Mitt Romney, the Second-Place Front-Runner

With the Iowa caucuses just over a month away, Republican voters are still searching for a savior. The latest hope is Newt Gingrich, who now sits atop national polls. He’s be wise not to get too comfortable. At various points this year, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have each surged to the front. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, while never dazzling, has been strikingly consistent—if also consistently unloved. Both in Iowa and nationally, he’s holding steady with a bit less than 25 percent of the vote, strong enough to make him competitive but not enough to pull away or generate excitement, despite performing well in debates and avoiding missteps. His own party seems determined to nominate anybody but him.

That may sound like a grim verdict. It isn’t, really. While Romney will never be a messiah candidate like Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, chances are he won’t need to be. “I don’t look at his being stuck at 25 percent as a weakness,” says Steve Schmidt, chief strategist for John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign. “I see it as a show of strength in a very strange primary. As other candidates’ vote share falls away, I think he’ll get stronger.”