It's getting so a Republican voter believes that "momentum" means "here today, gone tomorrow."
Yesterday's momentum candidate, Mitt Romney, suddenly and recognizably is a candidate who turns out to be a loser, in state after state. His momentum is confined to New Hampshire and Florida and if, I bet, you average out his track record now, with the Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota factored in, he's back to being pretty much the 26 percenter he's always been.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out last, the Republican party is beginning to look as though it's in disarray. Maddow sampled the awful screw-ups right across the fruited plain, from Iowa's incessantly uncertain outcomes, miscounts, and flat-out incompetence to Florida's delegate uncertainties.
Mitt is now left with putting a brave face on his losses as did his "top strategist," Stuart Stevens, last night.
Colorado is an important general election state, and [Stevens] sought to play down the notion that Mr. Romney’s poor showing here in the primary might be an indication of how he would fare against President Obama in the general election.
“I think we’ll do well here against Obama,” he said. “Colorado’s a tough state now, it’s going to be in play. It’ll be a tough state.”
He also said that the Romney campaign would likely be rolling out “clear contrasts” against Mr. Santorum. (In Romneyland, “contrasts” — at least as they illustrated them against Newt Gingrich in Florida — is code for an all-out, aggressive, and often negative line of attack, which already started this week against Mr. Santorum in surrogate appearances, conference calls and emails)....NYT
Pro-Romney Republicans are sure to be watching as "tough" takes over from "momentum." But their tolerance may be on the wane and their frustration on the increase. Democrats will increasingly see this as a fight among insiders: corporate, Wall Street insider Romney trying to defend himself from Santorum and Gingrich, both rank Washington insiders.
Romney's campaign argued that the results would have no bearing on the ongoing primary contest. But the reason for this argument was not because Romney's camp had suddenly discovered the importance of delegates -- it was because he was losing. ...Atlantic
It's not as though what's left of this week will be fun for Romney, either.
Romney heads to the unfriendly audience of this week's Conservative Political Action Conference, beginning Thursday in Washington, with even more explaining to do. ...Atlantic
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An analysis in the Washington Post gives us a much-needed view of Romney's ability to govern effectively. It's the son-of-the-father problem again. Romney, dutiful and ambitious, is ineffective over time. He's a coulda, shoulda, woulda kind of guy.
Massachusetts was one of just four states that by the time of the financial crisis still had not recovered all the jobs they had lost during the 2001 recession. And, as Romney’s opponents have pointed out, the state ranked 47th in job creation during his term.
The parallels between Massachusetts then and the country as a whole now point to the same central problem that has dogged the U.S. economy the last three times it’s climbed out of a recession: The recovery hasn’t created enough jobs.
Many state policymakers and economists say Romney struggled to apply his business expertise to Massachusetts’s problems during his tenure.
“There was this tremendous sense of a lost opportunity. Nobody questioned this was an incredibly capable man,” said Stephen Crosby, who was secretary of administration and finance for the two Republican administrations before Romney’s. “If he put his skills to work, in a really dedicated and thoughtful and appropriate way, there was a sense that he could’ve had a much greater positive impact.” ...WaPo
During Romney's governorship in Massachusetts, the unemployment figures, in fact, improved a bit, didn't they? No, not really.
Andrew Sum, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, says the unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney’s term. Just one state had a bigger drop in its labor force during the same period, according to Sum — that was Louisiana, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom,” said Sum, who is also the director of Northeastern’s Center for Labor Market Studies. ...WaPo
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At the end of 2002, just before he entered office, there were 338,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. By the time he left, there were 298,000, a drop of 12 percent, according to federal data.
“Under his administration, Massachusetts lost a huge number of blue-collar jobs that provided an opportunity for the middle class,” said Sum, the Northeastern economist.
Widmer noted that it’s often hard to pin a state’s economic performance on a governor.
“The job-creation record was weak. I don’t fault Romney for that. . . . There were larger economic conditions,” Widmer said. “On the other hand, he’s campaigning as a job creator.”...WaPo
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Bottom line: Romney's momentum? Fuhgeddabahtit!
Nate Silver at 538 has the last word in the opener to his analysis this morning in which he also shows how Romney could have won with a little effort. And that's the most damning aspect of the candidate's multiple loss last night. He almost gave it away.
Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable. ...NYT
