By John Fortier 

John Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and studies politics, the presidency, continuity of government, elections, the electoral college, election reform, and presidential succession and disability. Fortier is the executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and is a weekly columnist for The Hill.

Editor’s Note: This article was written in December 2007.

The presidential primaries have often had surprising twists and turns and occasionally produced unexpected
nominees, but even by historical standards, this year’s Republican contest is particularly fluid.

Consider the race as it stands. The frontrunner in the national polls, Rudy Giuliani, holds positions on social issues that are anathema to much of the Republican base. The frontrunner for most of the year in the all-important initial contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mitt Romney, polls only fourth nationally. The man who jumped into the race late to fill the perceived need for a conservative champion, Fred Thompson, sees his standing in the national polls slipping and does not lead in any of the early states. Then there is the former frontrunner, John McCain, who is now relegated to running a shoestring campaign but who still has a national presence and strength in New Hampshire. Finally, what looked to be only a four-man race has expanded to five, as Mike Huckabee has caught fire in Iowa, polling first or a close second to Mitt Romney in recent polls and steadily gaining support as the date approaches. And that is just the first tier. Even the second tier has intriguing candidates such as former libertarian and iconoclast Ron Paul and the strong foe of illegal immigration Tom Tancredo.

It is not the size of the field that is so remarkable, but rather the numerous scenarios that could arise in a several week period of primaries in January and February.

Remember that one year ago, John McCain was sitting on top of the world. He seemed to have successfully combined his maverick persona from the 2000 campaign with new support from conservatives, Bush supporters, and evangelicals. Before the 2006 midterm elections, McCain looked like he might face a strong conservative challenge from George Allen or Bill Frist. But the 2006 election loss vanquished Allen, and Frist chose not to run. McCain had also spent the previous six years shoring up his support with the Republican base: he campaigned with Bush and many Republican congressional candidates, he was one of the few positive Republican forces in the campaign of 2006, and he reconciled with Jerry Falwell. McCain also looked like a good bet to beat Hillary Clinton. Matchup polls showed McCain with a lead over Clinton, whose high negatives McCain could exploit. He was not only seen as the strongest Republican candidate, but he also did not look too bad to conservatives, especially by comparison to his rivals. Rudy Giuliani was a social moderate who was unlikely to appeal to the conservative base. Mitt Romney was not well known, and to the extent that he reached the national conversation, the question was about which Romney to expect -- the liberal Massachusetts Republican
or the conservative Mormon from Utah. Finally, McCain had assembled an impressive team of fundraisers, campaign operatives and policy advisers. A maverick hero with a compelling story, the best alternative for conservatives, the best organized candidate, and the man who could beat Hillary Clinton seemed like the obvious choice for Republicans.

But in the first few months of 2007, McCain’s formidable armor began to crack. The first and most surprising turn for McCain was President Bush’s announcement of his surge strategy. While McCain had supported Bush in a number of ways, he had also been a critic of the Bush Iraq war strategy from the right. McCain had long complained about Rumsfeld’s plan for a small footprint in Iraq. McCain was for more boots on the ground. While the war as a whole had become unpopular with the American people, McCain’s position had credibility and was politically palatable because McCain implicitly admitted some of the war’s failures and as a military hero held out the promise that he would have done it better and might be able to turn it around if put in charge. When Bush announced the surge, McCain was quick to support the President, but it did not help him. Now McCain was tied to an unpopular president on the issue that was his Achilles heel. The maverick, independent McCain was harder to spot. Other Republican candidates also supported the surge and made McCain less distinctive.

McCain also joined President Bush on the issue of immigration, which deeply divides the Republican Party. For this alliance with Bush, McCain paid a double price. Again he was connected too closely to Bush, this time on an issue that irked the conservative base. And he reminded conservatives that he was a maverick and often willing to stick it to Republicans and work with Democrats and independents.

Finally, McCain failed to live up to his frontrunner status in the very conventional playing field of raising money. He hired the best and biggest staff and had a campaign plan to raise and spend substantial amounts of money. But the dollars did not come in. And McCain’s new image as the stodgy, establishment frontrunner did not mesh well with the fun-loving, bus-riding, straight-talking outsider from 2000.

