As Super Tuesday dawns, national opinion polls are telling a clear story. \u00a0Despite a residual ennui about the choices and anxiety about November, Republican voters are coalescing around Mitt Romney as their standard bearer for the fall.<\/p>\n
The book on Romney has been that a large part of the GOP electorate didn\u2019t like him. \u00a0He was the candidate with a glass ceiling, couldn\u2019t get over 30 percent in the polls. \u00a0No one seemed to notice that beneath the glass ceiling was a concrete floor. \u00a0He never fell below 15 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. \u00a0Other candidate rocketed toward the heights. \u00a0Romney just moved along his steady way, never soaring but never plummeting either as so many king or queen for a day opponents did.<\/p>\n
But as of this morning, RCP shows the former Massachusetts governor at 38.7 percent and moving up. His closest rival \u2013 Rick Santorum \u2013 scores 28 percent and is in an all-but-vertical drop. \u00a0Tonight\u2019s results may serve up surprises. But without some kind of game changing moment, Mr. Romney has clearly broken through that invisible barrier and could well register support in national polls from a majority of GOP voters within a few days.<\/p>\n
You would think the party would be celebrating. \u00a0But across the nation, I hear more resignation than jubilation. \u00a0\u201cI feel zero enthusiasm for him \u2013 just zero,\u201d a California GOP conservative emailed the other day. \u00a0\u201cIf I were Barack Obama I\u2019d be loving life by now,\u201d a prominent Midwestern Republican told me on a recent evening.<\/p>\n
And yet, as The Washington Times<\/em> reported this morning, not only does Romney look as if he is on his way to besting the field, no one has a better idea, either. \u00a0That\u2019s according to polling The Times<\/em> commissioned. \u00a0Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, current New Jersey governor Chris Christie \u2013 no matter what white knight The Times<\/em> polled him against, Romney came out ahead. \u00a0Maybe not streaks ahead, but he won just the same.<\/p>\n Everyone sighs for the return of Reagan. \u00a0Again this morning, in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Bill McGurn points out that at this stage of the 1980 race, Reagan wasn\u2019t REAGAN. \u00a0He was polling behind Carter. \u00a0Gerald Ford was loudly sending quiet signals that he was ready to answer the party\u2019s call. \u00a0Reagan became REAGAN by steadily pursuing his goals, winning the presidency and achieving so much in it.<\/p>\n Now, I was a volunteer in the 1980 Reagan campaign. \u00a0When the governor lost Iowa, I was among those who carpooled from New York City, where I was licking stamps and answering phone after work and on weekends, to New Hampshire where, as I recall, I licked stamps and answered phones. \u00a0I also trudged house to house in the snow, slept wrapped in blankets on floors and joined fellow volunteers riding in busses to a certain rally. \u00a0I was sitting in the bleachers, half way up, maybe higher, and directly to Mr. Reagan\u2019s right when he sternly snapped, \u201cI paid for this microphone\u201d and pretty much won the primary on the spot. \u00a0That was one brilliant night on his way to becoming REAGAN.<\/p>\n We will see if Romney has any such moments. \u00a0I doubt he will, but then if he has little of the former president\u2019s showmanship, he does have comparable self-discipline. \u00a0His campaign has been nothing if not a display of planning, persistence and self-control. \u00a0Watching Mr. Reagan up close as one of his White House speechwriters, I concluded that more than brilliance, far more, self-discipline was the essential quality of a president. \u00a0And whatever else you think of him, Romney has that quality in depth \u2013 more by far than any of the parade of frontrunners who have come and gone these last many months.<\/p>\n The GOP\u2019s gloom isn\u2019t just about an ineffable blah that seems to fill Republican voters when they contemplate the state of campaign play. \u00a0It is also that the president\u2019s fortunes are rising. \u00a0The Obama machine is clearly well funded (on its way to raising a billion dollars directly and through an independent superpac, we hear about \u2013 and probably much more in union efforts and the like we don\u2019t hear about). \u00a0There are reports that the campaign has 2000 employees devoted to online and social media. \u00a0Think of that: 2000 Tweeters.<\/p>\n And yet, if the president is formidable, our side is, too. \u00a0Haven\u2019t all the months of debating and contesting told us that? So to those who so loudly sigh, here is a stern little lecture. \u00a0Think of me manager Tom Hanks dressing down tearful Geena Davis in A League of Their Own<\/em>. \u00a0\u201cSighing? \u00a0Sighing? There\u2019s no sighing in politics. Get out there and play ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Super Tuesday dawns, national opinion polls are telling a clear story. \u00a0Despite a residual ennui about the choices and anxiety about November, Republican voters are coalescing around Mitt Romney as their standard bearer for the fall. The book on Romney has been that a large part of the GOP electorate didn\u2019t like him. \u00a0He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1124,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}