the moderate, and he’s the conservative alternative.
Santorum’s speech in Saint Charles, Missouri, sought to reinforce exactly that perception. “Tonight was a victory for the voices of our party, conservatives and Tea Party people, who are out there every single day in the vineyards building the conservative movement in this country,” he said. “[On] health care, the environment, cap-and-trade, and on the Wall Street bailouts, Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama.” Positioning himself as a populist antidote to Romney, he touted his vision of “supply side economics for the working man” and added, “I care about 100 percent of America.” But he also injected a dose of God talk in the mix, taking Obama to task for “impos[ing] his secular values” on Catholics with his newly unveiled contraceptive mandate.
Like Romney, Santorum took the podium before he knew the outcome of Colorado for certain. When CNN called the state for him, he and Karen were so thrilled that they started snapping pictures of the TV screen. Santorum wrapped his arms around Biundo in a bear hug. Against the odds, they had gone all in and pulled off the trifecta. “This is going to be a game changer,” Santorum said.
• • •
THE ROMNEYITES TRIED TO make the case to the contrary the next morning on a conference call with Mitt. They repeated their talking points about delegates, the long haul, and yadda, yadda, yadda. The candidate wasn’t buying it. You guys can talk about that stuff all you want, he said. But for normal people just seeing the news, they’re not going to say, Oh, those were just beauty contests. They’re going to say, Wow, this Santorum guy has a little bit of something in him.
Romney was right about the tenor of the coverage. Biundo’s bet that the press would treat Santo as the ultracon comeback kid had paid off. Eager to shift the storyline, Mitt held a press conference that day in Atlanta in which he inveighed against Obama on contraception and attacked Santorum from the right on spending. But Romney’s splashier opportunity for a reset would come forty-eight hours later in Washington, where he was slated to appear at the annual meeting of CPAC.
Highly anticipated addr
esses were always a source of angst and agita in Romneyland—because Mitt’s speechwriting operation really wasn’t an operation at all. Romney considered himself an able pen; given his druthers, he would have handled all his wordsmithing himself. That being impractical, he had forged an authorial bond with Stevens. But Stuart had a great many other responsibilities, so their joint rhetorical endeavors were often shambolic and last-minute. In an effort to make the process less of a two-man show, Myers had brought on board a talented young writer, Lindsay Hayes, who had worked for Sarah Palin in 2008. It was Hayes to whom responsibility fell for drafting the Friday CPAC speech.
When Mitt got a look on Thursday morning at what Hayes had put on paper, he wasn’t happy. It’s too light, he thought. I want a serious tone and lots of substance.
After spending two hours with Stevens, Fehrnstrom, Flaherty, Chen, and Hayes debating how to change the speech, Mitt set off for the Virginia suburbs, where he had a fund-raising dinner and another speech to give the next morning before CPAC. He soldiered through the supper, which included taking 450 photos with donors, then went back to his hotel expecting a new draft to be waiting. Nope. Around 11:00 p.m., he convened a conference call with his people for another two hours. No draft, no time in the morning—and why am I speaking in Virginia? Romney unhappily thought. Exhausted, he called Ann at around 1:00 a.m., took a sleeping pill, and passed out.
Stevens and Hayes, working in shifts, pulled an all-night revision session. When Mitt showed up at the hotel where CPAC was being held, Stevens was still editing the speech. Romney had just one chance to practice it on the prompter, and even then, his people were still tweaking it as he did so.
To Romney, the point of the address was to explain that, while he wasn’t a classic movement conservative, he had come to the creed through experience and now embraced it deeply. And for the first few minutes, he was cruising. “Not everyone has taken the same path to get here,” he told the audience of activists. “My guess is some of you got here by reading Burke and Hayek. When I was your age, you could’ve told me that they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers.”
But when Romney pivoted to defending his record in Massachusetts, his delivery seemed a mite awkward—in the manner of a speaker not completely comfortable or familiar with his text. “I fought against long odds in a deep-blue state,” he said. “But I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”
“Severely” was nowhere in Romney’s script. The moment the modifier escaped his lips, Flaherty and Chen, seated in the front row, turned and gaped at each other, silently mouthing the offending word at the same time. Flaherty was Mitt’s designated liaison to the right. He found the adjective superfluous and odd, and knew others would, too. It’s like in A Few Good Men, when Demi Moore gets up and says, “I strenuously object!” he thought. You either object or you don’t object—there are no gradations.
Romney fed himself happy talk about his performance. Five standing ovations, glowing media reports—the speech was a hit, Mitt thought. “Severely conservative” didn’t trouble him too much. I meant “severely” in the sense of “strictly.” What a silly kerfuffle.
The Obamans were certainly pleased to be provided with video of Romney touting the severity of his right-wingery. But Flaherty was correct that the reaction among conservatives would be equally strong. Among establishmentarians such as Rove, Romney’s employment of the qualifier was a sign of his lack of confidence in his connection to the animating spirit of the party. To fire-breathers such as Limbaugh, it was an occasion for more mockery. “I may be a little giddy here,” Rush chortled on his show that day. “I have never heard anybody say, ‘I am severely conservative.’ No, I’ve never heard anybody say it!”
Frazzled, fried, and missing his wife, Romney wanted a respite—a weekend jaunt to La Jolla to see Ann and collect himself. It had been a month since he’d spent a night in any of his homes. But the next day in Maine, there were caucuses happening, and Romney decided he couldn’t afford a fourth straight loss in one week. From CPAC, he flew up to Portland for a hastily arranged town hall meeting that night and visits to a pair of caucus sites on Saturday. His plan was to bug out to California from there—but that itinerary was thwarted by an emergency strategy meeting called by Rhoades for Sunday in Boston.
