As the days ticked away, and the inevitability of Tuesday’s loss to the resurgent McCain became more apparent, Romney started downplaying the importance of New Hampshire. Suddenly, he had never expected to beat the popular Arizona senator. A year ago, he told audiences this past week, nobody gave him a chance against “household names” like Rudy Giuliani, McCain, and Fred Thompson. A second-place finish would prove them all wrong and give the campaign a boost going forward.
Apparently, he wasn’t planning to try out an authentic response after New Hampshire, either.
No Comeback Kid
With Iowa and Mike Huckabee in the rear-view mirror, Romney immediately began attacking McCain — or, as Romney insists, “contrasting” their records. He had some legitimate ammunition: McCain’s unpopular (in conservative circles) immigration bill, his votes against the Bush tax cuts, his many years as part of the Washington Beltway machinery.
But it’s hard to fight from behind when you’re being ignored. Few of the A-list media showed up for Romney events: Jeff Greenfield of CBS News took in an “Ask Mitt Anything” forum in Nashua; “Campaign” Carl Cameron of Fox News did a stand-up from a restaurant meet-and-greet in Concord; David Gregory of NBC showed up for Monday’s Rotary Club speech in Bedford. Periodic sightings of the top national print journos (Chris Cizzilla, Adam Nagourney) could be made, but it was otherwise nothing like the star-studded cast at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton events.
In another presidential-election year, Romney’s showdown with McCain might have drawn more attention. This year, in the wake of the Iowa surprises, he was at best the fourth-most-interesting candidate in the state. Even the local New England top-tier reporters bailed on the former Massachusetts governor, drawn like moths to the Obama-Clinton flame.
Romney’s appearances were not exactly traffic-snarlers anyway. His Q&A events each packed in a few hundred bodies, but much of that was media, endorsers, out-of-staters, and the many, many all-purpose Romney team members — volunteers and staffers, most of whom have been traveling state-to-state for months, providing loud, sign-wielding crowds at debates, speaking events, and straw polls.
There was no luck to be had for Romney. Friday’s economic news should have been a gift from the heavens for Mitt: a spike in unemployment triggered dire front-page warnings of impending recession. As the worsening economy rises issue-wise in voters’ minds, it should lift the fortunes of the CEO candidate.
But who cares about the tanking economy when Barack Obama is in town? Or when Hillary Clinton’s campaign might be collapsing? Or when Chuck Norris might be doing . . . whatever it is that draws so much attention to him.
Romney also made his own bad luck. After treating his fellow Republican candidates like market competition — to be beaten by any means necessary — for more than a year, Romney found those candidates drooling at the opportunity to deal him a death blow.
They went at him in two nationally televised debates, on Saturday and Sunday nights (requiring Romney to leave the campaign trail for debate prep both afternoons). They ganged up on him, as the candidates with less at stake in New Hampshire did most of the grunt work —though McCain did the most damage, pulling the rug right out from under Romney’s newly adopted marketing plan with the well-placed one-liner: “I agree — you are the candidate of change.”
