By Marc Pitzke in Southfield, Michigan
It was a necessary victory. And you could see the relief: He glowed with pleasure, his hair -- otherwise so perfectly coiffed -- flopped down over his forehead. He even went so far as to discard his jacket, a rare move for Mitt Romney. "Only a week ago it looked like this was impossible," Romney yelled out to his supporters. "We are the greatest nation in the world!"
The patriotic outburst took place in Southfield, a suburb of Detroit, where some 400 Romney backers crammed into the claustrophobic hotel ballroom to celebrate his victory in the Michigan primary, beer bottles and wine glasses firmly in hand. Romney grew up and went to school just a few miles away from here in Bloomfield Hills. Now, almost 50 years later, the prodigal son has returned, to celebrate a vital victory in the Michigan primary.
Having come in a disappointing second in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney needed a win to revitalize his campaign. And he got it, winning 39 percent of the vote with John McCain, who took New Hampshire, coming in second with 30 percent of the vote. Mike Huckabee, the surprise winner in Iowa on Jan. 3, only managed 16 percent, meaning the Republican field is wide open -- perhaps more so than it has ever been.
Romney relied heavily on his family's past in the state to prop up his ailing campaign. He focused heavily on both Iowa and New Hampshire, only to lose them both. His one victory, in Wyoming, came largely because most candidates elected to skip that primary. In Michigan, he hardly missed an opportunity to remind voters that he was a native son, carrying on the torch of his father, once a highly popular governor of Michigan. "Michigan," he predicted at his final campaign appearance in Grand Rapids, "is going to vote for a Romney again!"
And Michigan didn't let him down -- primarily because Romney knew how to promise what voters wanted. For more than half of the Republican primary voters yesterday, the economy was the top issue -- and they are now placing their bets on a multi-millionaire, ex-chief executive and son of a former Detroit auto magnate to get them out of their malaise. They are betting on a man who promises to recover the lost jobs, especially in the automotive industry. He has dangled the possibility of investing billions in the industry if necessary. His rival McCain is skeptical of such a policy.
Jobs were the theme of the Republican campaign in Michigan, the state with the highest unemployment in the United States, and the issue proved to be decisive. "Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," Romney proclaimed in a cutting allusion to McCain's 25-year service in Congress. The statement echoed the message on a banner hanging on the wall at the front of the room: "Washington is broken."
By the time Romney's party came to an end, McCain had long since flown on to the next battlefield in South Carolina. The weather in Michigan had proved to be one factor in his downfall: It was bitterly cold and snowing almost everywhere in the state. Turnout was pathetic. According to surveys, diehard Republicans fought their way to polling stations despite the weather, while independents and Democratic Party defectors -- instrumental to McCain's legendary victory over George W. Bush here in 2000 -- opted to stay at home.
McCain did his best to take the loss in stride. "For a minute there in New Hampshire I thought this campaign might be getting easier," grinned McCain in Charleston, South Carolina, where he had gathered together with his supporters in front of the TV screens. "But you know what? We've gotten pretty good at doing things the hard way, too. And I think we've shown them, we don't mind a fight."
He could be describing the Republican Party as a whole this primary season. A loss in a major early primary is not what it used to be, and McCain has already built up a massive campaign infrastructure in South Carolina. His "Truth Squad" is making the rounds, combatting the type of mudslinging that knocked him out of the race in 2000.
Mike Huckabee, who was relegated to third place in Michigan with 16 percent of the vote, comes across as equally pugnacious. "So it looks like that I won Iowa, John McCain won New Hampshire, Mitt Romney won Michigan," he said, speaking in the southern state which he had already moved on to ahead of Saturday's Republican primary. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to win South Carolina!"
It is, of course, to Huckabee's advantage to see it as a cycle. But in reality, the Republican nomination has descended into chaos. There have been three different winners in three radically different states and there is still no front-runner. Agricultural Iowa, with its conservative values, chose a former Baptist minister in Huckabee. New Hampshire, with its tradition of independent voters, went for McCain. And economically struggling Michigan decided on the manager, Romney. The Grand Old Party is a ship in distress. As the New York Times put it: "No G.O.P. Anchor in Sight."
And then, of course, there are still the sleeper-candidates, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, who have been content to stay on the sidelines until now. But Thompson is a "son of the South" -- born in Alabama and a former senator of Tennessee -- and has his hopes set on South Carolina. Giuliani is placing his bets on a breakthrough in Florida on Jan. 29, which he has been crisscrossing for days in a bus. Super-Duper Tuesday, as Feb. 5 has been dubbed, is beginning to loom large. Twenty-one states will be holding Republican primaries and caucuses on that day, and if no Republican candidate emerges from the crowd, the party might head into its September convention with no clear candidate -- for the first time since 1948. It could turn into a nightmare for the party.
"No one on the Republican side appears to have the money and staff to effectively compete across the board," wrote Peter Baker in the Washington Post. "And if none of the candidates arrives on Feb. 5 with a wave of momentum, it's hard to see any of them running the table." That's something John Judis of the New Republic already predicted in September, when he said: "If there is no clear front-runner by then, the race will probably continue on into June and perhaps even up until the convention."
Should that happen, the candidate would have to be chosen in backroom horse-trading. It's what they call a "brokered convention" in political jargon. "I think, it's my prediction, I think we're headed for a brokered convention," the former Senator Rick Santorum said in New Hampshire. "I don't think we're going to get a nominee."
The primary season has not been this exciting in recent memory. "It's not hard to ponder possibilities, particularly on the Republican side, where the race is as unsettled as any in decades," wrote Baker, who may have been envisioning a particularly turbulent Republican National Convention in Minnesota's Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in September.
One thing is certain: While the Democrats zero in on the dual between Clinton and Obama, the Republicans are lurching forward erratically -- disunited, rudderless, and above all lacking a coalition among the party's factions like the one that carried Ronald Reagan to triumph, or George W. Bush in his first presidential victory.
The Christian base (whose members prefer Huckabee), national security hawks (McCain's bailiwick) and the Wall Street establishment (Romney supporters) can't seem to find each other. No wonder Romney quoted Reagan so frequently Tuesday, in an attempt to show that he deserves to inherit the mantel of the Great Communicator.
"Romney is the only full-spectrum candidate in the party," said a campaign spokesman, Kevin Madden, standing in a draughty hotel corridor at the fringes of Romney's victory party in Southfield, Michigan. "He unites the coalitions and thus will win in November." Then he was off to catch a plane. Destination: South Carolina.
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