HAGERSTOWN, Maryland — Hickory trees were blazing brilliant
gold in the forest surrounding my home on the western slope of
South Mountain as I stepped outside Thursday afternoon to take a
call on my cellphone from a well-informed source. My enjoyment of
the autumn scenery was diminished only slightly by the cool drizzly
overcast weather, but much more by the shadows of gloom gathering
over the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, which was the
reason for the phone call.
After listening with great interest, I walked inside to
the dining room table, picked up a pen and asked my source to
repeat the information which I scrawled into a notebook: “Rubio
[chief] of staff — CESAR — used to be w/ Romney’s campaign … used
his contacts to push primary to 31st because they want Romney in.”
A couple more phone calls to D.C. and Florida, a few minutes of
online research, and I had an exclusive: “Top
Rubio Staffer Reportedly Pushed for Early Florida Primary to Help
Romney.” Perhaps not the kind of story Matt Drudge would
consider worthy of a banner headline, but a key piece of the puzzle
surrounding events that have hopelessly scrambled the 2012
schedule.
What my tipster explained was that Cesar Conda,
influential chief of staff for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, had been a
key force behind the scenes urging Florida Republican officials to
move their state’s primary — which should have taken place in
March, according to the schedule approved by the Republican
National Committee — to Jan. 31. Florida’s fateful
decision Sept. 30 set in motion a chain of events which, as
matters now stand, could result in New Hampshire holding its
first-in-the-nation primary as early as December 6, less than two
months from now. Although Florida had long threatened to break the
RNC-imposed rule protecting the four states (Iowa, New Hampshire,
Nevada and South Carolina) that traditionally hold early nominating
contests, the timing of Florida’s final decision — immediately
after Herman Cain won a
Sept. 24 straw-poll in Orlando — aroused deep suspicions from
conservatives.
Conda is well
known as a supporter of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney,
who has led the GOP 2012 field for most of the past year. On the
day two weeks ago when a Republican-controlled special committee in
Tallahassee set Florida’s Jan. 31 primary date, Texas Gov. Rick
Perry was still leading the
Real Clear Politics poll average with 26.5 percent to Romney’s
23 percent. However, Romney was regaining lost ground, as Perry’s
support collapsed in the wake of his embarrassing performances in
three September debates. It appeared that Romney, with vastly
superior fund-raising potential and a top-quality campaign
organization, was clearly once more a pre-emptive favorite to win
the nomination, and Florida’s move would help maximize Romney’s
advantage. Or at least that was the conventional wisdom of pundits
and Republican insiders, especially because a front-loaded primary
schedule would make it more difficult for New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie to make a late entry into the field. Five days after
Florida announced its primary would be Jan. 31,
Christie said his final “no.” By the time Christie made his
inevitable endorsement of Romney, major GOP funders like
Georgette Mosbacher were already aboard the Romney
bandwagon.
For Rubio’s chief of staff — formerly an aide to Dick
Cheney and a top D.C. lobbyist — to be a Romney supporter is
scarcely surprising, nor was I particularly shocked when my source
said Conda had been encouraging Florida to jump ahead in the 2012
schedule. The early-primary madness gripping Florida Republicans
has been well-nigh universal for months. A lone voice of sanity
warning against the move to January seems to have been the state’s
RNC committeeman, Paul Senft, who
chastised Florida officials with a reminder,
“Republicans have always been law abiding people who
obey the rules.” True, but Republicans are also creatures of habit,
and few habits have become more predictable than the GOP’s “It’s
His Turn” principle of choosing presidential nominees. Romney was
the chief rival to Sen. John McCain in the 2008 primaries and has
been building his 2012 campaign ever since. By long-standing
Republican tradition, it’s Mitt’s turn, and no one should be
surprised that the organized forces of the party establishment
(evidently including Cesar Conda) are doing
everything in their power to deliver the
nomination to him.
