Mitt Romney's Herman Cain Problem

Mitt Romney has a problem named Herman Cain. Cain is now leading PublicPolicyPolling's latest foray into the vital Iowa contest, with 30% to Romney's 22%. Other polls show the two in the other order, but much closer; whatever, I trust PPP way more than any other pollsters at this point. In late August, Cain was getting just 7% in Iowa, compared to Romney's 19%. But that's not Romney's problem, or at least, his problem isn't that Herman Cain will win the Republican nomination instead of Romney. It's that the rise of Herman Cain tells us a hell of a lot about the Republican primary electorate: they really, really, really don't want to vote for Mitt Romney.



Let's identify a "Tea Party faction" of Republican candidates: Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. In August, those four candidates were polling at 7%, 18%, 22%, and 5% in Iowa. Since then, Cain has jumped up to 30%, a gain of 23 points, while Santorum is holding steady at 5%. But Bachmann's lost ten points, sliding down to 8%, and Perry's lost 13 points, dropping to 9%. In other words, these four candidates totaled 52% in August, and they total 52% now. The total vote share of the Tea Party Faction has been utterly constant over the last two months.

Meanwhile, the Ron Paul bubble has burst a little bit, with Rep. Paul declining from 16% to 10% (though moving into third place, as both Perry and Bachmann plummeted past him), and Jon Huntsman went from 3% to 1%. Those eight points of lost support among non-crazy-right-wingers went 3% to Newt Gingrich, 1% to Gary Johnson, and 3% to Mitt Romney. Overall, the kinda-sorta-sane crowd (really defined as Establishment Faction + Libertarian Faction) went from 43% in August to 42% in October. Again, constant, with some slight shifts away from the Libertarian Faction (down by seven points) toward the Establishment Faction (up six points).

Now here's the point. Herman Cain is not going to win the Republican nomination. Everyone but everyone has to know that. He's an un-serious candidate, who recently demonstrated that he knows nothing about foreign policy. He has zero government experience; the last person never to hold government office prior to winning a major party's nomination was Wendell Willkie, and I think the last one before that might've been, uh, no one? He has zero electability cred, and his policy ideas are cartoonish. (Please, guys, prove me wrong and nominate Herman Cain. I'd love it. Obama beat Alana Keyes, he can beat Herman Cain, too!) And, you know, he's black. He's the token black guy. You don't make the token black guy CEO, that's why the "token" is in there.

Now, maybe I will be proven wrong about this. Maybe Cain is for real, and the virulently right-wing part of the Republican Party will prove that a) they really don't care about beating Obama, and b) it's really not just about race, and they're fine with black people as long as they're good Uncle Tom-Booker T. Washington-Clarence Thomas black people. If so, then Romney's screwed. But if not, Romney's still screwed. Rick Perry had an atrocious debate performance, halved his support over the course of two months, and that gained Mitt Romney damn near nothing. It certainly didn't change the basic facts of Republican primary polling, which are that more primary voters have said they want to vote for an outright crazy than for anyone either a little bit sane or a little bit libertarian, consistently. So when Herman Cain's bubble bursts, when it pops like a balloon as I think it is almost certain to, where are his supporters going to go? Back to Bachmann, who shares most of Cain's flaws? To Santorum, whose name they can't even google without, well, you know...? How minimally competent a debate performance do you think Rick Perry needs to turn in tonight in order to make himself the automatic recipient of Cain's ex-supporters?

In late 2007, at about this same point in the cycle, Hillary Clinton was getting about 45% in polls of national Democratic primary voters. She held a lead of over 20 points over her nearest competitor, Barack Obama. And yet she lost. Why? Because the dynamic of that election was Hillary vs. The Field. 45% is a pretty nice sum, in a multi-way race. But The Field was getting 55% of the vote. As soon as those 55% knew for sure who their champion was going to be, who would be Clinton's one-on-one opponent, they coalesced around Obama and led him to victory. In fact, he picked up nearly 100% of the supporters of "the field," and because Clinton was so close to an outright majority, he needed every last one of them.

Maybe I'm over-applying the lessons of the last war here, but I've viewed the Republican primary for 2012 though that lens. Early in this year I thought that a lot would depend on whether the contest shaped up as "Mitt Romney vs. the Field" or as "Sarah Palin vs. the Field." If the latter, then Romney would be the obvious choice to become the champion of The Field, the anti-Palin, and after absorbing the support of all the other non-Palin candidates he would obviously be able to kick Palin's ass in a one-on-one. But if it became Romney vs. the field? Then all of the people who didn't want to support Romney would end up coalescing around someone else, the anti-Romney. And that would be a much tougher fight for Romney. Originally I thought that guy would be Mike Huckabee, who was also the only one who actually scared me for the general election. It's not Huckabee, but it looks right now like it will probably be Rick Perry. The fact that those of his supporters who were scared off by his debatecle (Patent Pending?) went to a joke candidate like Cain means they are in no mood to go to Romney. Unless Cain turns out to be the real deal, which I think is highly unlikely (and isn't any better for Romney!) they'll find their way back to Perry.

Now, Perry is a much more flawed candidate than Barack Obama was in 2008. I remember that in '08 we Democrats were sitting around lamenting how difficult our choice was, because any of our eight contenders would make great Presidents. It was kind of a shame any of them had to lose. But in both of the last two Republican primaries, there's been this constant search for a Savior Candidate, like Fred Thompson or Chris Christie, demonstrating that even Republican voters think it's a shame one of these people has to win. It will probably be a lot harder for Perry to consolidate 100% of the "The Field" voters behind his banner. Romney will probably pick up some of the support as Huntsman, Johnson, Gingrich, and Paul voters in particular have to abandon their first-choice candidate (though Ron Paul might stick around through the convention, which could screw Romney pretty bad.) But Rick Perry, unlike Barack Obama, does not need 100% of "The Field" to support him. Right now Mitt Romney is at 20.5% in the pollster.com average. That's about as high as he's been. His highest single poll showing to date was a 33% in a Rasmussen poll from June; next best is a couple of 30% showings. During the very long time during which Romney's been hovering in the 15-20% range, we've seen Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich, Bachmann, and now Cain take the role of his main antagonist. Each one keeps fading, and yet Romney is making no headway. It looks to me like a solid 70% of the national Republican electorate just does not want to vote for Mitt Romney. Seventy percent of seventy percent is forty-nine percent. In other words, whoever the ultimate anti-Romney is only needs to pick up about seventy percent of the anti-Romney vote in order to beat Romney, even if Romney takes essentially all of the other thirty percent. If we assume that most of that 30% that Romney might hope to gain would come from the likes of the Paul and Gingrich supporters, and also that Ron Paul sticks around, then the math gets a little bit harder for Romney.

I guess that if Rick Perry has another awful debate performance tonight, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Santorum continue to show essentially no signs of life, and Cain regresses toward his "true talent" joke candidate level, then Romney will be in a pretty damn good position. Especially if all of those trends continue. But I think the level of competence that Perry needs to demonstrate in order to establish himself as the One True Anti-Romney again is very low, and if he does that, we're right back to Look Out Romney territory.


UPDATE: I checked Intrade just now, who have Romney as the frontrunner at a 64.2% chance of winning the nomination. Wouldn't mind the opportunity to short-sell some of that right now, I'll tell you...