The Montreal Gazette
U.S. Republicans fret as candidates cool to jump into the pool
By Sheldon Alberts, Postmedia News Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON - By almost every measure Republicans traditionally use to size up presidential candidates, Willard Mitt Romney makes the grade.
Former big-state governor, check. Impeccable political pedigree, check.
Successful businessman, check. Chiselled jaw. Perfect hair. Check. Check.
But something funny is happening to the GOP as its White House hopefuls line up at the starting line for the 2012 presidential contest - few of the old rules for picking a nominee seem to apply.
That was never more evident than this past week when Romney - the former Massachusetts governor and a 2008 Republican runner-up - finally took steps to enter the 2012 race.
Romney's announcement, via Twitter and online video, that he'd formed a presidential exploratory committee was a blink-and-you-missed-it affair.
The campaign rollout came late on a Tuesday afternoon, with little advance notice, and barely registered on the evening network newscasts.
Romney's low-key announcement was part of a deliberate strategy to play the tortoise in what he expects will a long and expensive trek toward the party's 2012 nominating convention in Tampa, Florida.
But it also reflects the sober reality that Romney, who many believed would be the natural front-runner in 2012, is just another face in a GOP field that so far failed to generate much in the way of excitement among Republican voters, let alone the broader electorate.
Indeed, the slow-starting Republican race is shaping up as one nobody really seems ready to run, let alone win.
With less than 10 months before the Iowa caucuses, only Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty have launched full-fledged exploratory committees.
Three others - former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Congressman Ron Paul - have announced they are setting up ``testing the waters'' accounts that allow them to raise money but don't require Federal Election Commission filings.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who last year seemed poised to run, has taken few organizational steps toward launching her campaign.
The hesitation among GOP hopefuls is already taking a toll on the campaign calendar. A planned May 2 presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library was cancelled for lack of candidate interest.
The first debate of the 2012 season will now be held May 5 in Greenville, South Carolina.
Organizers announced last week that five would-be candidates - Pawlenty, Gingrich, Paul, Santorum and former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer - had signalled their participation. But Gingrich officials have since indicated the former Speaker was a likely no-show because he will not have formally entered the race by that date.
In typical years, it would unthinkable for a serious candidate to skip an early debate in South Carolina, which holds the ``first in the South'' presidential primaries. South Carolina primary wins by George W. Bush in 2000 and John McCain in 2008 propelled them to the GOP nomination.
``It's very important to get established in South Carolina,'' David Wilkins, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada and former Speaker of the state legislature, told Postmedia News.
Would-be Republican candidates should take Wilkins' words to heart. In 2000, he engineered Bush's South Carolina victory, a win that stopped McCain's first presidential campaign in its tracks.
``I don't want to make a general statement that it's a mistake not to come here, but if you want to run well in the South, then you've got to do well in South Carolina,'' he says. ``You need to get to the state, to get known, and get organized.''
Wilkins isn't ready to hit the panic button yet on the 2012 field and says there's ``plenty of time'' for candidates to get established.
``I'm sure people are still assessing their ability to raise money,'' he said. ``I think within the next 30 days, you will see more and more candidates come out and all of it starting to jell a bit more.''
The tepid start to the 2012 campaign is producing alarm among other Republican Party officials and members of Congress.
``We think we can beat the president, but we have to have somebody to beat him with,'' Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, told Politico.
While unseating an incumbent president is a historically difficult feat in American politics, many GOP officials say President Barack Obama's vulnerability is apparent in approval ratings stuck at about 50 per cent.
The problem, according to some Republicans, is that none of the prospective candidates possess the ``wow factor'' needed to defeat Obama, one of the strongest campaigners in history.
More worrisome to party officials is that Obama is getting a big head-start on the road to November 2012.
While the Republican candidates hesitate, Obama last week formally announced his re-election bid and embarked on fundraising efforts expected to produce a campaign war chest nearing $1 billion.
Some political analysts argue the problem rests not so much with the candidates, than the Republican Party. The anti-tax, anti-establishment Tea Party movement has shifted the base of the party further to the right, making it more difficult for traditional - or politically moderate - candidates like Romney and Pawlenty to gain traction.
The Tea Party's rise has fuelled the candidacies of more unconventional candidates including Paul, a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, and third-term Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who has accused Obama of having ``anti-American'' views.
``The Republican Party is still trying to define its soul again after the exuberance of (last) November and the rise of the Tea Party. I don't think that dust has quite settled yet,'' Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University of America, said in an interview.
``Until it does, it is going to be hard to see which of the Republican candidates will catch fire.''
Nowhere has the unsettled nature of the Republican race been more apparent than in the sudden emergence of Donald Trump at the top of GOP polls.
A CNN/Opinion Research survey released this week showed Trump tied for first in the Republican race with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, at 19 per cent support,
Romney and Gingrich registered 11 per cent support, while Palin had 12 per cent.
Trump's rise has stirred anxiety within the GOP establishment, not least because his jump in popularity has coincided with a well-publicized campaign questioning whether Obama was born in the United States.
Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, suggested Trump's popularity was an aberration due to it being ``very early on'' in the political season.
``I don't think he is really serious,'' Cantor told CNN, somewhat hopefully, ``when we see a campaign launched on the `birther' issue.''
http://www.canada.com/Republicans+fret+candidates+cool+jump+into+pool/4627430/story.html#ixzz1KSUjLyKi
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