Romney faces moment of truth

MANCHESTER, N.H. — After months of hard-fought campaigning, acrimonious debates and millions of dollars spent on ads, the first primary of the 2012 election has arrived — and with it, a major moment of truth for Mitt Romney.

If the former Massachusetts governor can score a double-digit victory that leaves his rivals in the dust, he can fuel his argument that the GOP nomination is now his for the taking. But if a fresh onslaught of piercing attacks proves to have eaten away at Romney’s lead, his rivals will head on to South Carolina and Florida in a strong position to assert that Republicans are still clamoring for anyone but Romney.

{mosads}New Hampshire voters head to the polls on Tuesday one week after Romney, the establishment pick and consistent front-runner in the GOP race, eked out a win in the Iowa caucuses, besting former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) by an eight-vote margin that robbed him of any capacity to declare a decisive victory.

But it’s in New Hampshire that Romney has built the nucleus of his campaign, has deep personal roots and has long been considered the prohibitive favorite. It’s also one of the only places he’s been able to break a ceiling of about 25 points in the polls.

“Right now what I’m worried about is winning in New Hampshire and hopefully having a margin larger than in Iowa,” Romney said on Monday. “I can’t handle another night like that.”

For months, both Romney and his opponents expected he would win here by upwards of 15 points. But in the telling stretch between Iowa and New Hampshire, his numbers have been slipping. And the final few days proved to be some of his most ill-fated of the entire campaign, with attacks on his record as a top-notch businessman seeming to land head-on.

At issue is Romney’s career as chief executive at Bain Capital, a private equity firm that rehabbed ailing companies, sometimes through bankruptcies and layoffs. Romney has touted his work as evidence that he — more than any other candidate — understands how jobs are created. But what started out as attacks from Democrats who would rather see President Obama face a more right-wing opponent ultimately became volleys from both sides.

A super-PAC supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) put Romney on notice Sunday that a 27-minute film documenting the tribulations of workers laid off by Bain would soon be making the rounds. The same day, at a campaign event in Rochester, N.H., Romney told voters he knew the feeling of fearing a pink slip — but offered no evidence that his own prosperity has ever been at any real risk.

A day later, Romney verbally veered off course while talking about the need for competitive insurance options.
 
“I like to be able to fire people who provide services to me,” Romney said.

The awareness that he had just written his opponents’ attack ads for them was visible on his face a mere fraction of a second later, and Romney clarified that he was referring to a one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare, not firing individuals.

But the damage had already been done.

“If I spend my entire campaign carefully choosing how everything I say relates to people instead of saying my own life experience, my own personal experience, then that would make me a very different person than what I am,” Romney said the next day as he worked to stop the bleeding.

Conservative groups ranging from the Club for Growth to the American Enterprise Institute have come to Romney’s defense, and the irony of Republicans attacking a fellow Republican for embracing capitalism and profits hasn’t been lost on many.
 
But with Romney’s poll numbers already slipping, it remained to be seen what effect the uncharacteristically undisciplined slips have had.

“Everybody looking at this says, ‘Boy, this looks like a Democratic Party attack. It’s like attacking a businessman,’ ” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Are Republicans really going to be moved by attacks that many of them think are bogus?”

If Romney wins on Tuesday, even by a smaller margin than he had originally hoped, the “inevitability” argument becomes an even tougher obstacle for his rivals to overcome. People like to vote for the winner, and after two consecutive wins, Romney will look even tougher to depose.

“Is South Carolina really going to go put their franchise of being right every four years on the line, just to prove a point to Romney? Possible,” Kondik said.

But it’s difficult to see who is in a position to prove that point.

After pulling off a virtual tie with Romney in Iowa, Santorum enjoyed a surge in New Hampshire, as he did in South Carolina, which will carry the nominating process forward with its Jan. 21 primary. But his surge has leveled off, and Santorum appears headed for a third- or fourth-place finish on Tuesday.

In his final pitch to voters on Monday, Santorum picked up where former candidate Michele Bachmann left off, asserting that Republicans would fare better with a true conservative who could legitimately dispute Obama’s liberal approach to governance.

“Do what’s necessary. Give the Republican Party what’s necessary to create the contrast so we can win,” he told a somewhat lackluster crowd in Somersworth, N.H.

If he can’t break the top three in New Hampshire, Santorum will have little ground to argue he has momentum heading into South Carolina and Florida, which will vote on Jan. 31.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), who has the most at stake in New Hampshire, is clearly benefiting from a last-minute second look from voters. He is the only candidate in the race not to have taken a turn at the top of the polls as the alternative for those who see Romney as disingenuous and not a true believer.

“Something is happening out there,” Huntsman told a zealously supportive crowd on Monday in Exeter, N.H. “I have no idea what it is going to mean tomorrow night, but I do know this: We’re going to surprise a whole lot of people in this country.”

Huntsman has already announced plans to start campaigning in South Carolina as soon as New Hampshire’s primary comes to a close. But unlike Romney and Gingrich, he has almost no infrastructure there. And his more moderate, secular message seems ill-suited for a Southern, conservative state.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) will likely continue to capture his dedicated segment of the electorate in South Carolina and Florida, but has demonstrated an inability to build on his base of support beyond a certain point. And Gingrich, who three weeks ago had a 20-point margin over Romney in the Palmetto State, is now more than 10 points behind him.

Although Romney’s team has hoped to clinch the nomination within the first few states, it has taken little for granted and put everything it needs in place for a long and exhausting slog. Romney made clear at a Monday night rally — where yet again, Occupy Wall Street protesters disrupted him and were arrested — that even as Granite State voters head to the polls, he has turned his attention to the south.

“Let’s take it to the next state after New Hampshire and give me the boost I need — I hope.”