As McCain declined in the polls, a funny thing happened: Rudy Giuliani retained his popularity and became the frontrunner by default. Giuliani had always polled well, but many suspected that his high standing was ephemeral. Giuliani had high name recognition and was well regarded for his leadership in New York City after 9/11. The suspicion was that his popularity would drop as he jumped into the race and was subject to criticism and as the Republican base realized that he was not with them on abortion, gun rights, and civil unions. But Giuliani did not lose much in the polls, and he has been left standing as the Republican frontrunner since the spring of 2007.

Giuliani’s social liberalism has been balanced somewhat by two other factors that give him some appeal to conservatives. He is overwhelmingly viewed by Republicans as the candidate most able to beat Hillary Clinton or other Democrats. And he is seen as a tough candidate who is loyal to the Republican Party and who will fight to the end to beat the Democratic nominee. On the issue of party loyalty, he is the flip side of John McCain. John McCain’s positions on key social issues are reliably conservative. He is pro-life, supports gun rights, opposes gay marriage, and has been a longtime opponent of earmarks and wasteful spending. Despite these issue positions, conservatives have criticized his loyalty to the Republican Party for his championing of maverick causes such as campaign finance reform and immigration.

Giuliani, on the other hand, fails the conservative litmus test but emphasizes how he fights for the party. One of his best stump speech themes is that he has fought liberals in the belly of the beast, New York City. He went into the most liberal city in the United States and battled all of the left wing crazies that most conservative primary voters cannot even imagine. His fighter personality serves him in a number of ways. He is seen as the candidate who would fight the criminals, fight the terrorists, and fight the Democrats.

With the race being led first by McCain and then by Giuliani, a consistent theme through the beginning of the year was the need for an authentic conservative candidate. It just did not feel right to many conservatives that the race was dominated by a moderate, a maverick, and a man who wasn’t sure if he was a moderate or a conservative. Conservative discontent was also fueled by an overall drop in Republican fortunes. At the end of 2006 and start of 2007, generic polls between Republicans and Democrats did not favor the GOP. When asked to choose between two unnamed candidates of the major parties, poll respondents chose Democrats by ten percentage points or more. While the overall political climate favored Democrats, Republicans could derive some comfort from the fact that their leading candidates led Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in individual matchup polls. The explanation was that through some combination of the electoral strength of McCain and Giuliani and the high negatives and other weaknesses of Hillary Clinton, Republicans would be able to overcome a bad political climate and win the presidency. These hopeful numbers in the matchup polls began to fade in the early spring of 2007. Even Giuliani, who was viewed as the most electable, lost to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in head to head match-up polls (on average, Giuliani lost to Clinton by small margins in most polls).

With no true conservative in the race and the electability of Republicans in doubt, there was a hope for a new, more conservative, more electable candidate to enter the race. Republicans were looking for the ghost of Ronald Reagan to rescue them from their predicament.

Efforts to fill this conservative void came from both inside and outside the campaign. From within the race, Mitt Romney sought to be the conservative alternative. He disavowed a number of the more socially liberal stances he had taken when he ran for office in Massachusetts. He raised the most money in the first quarter of 2007 and has added funds from his substantial personal fortune to his campaign coffers. And he concentrated his efforts in key early states. To emerge as the conservative candidate, he needed to overcome his past moderate record in Massachusetts. He also had to deal with an issue that had not come up before in presidential campaigns: whether Americans would vote for a Mormon for president. While the number of Americans who say that they would not vote for a woman or an African American have over the years dropped to very low levels, significant numbers showed reservations about Mormonism. Especially troublesome for Romney was the prospect some conservative evangelical Christians would look not favorably on his religion even if they agreed with him on key social issues.

While Romney was shoring up his conservative credentials in the race, many were looking for Fred Thompson to join the race. Thompson was seen as a telegenic conservative who could shake up the race. He would also be the only candidate in the top tier to hail from the South, the core region of the Republican party. Conservatives hoped that Thompson could come into the race and become the immediate alternative to Giuliani.
The height of the Thompson fervor was the beginning of 2007, and many anticipated a July 4th entry into the race. But the Thompson campaign dawdled, postponing his announcement. In the meantime, he was hit by negative stories questioning his conservative credentials, revealing his lobbying activities, and reporting the disarray on his campaign staff. When he finally announced his candidacy in September, he did enjoy some initial success in the polls. He polled ahead of McCain and Romney but clearly behind Giuliani. But since his entry, his fortunes have declined. He is regularly panned by Washington and campaign insiders as a bad candidate, who either does not have the fire in his belly to win or has a poorly run, disorganized campaign. Thompson’s national poll numbers still show him ahead of McCain and Romney, but they have dropped. Even more troubling is Thompson’s seeming inability to compete in early states: he is far back in Iowa and New Hampshire and even trails in South Carolina, in the region he was supposed to dominate.

