Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States.
Paul Ryan, as vice president, will be breaking lots of 50-50 tie
votes in the Senate. Bank on it.
Here’s the big picture for the presidency: Romney will win the
entire South, including “swing” states North Carolina, Florida and
Virginia, plus all the usual solid-red states of the inland West.
That gets him to 248 electoral votes. From there, he will need only
one state from each of the next two conglomerations of three. He
will need to win either Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, plus
either Colorado, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. He will indeed take two
of those six in the right combinations, and he will be president.
And that doesn’t even include New Hampshire (an absolute tossup),
Iowa (I think it will go for Romney), or Nevada (probably an Obama
state), or the lone elector from the Second Congressional
District in Maine, which will go for Romney, too. And it doesn’t
include still theoretically possible longer shots Oregon (actually,
it’s doable) and New Mexico (probably not). Any of those states
could help form other combinations that bring Romney to the 269-269
tie that he needs to carry the day — or better.
What it boils down to is that it is Obama, not Romney, who
really has to “run the table” in order to eke out a victory. But he
won’t. Romney will win, 284 Electoral Votes to 254 for Obama.
Romney will also win the popular vote, but with a plurality
rather than a majority. I have it at Romney with 49.8 percent,
Obama with 48.6 percent, and Gary Johnson/Virgil Goode/others at
1.6 percent. (Ignoring the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness/misplaced specificity, and just to have some fun, I’ll
peg Romney’s total votes at 64,576,316, Obama’s at 62,982,965, and
all others combined at 2,135,802.)
In the Senate, as indicated above, Republicans will pick up
three seats, for a 50-50 tie. (In a bit of a surprise, the Senate
race in Maine will remain in doubt well into the wee hours of
Wednesday morning maybe even longer with Republican Charlie Summers
giving “Independent” fraud Angus King all he can handle, and with
Democrat Cynthia Dill well behind but still pulling far more votes
than expected. And in one other longshot possibility, if
it is clear early enough in the evening that Romney has won, then
Republican Linda Lingle might eke out a victory in Hawaii, which
would give the GOP a chance at a 51st Senate seat.) George Allen
will win Virginia, by the way, thus resuming a career interrupted
in 2006 by the Washington Post.
In the House, Republicans will easily hold a majority; in fact,
they will lose a net of only two seats, ending with a majority of
239 to 196. Of particular interest to knowledgeable conservatives,
Conservative Opportunity Society co-founder Dan Lungren will indeed
hold on in California’s hotly contested, redistricted Seventh
District. And in Utah, Republican Mia Love will rush past incumbent
Jim Matheson.
All of which would, of course, be mere assertions if there
weren’t some method to the predictive madness. Of course, there is
such a method. (For my past record at this, please, please consult
this, with
2006 being the only year that marred my record.) We start with a
bad economy (unemployment higher than when Barack Obama took
office; household net worth down hugely, the dollar terribly
devalued, etcetera). We add the fact that 55 percent of those
polled by the Washington Post say the country is “on the
wrong track” (vs. 43 percent on the “right track”), and that by a
50-46 margin, voters think Romney can do a better job with the
economy than Obama can. (The sample size is a reasonable Democrat
+3 — one that probably understates what the actual Republican
turnout will be, but not by as much as many other polls.) These are
not numbers that re-elect a president, nor ones that re-elect a
Democratic Senate in a year in which Democrats are defending more
seats, and more vulnerable seats, than Republicans are. They are
especially not numbers that re-elect a president when tremendous
intensity is on the side against him, while many of his own
supporters remain somewhat disenchanted or dejected. Moreover,
Romney also leads by a couple of points in the Real Clear Politics
average of “net favorable” ratings, and leads by a huge margin in
Rasmussen’s crucial “intensity of favorable/unfavorable” ratings
when compared to Obama.
Anecdotal reports from Ohio, Virginia, and especially Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania agree that enthusiasm is strongly on Romney’s
side. The Republican “ground game” is light years better than it
was in 2008, and probably even better than the superb effort put
forth under Ed Gillespie’s leadership in 2004. Plus, more outside
groups on the right are doing more of the smart political tasks
than ever before, by a long shot. Pro-life groups, the National
Rifle Association, Tea Party groups, Catholics and others motivated
by religious freedom, and sharp upstarts such as American Majority
Action are doing wonders with voter identification and
mobilization. Plus, of course, Romney and supportive Super-PACS
have raised and spent multiple times more money than anything
Republican presidential efforts have even dreamed of in the
past.
Against all this, Barack Obama has had four years to hone an
organization that did, after all, garner an astonishing 69 million
votes four years ago, plus has had the significant advantage of the
most slavishly and hypocritically unprofessional “establishment
media” this nation has ever seen. Those twin assets have been
enough to keep him close — but they aren’t enough to overcome the
remaining good sense of an American public where just enough people
still have a wisely inculcated value system that rejects the
weakness, failures, and leftist claptrap that animates Obama’s
worldview.
With super-storm Sandy having interrupted Romney’s momentum last
week, however, I found myself as late as Thursday night convinced
that the former governor and turnaround specialist would barely
squeak through in a 269-269 electoral vote tie, lifted by a
27-state majority in the U.S. House, and with West Virginia’s Joe
Manchin breaking with fellow Democrats to cast the deciding Senate
vote making Paul Ryan vice president. Significant civic unrest
would have marred the transition, but it would have faded out in
time for the inauguration due to the innate decency and common
sense of the American people.
Thank goodness we probably won’t be relegated to such a
scenario. Barack Obama has lost his magic, and his troops are a bit
enervated. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has made up for a
campaign-long spate of forgettable TV ads with a stretch-run
personal performance worthy of the office he seeks. His stump
speech has been sharper, his demeanor uplifting, his personal
decency on display, and his deep love of these United States
abundantly clear. And his running mate, Paul Ryan, has demonstrated
knowledge, competence, can-do optimism and, yes, compassion,
throughout an impressive first run on a national ticket.
For all those reasons, conservatives and independents who want a
new and promising direction for the country they love can join Ryan
in saying, yes, indeed, “we can do this. We can
do this. We… can do this, now.”
