Only One Nevada Mystery: Will it Go For Romney or Obama?
The big question is whether Obama can persuade Nevada voters that the downturn was deeper than expected, that he was trying his best, and that things would have been worse without his policies. Or will they decide he's had long enough, and it's Romney's turn to try to drag them out of the economic cellar? As Romney put it in his victory speech, "Mr. President, Nevada has had enough of your kind of help." After days of gaffes that made him look out of touch, he even made a stab at painting Obama as uncaring - citing his response of "interesting" to a woman whose husband had been unemployed for three years. Romney said he'd call that tragic.
Yet how will Nevadans react to Romney's answer to the housing crisis that is affecting neighborhoods all over Las Vegas? Obama has been ineffectual on this front, even as he makes renewed attempts to help. Still, it's hard to see how they'd prefer Romney's response, which is to let the market hit bottom and keep the government out of it. Even GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval doesn't agree with that.
Each man has opportunities to tap in Nevada. Saturday's caucuses confirmed that Romney can rally fellow Mormons. They make up only 7 percent of the Nevada population but, as in 2008, they accounted for a quarter of caucus-goers and more than nine in 10 of them chose Romney, entrance polls showed. The active business community also can be counted on to coalesce behind Romney.
Obama has potential wells of support among union members and Hispanics, if he can energize them after they've been battered by years of recession. He also has grassroots muscle contributed by labor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's organization, and his own infrastructure from 2008. He starts with a Democratic voter registration edge, but it has fallen from 100,000 to 50,000 in the past four years.
Romney's lead in Nevada was so broad that the entrance polls showed him sweeping demographic groups across the board. He did lose a few categories, most of them to Paul: people 29 and under, people making under $30,000, independents, people who have no religion, and people who said the most important quality in a nominee was that he be a true conservative. The people spoke, or at least his people spoke, and they didn't leave many clear-cut poaching opportunities for his rivals.
For those keeping score, Nevada has 28 delegates to the nominating convention in Tampa this summer. Romney started Saturday with 87 delegates, according to an AP count. That's a long way from the 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination, but a lot more than the other contenders have managed to amass. Going in to Nevada, Newt Gingrich - winner of the South Carolina primary - had 26 delegates, while Iowa caucuses winner Rick Santorum had 14. Paul had four.
The Gingrich campaign is in debt ($600,000, according to The Washington Post) and Gingrich's prime patron, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is already hedging his bets with outreach to Romney, according to The New York Times.
Still, Gingrich's propensity for incendiary rhetoric and his love-hate relationship with the news media guarantee he won't lack for attention -- especially if he continues to hit Romney as a phony liberal liar with cramped vision, who doesn't care about the poor or the moon. There's plenty of opportunity for that in the five states with races this month, at the Conservative Political Action Conference Feb. 9-11 in Washington, and in the next debate on Feb. 22.
Santorum, for his part, told CNN on Saturday night that Romney can't win a general election and "this race is a long, long way from being over." He was in Greeley, Colo., and had traded in his Iowa-New Hampshire sweater vest for a Western string tie.
The mysteries of the nomination race are how long it will go on, and how much more damage Romney's opponents will inflict on him before bowing to what certainly looks like the inevitable. Super Tuesday on March 6 seems like a natural end point for the also-rans, if they haven't dropped out by then. But that's a whole month and many attacks away.
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