Posted by
Steve on Friday, December 07, 2007 1:44:58 PM
The fallout from Romney’s speech is still being felt today. That marks it as a superior speech and one that is groundbreaking in its impact. Most political speeches are forgotten within minutes or hours of their being given. Missteps are remembered for a few hours or a few days. Entire speeches are not remembered except in extraordinary circumstances. This is one of those.
Hugh Hewitt, in his column today, makes that argument. He says that there have been a lot of missteps that are remembered and he lists many. But there are few that are positive and he only lists about four. That is how different this speech was. It has entirely changed the dynamics of the campaign. No longer can Mike Huckabee play the religion card without being seen as the bigot that he is. No longer can the religious bigots on the left play the religion card and be believed. No, Mitt Romney took all of that out of the equation for this election. That does not mean that some will try to use religion as a weapon, but they will be seen as the bigots that they are.
What does this mean for the other candidates in the Republican primary race? They have been drowned out by Mitt Romney and his speech on religion in America. Mike Huckabee has been exposed as a bigot. Mitt Romney drew a big distinction between himself and all of the others except for Mike Huckabee. The other candidates have down played their religious affiliation. This talk has put them on the outside looking in. Had they been talking about their faith as part of their being, they would have been included in the speech. Mike Huckabee was included and excluded at the same time. He was included because he also talks about his faith. Huckabee’s faith is a part of his being and a part of his candidacy. But, he has been running a campaign commercial that indirectly hints that Mitt Romney is not a Christian. After this speech, that commercial has been exposed as endorsing bigotry. So, Mike Huckabee has encouraged people to indulge in bigotry in picking a Presidential candidate. That will probably not sit well with the honest folk in Iowa.
The Democrats were completely outclassed in the talk. Not one of them could give a talk like that. Not one of them could look at America and talk about freedom and then talk about the reduction in freedom that they will propose. They will all try to emulate Mitt Romney. All will ultimately fail because they do not have the right material to choose from. Mitt Romney chose freedom as the basis of his talk on the greatness of America. All the Democrats are proposing less freedom for Americans. They could not talk about freedom and be believed. They are unable to give a talk of this magnitude. One will try at the Democrat Convention, and fail.
What does this do to the Republican primary? Since almost all of the talk will be about Mitt Romney in the few days before New Hampshire starts voting, he will win there handily. The question is how this will play to the crowd in Iowa that it was aimed at. I feel that those that support Huckabee will start to see that the Emperor has no clothes. The polls will start to tend towards Romney in the next few days and weeks. It should be enough for him to claim a victory in Iowa. After he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, he should be able to pull in South Carolina, then Michigan, Nevada and Wyoming. With all those wins, he will be hard to beat in the primary February 5. He will not win all of the states on February 5, but enough to stop Rudy from claiming victory. Then the coup-de-gras will occur in the early March primary.
With Romney emerging victorious, the Democrats will realize that they could lose. That will spell doom for Mrs. Bill Clinton’s campaign. She can only win if everyone thinks that it is inevitable that she will win the Presidency. Once people realize that she could lose, she is finished. That opens the door for the empty suit, Barak Obama. Romney beats him for the Presidency.