With Christie out, GOP gives current field another look

When Superman declined to put on the cape Tuesday, Republican donors and activists still jittery about the party's roster of presidential candidates faced a new reality: What you see is what you get.

Gov. Christie's decision to stay out of the GOP race ended the latest futile quest for a "dream" candidate to defeat President Obama.

The move is a boost to newly reestablished front-runner Mitt Romney, giving the former Massachusetts governor an opportunity to consolidate the different strands of the Republican Party around the idea that he would be the most electable, analysts and strategists said. It also means that the next GOP nominee is among the eight major candidates already out campaigning.

"We're done with the flavor of the day, and it now becomes a more normal campaign," said Republican media strategist Michael Hudome, who worked for John McCain in 2008 but is neutral in the 2012 contest. "As Republicans we typically nominate the guy who finished second last time. We like to vet them for four or eight years . . . and we don't pick somebody from the fringe."

By that formula, it's Romney's turn, though many conservatives have not warmed to him, leery of his Massachusetts health-care law that features an individual mandate to buy insurance, just like Obama's, and his moderate positions in the 1990s on abortion and gay rights.

In the short term, the campaign could boil down to a battle between Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is seen as the only other candidate with the fund-raising ability to compete toe-to-toe with Romney in a compressed primary process.

Perry, who had been the favorite alternative to Romney among conservatives, has slipped in the polls after three weak September debate performances made some party leaders wonder if he was up to the task, and rekindled the buzz around Christie.

A speeded-up primary calendar makes it unlikely that any new candidate can jump in so late, strategists said. Florida decided to schedule its primary for Jan. 31, leading the traditional early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to begin claiming dates ahead of it. Iowa's caucuses could be as early as Jan. 3, with New Hampshire's primary a week later, although the dates for those states haven't been announced yet. Candidates will be knocking on doors and holding rallies through the holidays.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has pushed her timetable for a candidacy decision to November, could still get in, but few party operatives expect her to be a factor if she does. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a supermajority of about 70 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents surveyed said they hoped she would not run.

Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who specializes in public opinion, said, "The data are really so negative for Obama at this point, any respectable Republican would have a chance to attract swing voters in crucial states: independents, white Catholics, people with some college or vocational education."

She theorized that Romney's "calm personality" might give him an edge among independents, compared with his rivals.

So far, the GOP race has been marked by periodic bouts of angst about the inadequacy of the field, particularly among conservatives aligned with the tea party movement, followed by wooing of various potential new candidates.

So far, the wooing hasn't worked. In April, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi said he lacked the "fire in the belly." In May, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said that he wanted to run but that his family vetoed it. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, author of a conservative GOP budget blueprint, turned aside entreaties. So did former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Christie was subject to intense recruitment and spent months saying no - at one point joking that he would have to kill himself to quiet the calls for him to run.

Perry was also an object of desire, and he entered the race in August. When he faltered, some prominent Republicans began fanning the flames again for Christie, who went on a national fund-raising tour and gave a speech at the Reagan presidential library in California last week on leadership, calling Obama a "bystander."

Meanwhile, Romney has stayed focused on a general-election message, using his previous experience as an investment banker to argue that he is best prepared to fix the economy, the top voter concern. His strategy: Become everybody's second choice, a plausible president.

"We're too busy looking at all the flaws in the candidates instead of looking at who can beat the president and get the economy back on track," said Alan Novak, a lobbyist and former Pennsylvania GOP chairman who signed on last month to support Romney. "That's been my argument to people. There is no perfect candidate, but there is one who's at the head of the class on that issue, and that is Mitt Romney."

Christie did nothing to hurt his future in the GOP, and some, including longtime strategist Roger Stone, believe that the governor's "masterful, crafty tease" was aimed at the vice presidential nomination. Christie shot that down in his freewheeling news conference, saying he could not see himself as anybody's No. 2.

And, as perhaps an added irritation to disappointed Christie recruiters, a new Quinnipiac University poll of potential Republican voters nationwide was released Tuesday afternoon showing the New Jersey governor tied with Romney for the GOP lead with 17 percent support, followed by 12 percent for former Godfather's Pizza executive Herman Cain and 10 percent for Perry.