Romney and his inner circle gathered in the third-floor conference room on Commercial Street at noon. Their mood was by turns dispirited, clear-eyed, and suffused with a sense of urgency. On the back of his trifecta, Santorum had seized the momentum in the race; in the first national poll taken since his wins, he had jumped to an eye-popping fifteen-point lead. As the sole survivor, Santorum was now in a position to consolidate the large bloc of anti-Romney GOP voters behind him. Rhoades was adamant that if Santorum caught fire, he could be the nominee. Everyone agreed that the fuse had been lit—and they had to douse it immediately.
The next two contests were primaries in Michigan and Arizona on February 28, two weeks away. While the latter was safe territory for Romney, the former was not. Before the trifecta, Newhouse’s polls had him up by ten points in the Wolverine State. But that lead had already evaporated, as Santo stormed ahead. Given Mitt’s historical Michigan ties, the expectations of his winning there would be sky-high—and the reaction if he lost all the more debilitating.
Romney was under no illusions about his status in the state. Sure, he was the scion of George Romney. Sure, he was a Michigan native. Sure, he had won the primary there in 2008. On the other hand, Mitt hadn’t lived in Michigan in forty years. He had been the governor of another state. Almost all of the voters who had supported his father were now dead. Then there was “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” which had already been a problem with Motor City donors and over which he suspected he would take major flak in the primary. The state’s Republican electorate had swung hard to the right; the Tea Party was ascendant. Though Mitt wasn’t pleased to be running behind Santo, he wasn’t shocked, either.
None of which made the prospect of losing Michigan any less daunting to him, or the scale of the challenges he faced any less dismaying. Before the meeting, he had raised with Stevens the possibility of skipping Michigan. “Is this winnable?” Mitt asked. “Because if it’s not, we shouldn’t go in there and spend millions of dollars just to lose.”
Team Romney was certain that Michigan was winnable, and over the next several hours they laid out a plan to win it. Deputy campaign manager Katie Packer Gage, who was also a native of the state, proposed that they treat the two weeks before the primary as if it were a gubernatorial race—reminding Michiganders of Mitt and Ann’s roots there, keeping them both stumping hard on the ground as much as humanly possible. As for dealing with Santorum, his years in Washington and his record on matters ranging from earmarks to spending presented plenty of juicy targets. Just as they had strafed Gingrich in Florida, they would carpet-bomb Santorum in Michigan.
Romney headed to the airport, where he hopped a small private jet with his Secret Service detail for La Jolla. Flying private was less an indulgence than an indignity. With the cost of the nomination fight now stretching the campaign’s finances thin, he had decided to pay for his flight home out of his pocket, leaving his staff and the media behind.
He was resolved to do what was necessary to halt the Santo surge. If I lose Michigan, I’ll lose Ohio, he thought. If I lose Michigan and Ohio, I’ll lose Illinois and Wisconsin. Then it’s game over.
Romney took a dim view of Santorum. He’s sanctimonious, severe, and strange, Mitt thought. But he believed that Santorum was now as likely to be the nominee as he was. Between the trifecta, the contraception issue coming to the fore, and Mitt’s vulnerability on health care, Santo was positioned to seize the momentum and send Romney packing. At least it’s not Newt, Romney thought, recalling with a chuckle a recent line by Dick Armey, who said that Gingrich’s “second-rate campaign has become a first-rate vendetta.”
On the flight to California, Romney thought about what losing to Santo would mean. La
Jolla, family, and horses for Ann—not a bad outcome. I’m resigned to whatever happens. I know it’ll be hard to get up for campaigning if I’m behind in the polls and my prospects don’t look great, but I’ll follow the course wherever it leads. And I won’t stay in the race beyond the point of being able to win. If we can’t reasonably get there, I’ll exit the race to give Rick the best chance of beating Barack.
For many in the Republican establishment, the specter of a Santorum coronation was too horrid to contemplate. But watching a flawed and faltering Romney struggle to put away the nomination was enflaming fears that his elevation might prove nearly as awful. In the wake of the trifecta, the salons of the Beltway’s right-leaning potentates and pundits were abuzz with speculation about an alternative scenario. About the possibility of a white-knight candidate galloping onto the nominating field for a handful of contests late in the spring. About the desirability of a brokered convention that summer.
Mitt had heard the mutterings and dismissed them out of hand. This talk of a brokered convention is nuts, he thought—and maybe it was. But it was also getting louder and emanating from some serious sets of lips.
• • •
HALEY BARBOUR PICKED UP the phone and called Scott Reed to bewail the state of the race. That Romney was proving an inept candidate—incapable of connecting with voters, inspiring conservatives, or restraining himself from planting his penny loafers in his piehole—was no surprise. What troubled them more was that Mitt was winning only by burying his rivals in an avalanche of money and manure. On his present course, Romney seemed destined to implode or emerge from the nomination fight so grievously injured that he would be easy pickings for Obama.
Barbour and Reed started gaming out the white-knight scenario. They agreed that if Mitt won Michigan and fared well on Super Tuesday, a week later, there would be no denying him the prize. But they were unconvinced he would do either. The key question, then, was how many primary and caucus ballots a late entrant could still qualify for after March 6. Reed did the research and discovered that the answer was seven—including those in the mega-states of California, New Jersey, and Texas. If a white knight ran the table, he could collect about five hundred delegates—far short of 1,144, but enough to deny that number to Romney or Santorum and then take the fight to Tampa.
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