Romney's retreat

I saw the news early yesterday morning on the Politico that Romney was ceding South Carolina and focusing on Nevada. I've been thinking about that decision since then.

My first reaction was that this was a great tactical move. He's playing the expectations game--he can't loose if he doesn't try. Nevada is much more friendly to his candidacy. Finishing fourth in SC would be a huge blow if he was campaigning hard. He can play it off as Nevada having 10 delegates more, so he looks like a business-type who's concerned about the hard results, not media fluff.

But this morning I'm wondering if this won't be looked back upon as the moment in which Romney lost the presidential race.

First of all, the "you can't lose if you don't try" means that I personally am in a great spot to win the presidency. Giuliani's trying it and it's failing. Of course it hasn't failed yet, and I could be proven wrong in my contention that it was a miserable strategic decision to skip all these early states. But you don't win the presidential nomination by shying away from the tough fights. That's what so appealed to me with Romney's kindling strategy. Don't ignore Iowa and NH but get in there, get your hands dirty, mow people's lawns for them if that's what they want, and earn every vote.

The playing with the expectations game would work better if Romney had said all along he wasn't going to contest SC. But of course that would make him look rather weak if he said earlier that he didn't think he could win the primary that's chosen the Republican nominee since 1980. It would work better if the other candidates would play along and try to contest Nevada. The expectations game is always a matter of media perceptions. The media have to play along, in other words. It began in 1988, when before the second presidential debate between Bush and Dukakis ABC News and the Washington Post released a 50-state poll announcing that Bush had an electoral college lock. Dukakis had to blow Bush away in the debate, or he was thought to be finished.

I don't know that the media's going to play along with Romney's show tune. The stories will be the Democrats in Nevada, and the Republicans in South Carolina. Oh yeah, Romney was in Nevada. What was he doing there? He knew he couldn't win in South Carolina. I don't think that this works for the Romney campaign.

What does it say about Romney's willingness to spend his own fortune? As John Ellis noted yesterday, Romney's got a huge advantage in being able to outspend his broke competitors.

I don't think it would be a damaging blow to Romney to campaign hard in SC and not do well. Huckabee did pretty miserably in NH and Michigan, and he's still in this thing.

Perhaps his team is looking at the polls and seeing not much of a possibility of a bump from Michigan, and a downward trend from early December (21%) to now (16%) with the possibility that it could trend lower. If he campaigned hard and lost to Thompson, finishing a distant fourth, that would be brutal.

But after winning Michigan, to abandon a primary everyone has always believed to be important is a strategy that doesn't settle well with me at all. Fight for everything, I say, take your lumps and try to spin the results in the concession speech.

Romney was quoted as saying that he'd be shocked if McCain doesn't win SC, that it's McCain-country. This is also expectations management. He knows McCain'll be hard-pressed to beat Huckabee, and he's trying to knock McCain out of the race. That's not a bad strategy--if it comes down to Romney vs. Huckabee, Romney will more than likely edge him out.