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Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum fought each other to nearly a draw in the Michigan primary and may actually have to split its delegates, but together they may have lost Michigan for their party by running campaigns that were completely disconnected from the lives of middle-class voters and pushed ever farther to the right margins of American politics.
A month ago, the state was rated a tossup in this November’s general election. But after voters got a taste of the Republican field, Michigan seems to be on President Obama’s side of the ledger, along with Wisconsin. Both elected Republican governors in 2010, but large numbers of blue-collar voters have turned away from the party after realizing how little regard it has for their interests.
Mr. Romney was unable to generate any enthusiasm in the state where he was born and where his family is well known. In fact, polls around the country have suggested that Republican primary voters are not thrilled with any of their choices so far. He won largely because of Mr. Santorum’s blunders, including his inexplicable decision to denigrate the value of college and to declare his contempt for John F. Kennedy and the Constitution’s mandate for an absolute separation of church and state.
Mr. Romney’s victory speech Tuesday night was unlikely to do much about the Republican electorate’s disappointment. Like his lightweight stump speeches around Michigan, he rattled off a long list of things he opposes: taxes (mostly on the rich), government spending (mostly on the poor), health care reform (for everyone). There was next to nothing about what he supports, with the exception of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. A blue-collar family that has suffered a job loss (or fears one) heard nothing that offered the promise of a more stable, hopeful future.
“We will abolish, finally, the death tax,” he announced. That’s great news to those with estates of $5 million or more. It was a slap in the face to those whose unemployment insurance is about to run out because his party has insisted on getting tough with jobless government freeloaders.
Middle-class voters did learn that Mr. Romney still opposes the auto-industry bailout that has saved the jobs of more than a million workers in Michigan and the region. (He called it a giveaway to unions, ignoring worker sacrifices that are well-known in the upper Midwest.) They learned how the 14 percent of Michigan residents who have no health insurance would be left on their own once the candidates get a chance to repeal health care reform. And they learned that Mr. Santorum is far more concerned about the menace of birth control and liberal college professors than he is about their struggles.
If they listened to Mr. Obama’s fiery speech to the United Auto Workers on Tuesday, however, they heard a very different set of priorities: using government action to bring an entire industry back to life, raising taxes on the rich to avoid cutting programs for the poor, keeping insurance companies from cutting off the sick.
“Since when are hard-working men and women who are putting in a hard day’s work every day — since when are they special interests?” the president asked, addressing the contempt for labor demonstrated by the candidates and several Republican governors in the Midwest. The answer explains why Mr. Obama was up by 18 points over Mr. Romney in a recent Michigan poll, and why Republican leaders are worried about their presidential field.
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