The fifth candidate who now has to be considered in the top tier is Mike Huckabee. He has been in the race from the beginning but was not taken very seriously until recently. His genuine, everyman persona, his ability to speak to evangelical Christians, and his debate performances have raised his profile in the race. By the summer, all of the other candidates were talking about how much they liked Huckabee and pundits speculated that he would make a good vice presidential nominee. He would make an especially good pair with Giuliani, who needs someone with conservative credentials to balance his moderate Republicanism. But what has vaulted Huckabee into the top tier is his rise in the polls in Iowa. Without the campaign funds of his rivals, he rose to second place in the Iowa polls, and recently has vaulted into first.

Even with all of these candidates, there are a couple of simple storylines for how the campaign might play out. In a nutshell, Giuliani is the frontrunner, and he can win as long as the conservative vote does not unite around one of his opponents.

Romney and Thompson have for some time been the two candidates who might be able to fill that conservative role. If one triumphs over the other, then there might be a consensus conservative candidate who can beat Giuliani. Over the summer, the hopes of conservatives were pinned on Thompson, but this fall the more likely uniter of the conservatives is Romney. Some of Romney’s success comes from Thompson’s lackluster campaign, but he also has the funds to compete and could win Iowa and New Hampshire. If he were to win clear victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, he would likely effectively kill Fred Thompson’s campaign. He would also put Giuliani on the defensive because he would be the clear consensus conservative choice. Giuliani, recognizing this possibility, is scrambling to get a win or at least score a close second place in New Hampshire, so that he can stay viable until early February when he can compete in states more favorable to him.

But this simple narrative is complicated by a few new wrinkles in the campaign. Romney’s strength in Iowa has been strong and building for months. He has spent time and money in the state, built a top notch organization and run many ads. The rise of Mike Huckabee is, however, a great threat to Romney. If Huckabee wins Iowa or even finishes a close second to Romney, he will step on Romney’s headline. He will derail Romney’s case for being the conservative alternative to Giuliani. Giuliani will gladly accept this result as it will maintain the status quo with Giuliani in the lead and no strong conservative to beat him.

Also consider the role of John McCain. McCain is far from his days as the front runner in the race. But after his fall, he reorganized his campaign, emphasized his frugality and has tried to reclaim his maverick status. McCain is still an authentic hero, who can speak directly from his incredible life on matters of national security. While overall public opinion is still deeply skeptical about the war in Iraq, there is no doubt that Bush’s surge has had strong positive effects in Iraq. McCain speaks compellingly about the surge, its importance, and the sacrifice that is sometimes needed in protecting our nation. His defense of the surge is one that is hard to impeach given the great personal sacrifice that McCain made for his nation.

McCain still sits in third or fourth place in national polls and third in New Hampshire, but he trails Giuliani by only a hair in the Granite State. If McCain is able to beat out Giuliani in New Hampshire, he can make the case that he is the less conservative alternative to Romney.

To add to all of these scenarios, Ron Paul has a committed band of supporters and the potential for a libertarian appeal in New Hampshire, not to win, but to take away votes from others. Also, Paul or Tancredo or some anti-immigration or religious right candidate might choose to run as a third party candidate down the line, especially if the moderate Giuliani gets the nomination.

The final, less than likely, but still possible scenario is that the early primaries are so muddled that no one gets a clear majority. A large majority of delegates are selected on February 5th. If we see Huckabee winning in Iowa, Romney in New Hampshire, Thompson in South Carolina, and Giuliani in Nevada and Florida, then it is likely that there will be only a plurality winner on February 5th and that no one will get an outright majority of delegates. That situation could be resolved by some deal among the candidates before the convention, or in the extreme case, we might go to the St. Paul and have to decide the nomination on the floor of the convention.
The central storyline that either Giuliani or a conservative alternative such as Romney will win the race still has some truth to it, but the possibilities for twists and turns in the Republican nomination are endless.

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