By William Lewis
Some of these analogies are accurate, but there were also significant differences. Reagan, when he was governor of California and president, projected the image of a strong and decisive Republican leader. Romney certainly has leadership qualities, but he did not exemplify them as Reagan did.In terms of his overall presidential campaign, he experienced continual misfortunes. He had hoped to obtain early victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the evangelical vote was very powerful in Iowa and went very heavily for Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. There was a segment of the electorate who questioned his Mormon background, which in turn compelled him to defend his religious faith by emphasizing his belief in separation of church and state. He still lost the Iowa caucus, however.During the New Hampshire primary he went on the offensive, launching negative TV ads attacking his chief opponents, especially Huckabee. This tactic may have hurt him more than helped since it seemed to turn the other Republican presidential candidates against him. That was evident during the debates when they showed hostility toward Romney.In his New Hampshire victory, Republican contender John McCain totally recovered from his campaign's financial meltdown months earlier when the perception was created that his campaign was broke. With former Mayor Rudy Giuliani not making a serious effort in the early primaries, it gave McCain the opportunity to monopolize most of the liberal, moderate Republican vote as well as the independents. He worked vigorously with his town meeting campaign approach. Romney did go on to win his former home state of Michigan in addition to the Nevada caucus. But after that he would lose the critical primaries in South Carolina and Florida to McCain. This situation gave McCain momentum going into Super Tuesday. The official Republican Queens County Organization was supporting Rudy Giulliani. However, after he withdrew, they announced their support for John McCain for president. During that period, newspaper endorsements continued for McCain. These endorsements were also critical of Romney. They criticized him for shifting his positions on issues and only serving four years as governor rather than eight years. He was also criticized for his lack of foreign policy experience.Regarding Romney changing his positions on issues, it should be mentioned that Reagan during the early part of his political career was a Democrat who held liberal views, especially on social issues. It was the Communist menace of the late 1940s and early 1950s that brought him around to becoming a conservative Republican. Therefore, in terms of Romney shifting his positions on issues, it could be argued he was following the example of the Reagan.There were other things that seemed to have a negative effect on Romney. Some parts of the news media made an issue of Romney's spending somewhere between $35 million and $50 million of his own money on the race while other candidates had to raise money only through campaign contributions. Romney as a public speaker gave good formal speeches but in press conferences he had a habit of speaking too rapidly, thereby distracting from the effectiveness of his presentation.Several days before Super Tuesday in which Republicans would compete in 21 states, conservative talk radio, which reaches millions of listeners every week led by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, and joined by Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage, seemed to launch a verbal assault on McCain for his less than conservative actions on certain key issues. In the case of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, it was launched with an almost crusade-like fervor. At the same time they seemed to be supporting the Romney candidacy. However, it proved to be too late to stem the tide of McCain successes. If these initiatives had begun in earnest 10 days earlier, it might have made a difference in the results of the Super Tuesday Republican primaries. As it was, Romney did win a third of the primaries by capturing seven out of the 21 states. Most of these victories were by large margins. The nine states that McCain won had far more delegates than the Romney seven. This gave McCain a commanding lead over the other Republican candidates.Romney has now suspended his campaign. If McCain should go on to win the presidency and serve only one term due to his age, Romney may have another opportunity to seek the presidential office.
