politisane asked: Given your recent post explaining why you believe Mitt Romney will be the nominee, I was wondering how critical you feel it is that he break the 40% threshold in a primary in the near future? His win in New Hampshire was sizable, but he was still under the 40% threshold in a state much friendlier to him where far fewer votes cast when compared to S.C. Do you think Romney can continue to be stagnant in his level of support and still develop the necessary momentum to win the nomination?

I think “threshold” standards are not very helpful in this case. The Republican Party’s primaries have so far featured candidates who represent each of the (at least) five branches of the party: the libertarians (Paul), the tea party (Bachmann), the conservatives (Gingrich and to a lesser extent Romney, at least in his rhetoric), the evangelicals (Santorum) and the business interests (Romney and Huntsman). It is not surprising that in a factionalized party factional interests split the vote.

The better question is, “is there some reason that some faction won’t support the party’s nominee if the nominee represents a different faction?” It happens, as when Southern Democrats rejected the Democratic Party after President Johnson signed the Voter Rights and Civil Rights acts in the mid-1960s. Those Southern Democrats at first supported the independent candidacy of George Wallace in 1968—when Wallace won electoral college votes by winning several southern states (the last third party nominee to do so). They then shifted to voting Republican once Nixon and later Reagan adopted the so-called “Southern Strategy” of using the code words like “states’ rights” as a way to signal to southern conservatives that the Republican party would not interfere with their actions.

So, will the Republicans rally around Mitt Romney? Probably, but without substantial enthusiasm. Which is about how Democrats will embrace President Obama. After all, the race is not between their guy and my ideal guy; it’s between who they put up and who we put up. And in the end I like my guy more than I like theirs…

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