Mitt's inevitability?

Much has been made lately of the inevitability of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination for President.  With one alternative after another rising to the heights and then descending into irrelevance, the assumption is that eventually Republicans will come to the conclusion that they must concede the race to the former Massachusetts governor.

The logic goes something like this:  Even as Bachmann, Perry, and Cain each rose to prominence and thereafter declined, by the time of the Iowa Caucuses, even Newt Gingrich will have been found wanting.  With the conservative vote divided, Gov. Romney will win the Caucuses boosting him to victory in New Hampshire and thereby ending all opposition to his nomination.

Romney could very well win Iowa.  Certainly the caucuses are perhaps the most uncertain part of the process at this point.  It is said that no Republican has ever been nominated for president who hasn't first won either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire Primary.  But at the same time every Republican nominee has also won South Carolina.  Even if Romney does win Iowa, he has been consistently either a weak second and frequently third in the state.  If we assume he wins Iowa, the first and second runners up, believing New Hampshire to be a foregone conclusion, will skip to South Carolina.  Are we to believe South Carolina voters will forfeit the nomination decision to Iowa and New Hampshire?   In fact, Romney came in fourth there in 2008.

Now, this would be an upset for sure, by virtue of being unexpeted, but the race from that point could actually get pretty rough for Romney.  Let's assume Gingrich is the winner in S.C..  Romney's political base in 2008 was actually quite limited.  Though he did come in second in the most populous states to McCain, he came in 3rd in most of the South.  He only won 3 primaries in the whole country: his father's state of Michigan, his home state of Massachusetts, and Utah, the HQ of his Mormon faith.  The rest of his base consisted of a multitude of small state caucuses.

After South Carolina comes Florida.  Newt is currently at almost 50% in Florida in several polls.  If you look at the calendar this year, if Romney loses Florida he would be on the defensive for an entire month in states he carried 4 years ago.  If Newt were to pick off a few caucuses, Romney would begin to look like yesterday's news.  Texas and Virginia will be battlegrounds on Super Tuesday.  If no candidate wins a majority in Texas, the delegates are allocated proportionally, so Romney could survive.  If Newt gets a majority however, thereby winning all of Texas' delegates, Gingrich's lead could be insurmountable.  Without a major win since New Hampshire, Romney might be finished at that point.

In fact, without winning Florida, Romney would have to do what no candidate has ever been able to do (not even Reagan in '76), which is win a come from behind victory in states currently towards the end of the calendar: Pennsylvania and New York in April, and California and Ohio in June.  And he'd have to win all of them.

So the odds are, even if Romney wins in Iowa, whoever comes in second will win South Carolina and quickly gain a lead which Romney will not be able to overcome.