A year ago, I could be counted among the vast majority of political observers who were prepared to tell you why Mitt Romney couldn’t win the Republican nomination. Today, in the aftermath of last night’s Texas Primary that allowed the former Massachusetts governor to gain a clear majority of delegates to the Republican convention, the nomination is securely and officially in his pocket. Why was I — along with a lot of other people — so wrong about Romney? There were many reasons, and more about that in a moment.
But the main point about the GOP nominee today is that after a difficult, long and bitter primary fight that was supposed to have left him weakened and with a well-funded incumbent president who is already launching brutal personal attacks on him with the eager assistance of most of the mainstream media, Romney is right where he needs to be. Though President Obama has some real advantages, the presidential race is a virtual dead heat. The economy, which is Romney’s strongest issue, is showing no signs of the sort of robust recovery that could guarantee the president’s re-election. The initial Democratic assaults on Romney’s business record (the Bain theme) and on the Republican Party in general (the faux “war on women”) have more or less flopped. A lot can happen in the next five months, but having weathered so many negative attacks from both sides of the political aisle in the last year, only the most starry-eyed Obama idolaters or the most hardened GOP pessimists could deny that Romney has, at worst, an even chance of being sworn in as the 45th president next January.
