Romney’s new objective: Obama.

Macías Méndez D. Alejandro

Relaciones Internacionales - 142485

Tuesday 20 March 2012 the diary The Washington Post published many articles regarding Mitt Romney’s victory in the state of Illinois for the Republican presidential nomination, the results are clear Romney has already surpassed his closest rival, Rick Santorum, and has decided to focus his campaign against President Obama, trying to weak the image of the current ruler.

In Illinois contest the former Massachusetts governor won clearly, according to the Washington Post, Romney won 47 percent of the votes, Sanctorum 35, Paul 9 and 8 for Gingrich. With the former results it can be assumed two possible scenarios: Romney has outmatched his rivals and can begin a more aggressive offensive against Obama; or Sanctorum, Paul and Gingrich did not consider Illinois an important state.

 Illinois is the 5^th most populous state, it is clearly an important state, so we can rule out the idea that a least Sanctorum did not try to win the state. The Washington Post mentions that Romney invest seven times on publicity ads than the rest of  the republicans candidates together. To this Gingrich said that the Republicans need a candidate that could Beat Obama without that quantity of resources, namely himself, yet Gingrich has slowly disappeared into oblivion as Romney and Sanctorum face each other on recent events.

Sanctorum by his part said that he had won on areas near Chicago and in downstate zones were conservatives do live. Actually Romney gathered the support of moderate and somehow conservative, while Sanctorum had managed to get the support of the very conservative. This explains a current problem the republicans have according to Campbell and Putnam (35) who recently published on Foreign Affairs: “The connection between religiosity and political conservatism has become so deeply embedded in contemporary U.S. culture  that is starting to recall just how new the alignment is.” As they explain, the Republicans have a new dilemma, they have to appeased their far right base without alienating the general electorate.

Sanctorum has also lose a lot of support after he said recently that the economy was not his main campaign goal, this not only affects him but the entire republican party, because if a candidate says his priorities are not the economy many will decide to support not Sanctorum or Romney but the democrat candidate President Obama

So for Romney there were two scenarios: attack Obama now or gather strength to face the other republican candidates. Gingrich is out of the race by now, and Sanctorum is breaking his own legs, it is unlikely that he reaches Romney. Ron Paul was never a serious threat for Romney, despite his brilliant ideas Paul is not appreciated by the republicans, it is not unreasonable to say Romney will be the candidate, and after his victory of today he is already showing that. The Washington Post says Romney said to young voters that his experience as businessmen taught him “What makes the American system so powerful.” And not even teaching constitutional law at Chicago can teach you that, referring to Obama’s career.

Romney has outmatched his republican rivals slowly but safe, now he has a new goal to win the presidential elections, for that he will have to be confident, to show that confidence and most important, to prove he is not only equal to Obama but better than the current president to the American electorate. If he wants a small chance to win he has to strike now.