It's hard to tell if it was a big weekend for Mitt Romney or yet another slap on the collective conservative forehead. Romney fought off Ron Paul to take the Maine caucuses and then won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), beating out rival Rick Santorum.
Both victories, however, lacked the resounding thump that Romney needs at this point. Squeaking out wins against two different opponents (Santorum got 31% to Romney's 38% in the straw poll, and Ron Paul took 36% to Mitt's 39% in Maine) served as a reminder that Republicans are still quite divided about who they think should take the nomination.
Mitt's real chance to make some hay came in Washington D.C. at CPAC, where hardcore, skeptical conservatives gather every year to rip apart the red meat served up by right-wing heroes such as Ann Coulter, John Bolton, and Sarah Palin, 2012's keynote speaker. It was clear that Romney had adjusted his settings for the CPAC crowd, programming his voice mechanisms to utter the word “conservative” over and over again in his speech.
Then Mitt threw an audible.
Although not known for his off-the-cuff spontaneity, Romney's internal wiring seemed to have crossed wires for a second as he approached the twentieth “conservative” in his prepared text:
“I was a conservative governor. I fought against long odds in a deep blue state. I understand the battles that we, as conservatives, must fight because I have been on the front lines.”
A quick computation in the Romney control center overrode the code and delivered a command: Adverb...adverb...adverb!
“I was a conservative governor. I fought against long odds in a deep blue state, but I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”
It was an odd choice of words, for sure. One may have a severely bad cold, or be severely injured in a crash, or severely suffer from dehydration, but what must it take to become a severely conservative governor?
CPAC attendees still awarded Romney the straw vote victory, but they have to be wondering about their man's ability to communicate. Mitt's obvious overcompensation for his blue state record in Massachusetts and his tremendous personal wealth continue to collide in awkward fashion for the candidate, a point that was not lost on George Will, who said on ABC's This Week:
“He seems, around conservatives, to be like a well-meaning, earnest tourist in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. And he’s trying hard to connect with them and he says, ‘My father grew up poor.’ Please.”
The knock on Romney from his conservative detractors is that he's a moderate, and strange ad-libs like this surely cannot be helping him win over the base of the party. Romney's hopes of commanding the frontrunner status and leaving his opponents in the dust remain tentative at best as the race moves toward Arizona and Michigan, severely undecided.
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