KEITH OLBERMANN: Let’s recap what we know and what we don’t know as the polls close in Michigan and Arizona.
In our number-one story — the GOP primary race. Specifically, the battle between Romney and Santorum, widely described this week as a knife fight. One might add that it might have been a knife fight with each guy holding the blade and not the handle.
Rick Santorum, this week, continues to fight a culture war — taking issue not only with all forms of higher education, but also with the 1960 John F. Kennedy speech about the separation between church and state, which Santorum claims made him almost throw up, off which he tried to back today.
Mitt Romney, however, has not been so quick to engage in that fight, refusing to even question Santorum on those comments. Instead, the former governor of Massachusetts, in between false eyewitness memories of events that either didn’t happen — like the day he voted against Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Tip O’Neill — or happened before he was born — like the Detroit Auto Jubilee he thinks he attended nine months before his own birth — he has worked to redirect the conversation to the economy, which he considers his strength.
(Excerpt from video clip) ROMNEY: I’m going to go to work to get our economy going again with good jobs and rising income. That’s what this is about.
OLBERMANN: Joining me now, the host of the nationally-syndicated radio show “Ring of Fire” as well as the web-radio program “The Majority Report,” Sam Seder. Good to see you, Sam.
SAM SEDER: Nice to see you, Keith.
OLBERMANN: We were talking before we started here about what constitutes a win for Romney — and we’ll get how the exit polls affect that — but just on the basic of it, what do you think — what is a win and what is a non-win win for Romney?
SEDER: You know, I think it’s really hard for him to win now, even if he wins. I mean, I think he has to win at least — Steve Kornacki said five or six points — I think maybe even a little bit more because, you have got to remember, Santorum is up in Ohio in the polls. He is beating Romney, at least, in Georgia, a second to Newt Gingrich. He’s up in Tennessee. I mean, these are the biggest electoral states coming up, so — and Romney should be — basically, there should have been no contest in Michigan, and there is obviously a contest.
OLBERMANN: As we look at some of those exit polls — and obviously, the accuracy of these is always slightly questioned — but they give you good feel of direction at least. It doesn’t seem like this was a really extremist, one way or another, voting group in Michigan because if you have — you really have nearly 40 percent evangelicals. You also had 30 percent people independents and 10 percent who identified as Democrats, and then, at the extremes, one in seven said they wanted the true conservative and one-third considered electability as the primary number. That’s a huge middle ground of people who were just, I guess, assessing the two candidates.
SEDER: Well, I mean, it is sort of hard to say who is the true conservative in this, and it’s really hard to say which one of them could win at this point.
I mean, there was a time where people thought Romney was the guy who was going to beat Obama. Nobody seems to believe that anymore, and Santorum was never considered one of those hardcore, true conservatives. He’s always been more of, like, a social-movement conservative guy but a big spender, sort of a George Bush conservative.
So that’s the problem. There is no constituency. Neither one of those guys represents either one of those constituencies.
OLBERMANN: However, when they asked the voters in the exit poll who was, in fact, more electable, nearly 50 — a little over 50 percent — said Romney was the electability choice over Obama, and about 25 percent said Santorum. So again, the closer this gets, the more it says that on these core points about Romney, Michigan isn’t buying them, any of them.
SEDER: Well, that’s one of the biggest problems, I think, that Romney has now — is that, originally, his big sales pitch is “that I can beat Obama,” and there’s less and less Republicans who are starting to believe that, and, you know, he’s got to walk this tightrope because, on one hand, he’s got to convince the conservative base of the Republican party, which don’t buy into him.
On the other hand, he has to maintain his integrity in the general election, which he’s had a hard time doing. He’s lost 10, 12 points with independents over the past six weeks, and so he’s got to sort of stop that hemorrhaging, but at the same time protect his right flank, and that’s — he’s walking a tightrope, and he’s not doing very well.
OLBERMANN: How much — we hear so much — and obviously, those of us on the left have been watching this and just laughing our backsides off —
SEDER: Yes.
OLBERMANN: But how much of this presumed damage to the eventual nominee is legit? Ed Rollins says, “It’s a an effing mess.” Haley Barbour says, “It’s taking attention away from fighting Obama.” The governor of Maine, Paul LePage, said, “Let’s pick a fresh face at the convention.” Possibly Doug E. Fresh or “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” but weren’t we all saying exactly these things about the Democratic race in 2008, four years ago this day probably?
SEDER: You know what, I don’t think so. I don’t think so because I think there was — I think the concern four years ago was that there was going to be such acrimony between the people who supported Obama and the people who supported Clinton that they’d never come together. That is usually a surmountable problem.
The problem I think that Romney has, if he’s the eventual nominee, is that he’s actually been, like, hurt empirically with independents because he’s had to change his positions and move so far to the right on things like immigration, on things like the economy, on taxes, and so I think he’s actually damaged goods for the general election, and I think you’re seeing that reflected within the Republican base.
They’re looking at him and don’t see him as the guy who could definitely beat Obama like they did six months ago.
OLBERMANN: Going into this, Gingrich and the other fellow — what was his name again? — Ron Paul, at 23 percent in the polling and had — in the first 13 percent, 14 percent of vote tonight — had, between them, 18 percent.
Sounds like they’re irrelevant and trivia, but with something this tight, they’re vital. Do you see either of them dropping out? I mean, Gingrich just got another $10 million from Sheldon Adelson, and Ron Paul might as well be wearing an 11th-century visor over his head, saying “I’m on a crusade.” What happens if they stay in and don’t get out — at what point is their endorsement irrelevant?
SEDER: Well, I think Paul will make it all the way to the convention, and I think because he has a very sort of — maybe a little bit static, but he has a base of support. He is going to go in there with some very enthusiastic supporters, and I think he’s looking for a good speech — speaking spot or maybe something for Rand, but Gingrich is another — he’s got good numbers in Georgia. He’s got a lot of books to sell. He’s got some problems right now with the election commission in terms of how he’s been spending his money.
OLBERMANN: Right.
SEDER: I mean, he’s basically been — this has been his, sort of like, his job, in a way, and it’s been his way of selling some books, and I think he’ll stay in as long as he still has books that are in the boxes in his garage.
OLBERMANN: Well, they’re still in there tonight.
Sam Seder, of “The Majority Report,” thank you for coming in. Good to see you, sir.
SEDER: My pleasure.