So far, so good for the conventional wisdom which would
have us believe that Romney is inevitable as the Republican 2012
standard-bearer. Even conservatives determined to resist Romney’s
nomination — many of whom are still holding out hope that Perry
can somehow regain his footing — seem to be trying to convince
themselves that Romney wouldn’t be so bad. Why, however, did my
item yesterday about Cesar Conda and the Florida primary provoke
such a phenomenal reaction, getting re-Tweeted more than 200 times
in the span of a few hours? Why did
Michelle Malkin react, “Damn, I hate politics”? Because
the Conda story seemed to implicate Marco Rubio in the insider
maneuverings to coronate Romney, and Rubio was one of the greatest
heroes of the Tea Party uprising. Indeed, if the GOP Establishment
had gotten its way, Rubio would not today be one of the most
promising young Republicans in the Senate.
In May 2009, Florida’s GOP chairman Jim Greer endorsed
Gov. Charlie Crist in the 2010 Senate race, more than 15 months
before the primary. National Republican Senatorial Committee
chairman Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also
endorsed Crist, who was then leading Rubio by more
than 30 points in the polls. Greer and Cornyn were both acting on
the conventional wisdom that Crist, with statewide name recognition
and proven fund-raising abilities, would be the safe bet to hold
the seat being vacated by the retirement of Republican Sen. Mel
Martinez. Outraged by this attempt to anoint Crist — who had
endorsed President Obama’s deficit-spending stimulus program —
conservatives
rallied behind Rubio. Within a year, as the Tea
Party movement boosted Rubio to a commanding lead in the primary
polls, Crist
quit the GOP and launched a doomed third-party
bid. (Greer resigned in disgrace and is now awaiting trial on
corruption charges.)
Just as the Republican elite’s attempt to anoint Crist
backfired, sparking a Tea Party uprising that carried Rubio to the
Senate, there may be a possibility that the behind-the-scenes
effort to anoint Romney could ignite a grassroots movement to unite
conservatives behind Herman Cain’s surging candidacy. The strength
of Cain’s surge may have been underestimated in the conventional
wisdom of late September, when Florida Republicans made the
decision that scrambled the campaign schedule. And the Atlanta
businessman got an unexpected boost on Oct. 5 when former Alaska
Gov. Sarah Palin announced she would not be a candidate in 2012.
Many of her most fervent supporters had waited for months hoping
she’d jump in the race and, when
she finally said
“no,” Palin singled out
Cain for praise in an interview on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News
program. Whether Palin’s supporters took this as a signal or
whether they naturally gravitated to Cain’s populist “outsider”
appeal, the effect is noticeable: Cain’s
RCP poll average on Oct. 4 was 13.7 percent, but
in the four national polls taken since Palin announced her decision
not to run, Cain’s average is 26.3 percent. In the latest
Rasmussen survey, Cain is tied with Romney, with
Perry fading to single digits in fourth place behind Newt
Gingrich.
The GOP Establishment’s alignment behind Romney has produced a
Newtonian counter-reaction, and the voices of Establishment
spokesmen deriding Cain’s chances of winning are likely to solidify
Tea Party support behind the Atlanta businessman. Last night, Karl
Rove (a pundit especially loathed by Palin’s fans) told Sean
Hannity that he
doubts Cain can sustain his current momentum,
saying Cain was “coming up short” and predicting his campaign is
“not gonna have a nice ending.”
Of course, Rove never predicted Cain’s October surge, and how
this year’s Republican campaign will end is probably beyond
anyone’s power to predict, when no one yet knows whether the New
Hampshire primary will be in December or January. The odds favor
Romney, but the odds have always favored Romney. For the past three
weeks, events have seemed to be accelerating toward some kind of
apocalyptic climax, the outcome obscured by ominous clouds of
uncertainty. For now, there is only the campaign trail ahead, which
will bring the candidates together Tuesday in
Las Vegas for a CNN debate in which Cain will
defend his newfound contender status against his Republican rivals.
Autumn leaves are falling, and the days are rapidly running down
toward the time when at last the predictions of polls and pundits
will be less important than the decisions of actual voters.
UPDATE:
“Marco
Rubio Denies His Office Influenced Florida Primary
Date”
