Fractured US conservatives seek a 'not-Romney'
With New Hampshire's primary days away, and South Carolina's vote looming, can conservatives rally around one champion to loosen Mitt Romney's grip on the Republican presidential nomination?
"There's still a possibility that conservatives will rally around a 'Not-Mitt' candidate, but time may soon start running short," said Matt Dickinson, a political scientist at elite Middlebury College in Vermont.
"And that person will have to make the case, in a credible manner, that they can win this election. I don't think that this is a case where Republicans are willing to go down, flags waving, for the cause," he added.
The millionaire venture capitalist has arrayed a well-oiled campaign, amassed a vast campaign warchest, and piled up high-profile endorsements feeding a juggernaut image as the candidate to beat for the party's nomination.
And on Wednesday, veteran Republican Senator John McCain urged New Hampshire voters to hand Romney a big win in the state's January 10 primary to help "get this thing over with, get the real contest going."
Some Republican insiders worry about a "circular firing squad" that bloodies the eventual nominee to take on the otherwise highly vulnerable President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.
"Quick please. Focus the rage," one of them, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP Thursday.
But Romney suffers from lingering doubts about his conservative convictions -- stoked by a largely centrist record as governor of Massachusetts -- and has never broken past 30 percent support among Republicans nationwide.
And conservatives, or at least voters not prepared to rally behind the candidate who clearly has the backing of the party's Washington establishment, have in fact been rallying behind a "not-Mitt" for a year, giving different candidates brief surges to the top of the back before falling back.
"I find it amazing the news media continues to say he's the most electable Republican when he can't even break out in his own party," former House speaker Newt Gingrich, one of those candidates, said Wednesday.
"The fact is Governor Romney in the end has very limited appeal in a conservative party," said Gingrich, whose support crumbled under a barrage of attack advertisements, much of it from a group allied with Romney.
McCain, who beat Romney for the Republican nomination in 2008 then lost to Obama, mockingly described the other candidates "the flavor of the month" and insisted "there's always been Romney."
And Dickinson warned conservative core Republican voters that "unless they focus on somebody, they're just going to fracture the vote in a way that leaves Romney the last candidate standing."
As for the candidates themselves "they all understand the problem, and they all think 'I'm the solution,'" he said, meaning that "the winnowing process in the next two races is really crucial."
South Carolina's primary is on January 21, and Florida -- which essentially anointed the winner last time -- on January 31.
Early Wednesday, Gingrich floated the possibility of an alliance with surging Christian conservative Rick Santorum, who came in second to Romney in Iowa's first-in-the-nation nominating caucus by just eight votes out of 120,000 cast.
"Absolutely. Of course," he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.
But by evening, Gingrich was backing off, telling Fox News Channel: "No, no, what I meant was we're both conservatives.
And Gingrich spokesman RC Hammond left no doubt a day later: "We would like to knock them all out. We are not here to be somebody else's tackling dummy. We are here to win the nomination."
"They have to have a kingmaker who could anoint the conservative to take on Romney," said Dickinson.
Some who could play that role haven't shown much of an inclination to do so -- such as Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, a patron and leader of the archconservative "Tea Party" movement that carried Republicans to big wins in the 2010 elections, who says he's staying neutral in the primaries.
But "Tea Party Express" strategist Sal Russo told Fox News Channel Thursday that "I don't think it will be too much longer before we pick somebody."
"We're getting close to picking a horse and saying, 'look, they have had their opportunity to make their story. And now we have to settle on a candidate,'" he said.
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