Mitt knows it’s the economy, folks

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Updated: February 7, 2012 8:20AM

The race for the Republican presidential nomination is entering the make-or-break phase. Will Mitt Romney finally win over enough conservatives to nail down the nomination in a few weeks? Or will social conservatives finally coalesce around one candidate, perhaps Iowa surprise Rick Santorum, to force a long, drawn-out contest to at least slow Romney’s drive or maybe even deny him the nomination?

Given his financial resources, his strong organization, his prowess and confidence as a candidate, and an air of inevitability hovering over him, Romney is positioned to emerge as the nominee sooner or later. I’d guess sooner, but in what has been an unpredictable political season, anything can happen.

Romney has been fortunate so far in candidate forums in escaping the focus of attacks as his rivals tended to aim their poison arrows at whichever contender was the anti-Romney candidate of the movement. That likely will change in the two debates this weekend since Romney is far and away the front-runner in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

His position is so strong that a lot of the political focus is turning to the next primary, Jan. 21 in South Carolina, as the best chance to halt Romney’s momentum. The Palmetto state, with its large number of socially conservative voters, is viewed as fertile ground for the two contenders from the South, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, as well as Santorum, the candidate of traditional values.

Romney fared poorly in South Carolina in 2008 but this time has invested considerable financial and organizational resources there and won the endorsements of Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. John McCain, the 2008 primary winner. Romney may benefit, as he did in Iowa, from having several opponents split the anti-Romney vote.

Prominent social conservatives are reported to be meeting in Texas over the weekend to come together on a consensus candidate. That doesn’t mean it’s a stop-Romney meeting, Gary Bauer, one of the movement leaders, told Politico.

If their goal is to defeat President Barack Obama, these social conservative leaders will have to realize this isn’t the year to base a campaign on abortion, gay rights, marriage and family values.

No, “it’s the economy, stupid” — to appropriate the successful 1992 campaign strategy of Bill Clinton.

And that’s Romney’s strong suit for the campaign, and why he is right for the tough times facing America after three years of Obama’s failed economic policies.

In an illuminating article about Romney’s days at Harvard University, the New York Times reported that Romney didn’t tackle issues as an ideologue: “Eager, driven and tremendously hardworking, he mastered the Harvard Business School method of literally looking at the world on a case-by-case basis, approaching each problem completely on its own terms and making recommendations based on data.”

That’s what our economic challenges require — not another four years of an ideological president who sees fiscal policy as a vehicle to achieve social equality via the European-style entitlement state.

Obama adviser David Axelrod mocked Romney’s razor-thin Iowa win by calling him “the 25 percent man” because he got only one-fourth of the caucus vote in a state that never was favorable territory for him. Come Election Day, Obama can only hope to be “the 8 percent man” — meaning he’ll be lucky if the high unemployment rate prolonged by his disastrous policies is down to 8 percent.