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Romney campaign propped up by super PAC

EDITORIAL | opinion

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February 23, 2012|By Joshua Green

(Getty images/istockphoto;…)

MITT ROMNEY probably never imagined his current predicament: He lost three of the last four Republican contests to the lightly regarded former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum; trails Santorum by 10 points in the latest Gallup poll; and is limping into his home state primary in Michigan next Tuesday - a contest he may well lose. The Republican establishment is becoming ever more noisily dissatisfied with his candidacy, and if he can’t prevail on Tuesday, several prominent members appear poised to demand that he step aside. Their concern isn’t hard to fathom.

Right now, Romney looks as though he’d be a dangerously weak nominee. But there isn’t much Republicans can do about it. And for that, Romney can thank the Supreme Court. Its 2010 decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, gave rise to so-called “super PACs,’’ the ostensibly independent political committees that can accept unlimited sums from individuals, unions, and corporations and use that money to influence races, usually in the form of negative television ads.

Most of the recent attention devoted to super PACs has focused on Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy donors whose millions have helped prolong the candidacies of Santorum and Newt Gingrich, respectively. But Romney’s super PAC has been at least as instrumental to his own campaign, and possibly more so. In the states where he’s won, Romney and his allies have routinely outspent his opponents by a factor of 5 to 1 or even greater, burying them beneath waves of negative ads to which they lack the resources to respond. As the Globe’s Glen Johnson has pointed out, Romney’s campaign committee and super PAC combined to spend more than $32 million last month, dwarfing his rivals’ efforts and pushing him into the lead.

But when Romney hasn’t deployed these resources, such as in the Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota contests two weeks ago, he’s fared much worse. All else being equal, most Republicans don’t seem to want him as their nominee. Given his current tenuous position in the race, it’s easy to imagine that his many deficiencies would have sunk him by now were it not for the tens of millions of dollars in support he has received from an outside entity.

This is hardly the result most Republicans (and Democrats) anticipated from Citizens United. Instead of making it easier for the establishment to consolidate support behind its preferred choice, the decision may inadvertently vouchsafe the nomination to someone too weak to have won it otherwise.