If there was one clear message from the Republican establishment this weekend, it was this: If Mitt Romney wins in South Carolina, he will be the nominee.
On Sunday, less than a week from the January 21 primary in South Carolina, Republicans were explicit in framing Saturday’s primary in the Palmetto State as the last chance for the other candidates to stop Romney’s momentum or concede defeat. They were also clear about one other thing: they want Romney to wrap up the nomination ASAP.
“If Romney wins South Carolina, I think the game’s over,” Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) said on Meet the Press Sunday. “This is the last stand for many candidates.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, appearing with Scott on the show, echoed this sentiment: If “Mitt Romney wins South Carolina, no one’s ever won all three, I think it should be over. That would be quite a testament to his ability as a candidate and a campaigner, and I’d hope the party would rally around him if he did in fact win South Carolina.”
On other networks, the message was the same. “It`s kind of a last stand for a lot of the candidates,” South Carolina’s other Senator, Jim DeMint, said on Face the Nation. Appearing on CNN, Rick Perry sounded optimistic about his prospects there but wouldn’t completely rule out suspending his campaign if he did not do well in South Carolina.
Going on to Florida is “our intention,” he repeated.
Though Graham himself declined to endorse anyone at this time — as has DeMint — he seemed to be rooting for Romney.
“Mitt Romney is a good man that Tea Party people should look at closely to vote for because I think he can beat Barack Obama,” Graham said.
Electability, as Graham mentioned several times, is certainly an issue. But Republicans have another reason to wrap the primary up quickly: they feel the negative attacks are harming their party’s chances in the general election.
There was a time when Republicans wanted a primary more drawn-out than in previous years. They even tweaked their primary rules for allotting delegates so that the process would take a little bit longer, the goal being that the contest would draw attention and create momentum going into the general election. Not anymore. Now, they want the primary to wrap up quickly, and they’re using the South Carolina deadline to frame the race as in the home stretch.
Once Newt Gingrich and the super PAC behind him unleashed their anti-Bain attacks, and Rick Perry tagged along with comments about “vulture capitalism,” Republicans have re-evaluated their desire for a more protracted battle. As Dave Weigel has pointed out, it’s one thing for Democrats to give a liberal critique of Bain Capital-style capitalism, but it lends those critiques a whole new level of respectability when it comes out of the mouths of conservatives like Gingrich and Perry. For all the spin we usually see on TV, Republicans are pretty clear that this is a serious concern.
“If Romney is our nominee, there will be numbers of ads, many ads run by the President talking about what Republicans said about our own nominee,” Scott explained, “I think that’s just bad for the country because I think the country absolutely needs a new President.”
“This is our election to lose,” Graham said. “And the only way we’re going to lose it, if we go too long in time in terms of the primary, and our attacks go too far. We haven’t done that yet.”
It’s not just the forces coalescing around Romney who are calling South Carolina the deciding state. For days, Newt Gingrich has been saying South Carolina is make or break for him – a message that he hopes will bring out his supporters. “[T]o vote for anybody but Gingrich is, in fact, to help Romney win the nomination and to help him win the primary in South Carolina,” Gingrich told NBC’s David Gregory Sunday. “I think that’s the heart of the message for the next six days.”
