GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Rick Santorum lost Tuesday’s primary
here in Michigan. All the spin in the world can’t change that fact,
and if Mitt Romney goes on to win the Republican presidential
nomination, political historians will point to Feb. 28 as his
watershed moment. Exactly how Santorum or any other GOP rival can
beat Romney now is an increasingly difficult scenario to
describe.
The best way to understand the significance of Mitt’s win
in Michigan is to imagine the opposite result:
Had Santorum won here in Romney’s home state, it
would have been a shattering blow to the aura of “inevitability”
and “electability” that has always been Romney’s strongest argument
as the “It’s His Turn” candidate whom the Republican Party
traditionally nominates. A win on Romney’s home turf would have
sent Santorum surfing a tidal wave of momentum going into next
week’s Super Tuesday contests in 10 states. Had Santorum won
Michigan, it would have set off panic in the ranks of the GOP
establishment, stirring new talk of a brokered convention to anoint
a “respectable” candidate like Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels —
someone, anyone! — as the nominee.
Instead, after an all-out battle that lasted three weeks
since Santorum’s Feb. 7 triple wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and
Missouri, Romney scored a narrow victory in Michigan that will
enable the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign to boast of a
“comeback” that ratifies his claim to legitimacy as the rightful
heir to the nomination.
That Santorum came close to winning here — within 3
percentage points, 41%-38% — is unlikely to affect the perception
that Michigan gave Romney a major boost toward an August coronation
in Tampa. The state of the race now was perhaps best summarized by
one network correspondent while departing the Amway Grand Plaza
Hotel where Santorum held his primary night party. “Back to our
regularly scheduled programming,” the correspondent said, en route
to the airport for a flight to Tennessee, where Santorum will renew
his campaign with rallies Wednesday in Knoxville and
Nashville.
The “regularly scheduled programming” is, of course,
Romney’s seemingly unstoppable march toward the GOP nomination, a
perception augmented by his victory in Arizona. Santorum made
little effort in Arizona, where Romney coasted to victory by a
20-point margin, and instead concentrated his campaign here in
Michigan, hoping that his blue-collar appeal could help him win a
game-changing upset. Ceding the winner-take-all primary in Arizona,
however, meant surrendering 29 delegates to the front-runner.
Santorum’s supporters tried to take comfort in the possibility that
their candidate might take a majority of Michigan’s 30 delegates,
due to apportionment based on congressional districts. Yet even the
most optimistic evaluation, counting the Arizona result, would have
Romney winning 43 delegates Tuesday to Santorum’s 16.
“We didn’t win by a lot, but we won by enough,” Romney
said in his victory speech to cheering supporters in the Detroit
suburb of Novi. His Michigan comeback, after some polls showed him
trailing here by double digits, enabled the well-funded frontrunner
to portray himself as an underdog, saying that “a week
ago the pundits and the pollsters were ready to count us
out.”
In his own speech, Santorum began by paying tribute to two
women — his 93-year-old mother and his wife, Karen — and tried to
put Tuesday’s result in a positive light: “I came into
the backyard of one of my opponents in a race where people said we
had no chance here and the people of Michigan looked into the
hearts of the candidates. And all I can say is I love you
back.”
Santorum closed his speech by invoking George Washington’s
“ragtag” patriot army, “who stepped forward to volunteer to create
freedom in this land. … That’s how America’s freedom was won —
leaders believing in the people that they led.”
Washington’s troops suffered many defeats on their way to
ultimate victory and, after their narrow loss in Michigan,
Santorum’s army marches forward knowing that they can afford few
more near-misses. They came close here but, as an old saying has
it, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
