Within the Margin

Scarborough, earlier this week:

Romney’s continued weakness in the Heart of Dixie spells trouble for the GOP this fall. The only question is whether it will take a Santorum win in Wisconsin to refocus Republican minds on the unassailable fact that GOP presidential candidates cannot win unless they have the support of rock-ribbed conservatives. Mitt Romney does not, and that is becoming clearer by the day in this painful primary season.

No one questions that Romney has problems with conservatives of various stripes, and that this has helped forestall his clinching of the Republican presidential nomination. But earlier in that piece, the normally-sharp Scarborough ticks off the Southern states that are in play and references those that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton won over the last twenty years. Let me be clear: I do think that the two states Obama carried four years ago (Virginia and North Carolina) are very much winnable for him again, but I don’t think under-enthused conservatives will be Romney’s problem  in those states so much as the growing ranks of highly-educated and often-transplanted voters in those states, whose social liberalism could be offset by an appealing fiscally conservative message but for the fact that Romney offers numbers that these voters know won’t add up: huge tax cuts coupled with large increases in defense spending. Elsewhere, asking conservatives to turn out so weakly in, say, Georgia that Obama is able to add that to his win column – as he almost did in 2008 – is a bit much. Romney would have to truly alienate independents to make that happen – mind you, the GOP’s twin-obsession with contraception and abortion might just do that, but we’re not there yet.

Meanwhile, I’m still deeply skeptical that Republican or conservative turnout will be weakened at all this year, whether we’re talking about the South like Scarborough is, or the Rust Belt, or the Rocky Mountains. Sure, Romney trails Obama more often than not in national polls and in key states, but we’re still in spring training in more ways than one. Democrats have not fully erased the enthusiasm gap that has existed since the darkest months of the recession. The idea that the Republican primary process is tarnishing their party’s image is true enough, but not irreversible. The idea that Republicans will be so bored with Romney that they don’t show up to vote against their hated foe, Obama? That remains laughable, in the South and everywhere else.