The South, a traditional conservative bastion that for decades has been critical to fortunes of Republican presidential contenders, could prove far more competitive than expected this fall if Republican front-runner Mitt Romney fails over the next few months to broaden his support there.
Southern hospitality was certainly in short supply for Romney on Super Tuesday. He was trounced in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia, in defeats that appear all the more daunting when set against the backdrop of a previous defeat in South Carolina. Outside Florida, Romney has yet to win a Southern state, where voters are clearly looking for a more conservative standard-bearer.
Moreover, this year is unlike recent general elections, when Republicans could safely assume an advantage south of the Mason-Dixon Line. This year, the GOP faces a Democratic incumbent who four years ago won Virginia and North Carolina — albeit in a more favorable political environment.
The combination of Romney’s poor showing in the South and President Obama’s widespread appeal with the region’s black voters has Democrats eyeing states previously considered insurmountable challenges for a national Democrat.
“If anything, our map has gotten more expansive and there’s more opportunities to look at,” Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina said Wednesday as the president was appearing at a truck plant in North Carolina. “The longer the Republican primary goes, the longer we have to continue to build.”
Obama used the stop in North Carolina to announce a $1 billion initiative to encourage the use of fuel-efficient technologies by localities. But it also served to assure North Carolinians that Obama had not forgotten the state that’s hosting this summer’s Democratic National Convention.
Obama won North Carolina by just 14,000 votes in 2008, making him the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to carry the state. His victory in Virginia was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate in nearly half a century.
Whether Obama can build on his Southern support from four years ago remains an open question. But Romney has done little so far to dissuade Obama from thinking he can compete against a Harvard-educated businessman who built his political brand in New England.
In 2008, Southern conservatives mostly coalesced around the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, despite concerns about his conservative pedigree. But McCain, a brash war hero, projected an image with which some religious and blue-collar voters were comfortable.
The question for Romney is whether Southern conservatives will embrace him once he becomes their nominee, analysts said.
“I think there will be more enthusiasm once we emerge from this fragmented field,” said Tucker Eskew, an unaligned Republican consultant who helped run former President George W. Bush’s South Carolina campaign. “The stimulus, Obamacare and general incompetence of the incumbent administration — those factors are the forest while Republicans are staring at the trees during this primary.”
Charles Bullock, an expert on Southern politics at the University of Georgia, was skeptical that Obama can even hold on to Virginia and North Carolina — and scoffed at the suggestion that Obama could carry Georgia.
“I just don’t see it,” he said.
The decision by a string of Democratic incumbents across the South to forego re-election this year and the expected dip in the ranks of black voters will only make the South more challenging for Obama, he said.
