Romney Wins the Nomination!


The view from the floor at W&L’s Warner Center Photo by Tim MurphyFred Thompson is winding his way through his prepared remarks at Washington & Lee University’s Republican Mock Convention, and, as he gestures to the audience once more with his reading glasses, it is clear he has left some children behind. The gymnasium floor at the Warner Center, peppered with big red signs indicating where representatives of each of the 57 states and territories should sit, is about three-quarters full of students in varying states of concentration. The Alaska delegate who was sleeping at the beginning of George Allen’s speech has dozed off again. His friend looks to be asleep too, but then he pulls out his phone and starts texting. A few rows back, another delegate tilts her head back and raises her eyebrows: “Jesus Christ, this is long.”

Since 1908, students at W&L, located about three and a half hours southwest of DC in Lexington, Virginia, have been convening every four years to pick the presidential nominee of one of the two major political parties. They form properly proportioned state delegations, adopt bylaws, and spend the better part of a year studying voting trends and polling data. Before they ever take the stage for the roll call, they’ve spoken with all of the  delegations whose nominating contests fall earlier on the calendar, so as to best understand the hypothetical state of play—if Romney’s cleaning up in the early states, the stragglers know better than to go swing en masse for Ron Paul. It’s a political ritual akin to Groundhog Day, if only Punxsutawney Phil wore a blue blazer with boat shoes.

And they’ve gotten pretty good at picking winners: They’re right 76 percent of the time. At one point, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (W&L class of ’69) pops up on the two 20 x 20 video screens to tell us, on behalf of uncommitted Republicans everywhere, “We are looking to the W&L convention to tell us who will be the Republican nominee.”

Given the way the race has panned out, that’s not such an unreasonable proposition. Five different GOP candidates have led the national polls at least once—six, if you count Donald Trump. Last week, just when Mitt Romney seemed to have finally taken control of the race with a big win in Nevada, Rick Santorum blew him away in three states. Santorum now holds a commanding lead in Romney’s home state of Michigan. The clusterfudge hasn’t been lost on the convention’s participants. “The Northeast region was joking about how we might go rogue and go Chris Christie,” says Frank Cullo, a senior who chairs the New Hampshire delegation.

Over three days, the student body hears from a series of speakers of various levels of repute before each delegation formally declares a winner (based on their reading of a variety of indicators). Dick Morris spends much of his Saturday morning address laughing over his applause lines with the kind of villainous cackle one normally expects from disgraced former political operatives who have secured lifetime employment with their former opponents. Fred Thompson mumbles his way through an unconvincing endorsement of Gingrich, in which he breaks Effective Surrogate Rules 8–14 by volunteering that his candidate “has more baggage than the airlines.” Haley Barbour hops on stage to the hook from Kanye West’s “Power,” and reflects on how nice it is to be at a school “where they still let ya pray.”

It wouldn't be a Republican confab without a stealth smear campaign.: Photo by Tim MurphyIt wouldn’t be a Republican confab without a stealth smear campaign. Photo by Tim MurphyFinally it’s time for the roll call, the centerpiece of the whole event. The state chairs form a long procession up to the microphone, where they briefly introduce their state and announce how they’re voting, depending on whether their state allocates its delegates proportionately or winner-take-all. Texas, which splits its delegates between a caucus and a primary, is represented twice.

It’s a mix of earnest trivia, partisan one-liners, and dick jokes. Ohio gave us the Wright Brothers and “unfortunately, the American Federation of Labor. I know, it sucks” (60 votes to Mitt; 3 apiece to Newt and Santorum). Oklahoma announces “zero delegates to the best candidate, Ron Paul!” There are a few scattered boos when Wyoming tells us it was the first state to give women the right to vote. The Maryland delegate is dressed up in a full-body crab suit and informs us that Maryland is “the best place to get crabs” (Romney takes all 37 delegates). 

Indiana’s May 8 primary finally puts Romney over the top. When Romney takes the nomination, there’s a loud pop. Red, white, and blue streamers drop from the ceiling, the gym floor explodes with applause, and DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win” blares from the speakers. The rest is a formality, but hardly dull: When West Virginia’s state chair, wearing a coal miner’s hard hat with a flashlight on top, recites the normally uncontroversial fact that his state has been around since 1863, he’s heckled by a kid who believes the state should never have broken away (“That’s unconstitutional!”). New Mexico, “home to all kinds of aliens,” gives 18 of 23 delegates to Romney; Guam “home to actual US citizens, unlike our current president,” gives its 9 delegates to Romney.

We wait around for a few more minutes for the man himself to call in and accept the nomination (“Congratulations! Thanks for coming! Boy, this is great; I love gymnasiums!”), but he doesn’t, and things start to get chaotic. The odd “USA!” chant breaks out, as does the compulsory “Ron Paul!” Finally, about 10 minutes later, Romney’s wife, Ann, calls in to graciously accept the nomination and inform us—reading from a script, from the sound of it—that Virginia is “a state with a rich history and one that’ll play an important role in the 2012 election.”

My initial impulse is to second-guess—how could they hand Romney the nomination by such a wide margin, given everything that’s happened in the last week? Why are they so bearish on Santorum? Are we sure Romney’s going to win Michigan? What would happen if Maryland’s actual state party chair showed up in Tampa dressed as a crab? But on second thought, maybe we could learn a thing or two from the whole affair. They’ve crunched the numbers, ignored the day-to-day fluctuations, and attempted to offer something we in the media would rather do without: finality. And why not? It’s been a pretty lousy year for pundits.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate