Romney Faces Toughest Challenge Yet: Tea Party Homeland

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Mitt Romney has now taken both Iowa (narrowly) and New Hampshire (decidedly) in the first two early voting states of the primary season. He’s got his “one-two punch” he was hoping for in the primary season and is hoping that his momentum will start people talking about him as the eventual nominee with some inevitability. His issue is the ideological chasm that exists within the Republican Party, a kind of archipelago forming three major platforms; the evangelicals, the coastal moderates, and the Libertarian-leaning Tea Party. He scraped together the evangelicals in Iowa, charmed the moderates in New Hampshire, and is now headed to the Tea Party heartland in South Carolina, which is going to be a tougher sell than either of the previous two.

Gingrich had high hopes for Iowa, and even though he had a fairly dismal showing, he’s like a barnacle that won’t come off this campaign season without some noxious chemicals and a lot of scraping. Iowa did convince Bachmann of her non-candidacy, and for a moment it looked like Rick Perry would follow suit. However, after some right-wing evangelizing he decided to skip New Hampshire and started campaigning in South Carolina. New Hampshire’s outcome, if it does anything, will convince John Hunstman (or the Romney 2.0 that American voters don’t know) that Mitt’s already got the moderate-ish Mormon political nook securely filled.

The issue here is Ron Paul. Paul is the grand-daddy (maybe great grand-daddy?) of the Libertarian movement, which ideologically is closer to the Tea Party than either of the other two banks of the Republican Party. Paul, although not a favorite to take the nomination in the end, is likely to pull some delegates away from Romney and impact the course of the Republican Party’s dialogue in an area where Romney is seen as weak; limited government. Although Ron Paul may not take South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley has publicly endorsed Mitt Romney after all, he certainly won’t make it easy. If Romney can pass this crucible, he will prove himself the likely candidate in 2012 and may finally become the foregone conclusion that he’s pined for so badly.

One side-effect of Romney capturing every ideological island of the Republican archipelago is that Obama will also be honing his message in advance of the general election. Romney is seen as a “one percenter”, out of touch, and the product of the plutocratic system; a weakness on which Obama, who has characterized himself as the champion of the middle class, will no doubt focus.