Thank you Cleveland Plain Dealer: " for anybody-but-Obama voters, it might not matter whether Obama's Republican foe were Romney or Santorum. The point for the Party of Lincoln's true believers is that somebody -- anybody -- must retire the president. But that calls to mind another maxim, this one from the Statehouse: You can't beat an incumbent -- Obama -- with a comparatively weak challenger."

Even in GOP-ruled Ohio, Mitt Romney is running uphill: Thomas Suddes

Published: Saturday, March 31, 2012, 2:25 PM     Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2012, 3:56 AM

 By Thomas Suddes, The Plain Dealer 

Gerald Herbert, Associated PressMitt Romney at a campaign appearance in Dayton before last month's Ohio primary.

Had next November's election been held instead this March, Ohioans would have voted to re-elect President Barack Obama, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll.

That, in itself, was no surprise, given a slowly bettering economy. Youngstown maxim: People vote their pocketbooks.

What was telling about the poll was this: Matched against Democrat Obama, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the perceived Republican front-runner, would lose 41 percent to 47 percent.

But -- and this was the eye-opener -- Romney's tally was just 1 percentage point better than that of former Sen. Rick Santorum, a suburban Pittsburgh Republican, would have been against Obama.

According to Quinnipiac's polling, Santorum would collect 40 percent of Ohio's vote to (again) the president's 47 percent in a hypothetical head-to-head.

Yet Santorum is supposedly an "extreme" Republican compared to Romney, at least to the Republican Establishment.

True, for anybody-but-Obama voters, it might not matter whether Obama's Republican foe were Romney or Santorum. The point for the Party of Lincoln's true believers is that somebody -- anybody -- must retire the president.

But that calls to mind another maxim, this one from the Statehouse: You can't beat an incumbent -- Obama -- with a comparatively weak challenger.

Romney has indeed worked: He leads Santorum in the quest for Republican presidential convention delegates. But as demonstrated by Ohio's March 6 presidential primary, rank-and-file Republicans in GOP heartland counties prefer Santorum.

It's impossible to believe that many, if any, of those Ohio Santorum voters would vote for Obama if Romney became the Republican nominee. But those Ohioans might stay home. And that'd be a big headache for Romney.

Consider a good measure of GOP commitment in Ohio. Only twice in the 20th century, in 1944 (Republican Thomas E. Dewey vs. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt) and 1960 (Richard M. Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy), has Ohio been on the losing side in a presidential election.

That is, no matter how the rest of the United States was voting in 1944 and 1960, no way was Ohio going to vote for a Democrat, not even mid-World War II incumbent Roosevelt.

Of the 22 counties (one-quarter of Ohio's 88) where Dewey (and his running mate, then-Gov. John W. Bricker) ran strongest in 1944, all but Delaware supported Santorum on March 6, not Romney. And Dewey, be it noted, bested Roosevelt in Ohio by only about 12,000 votes. That is, maximum Republican turnout bucked a national Democratic victory.

In 1960 in Ohio, Nixon (who, by heritage, could be considered an Ohioan) beat Massachusetts Democrat Kennedy by about 273,000 votes (albeit, some of those Nixon votes were the product of now-pass anti-Catholicism). Nixon's vote margin over Kennedy in the 49 Ohio counties where Nixon ran strongest in 1960 can account for his entire 273,000-vote edge.

But on March 6, Republicans in 45 of those 49 Nixon counties preferred Santorum to Romney. The pro-Romney exceptions: Delaware, Warren (Lebanon), Medina and suburban Cincinnati's Clermont.

Those pro-Romney counties are growing suburbs, so that's "where the votes are" -- and that's a plus for Romney. And yes, Ohio Republicans probably would prefer anyone for president, even Mitt Romney, to any Democrat. But Ohio's March 6 tally suggests enthusiasm for Romney isn't even lukewarm among the salt-of-the-earth Ohioans who go door to door for Republican candidates, distribute their literature and post their signs.

For Romney, that's bad news. If he can't romance an Ohio whose GOP runs every statewide executive office and the General Assembly, and elects most of the state's congressional delegation, Republicans have a big problem -- and Barack Obama a big opportunity.

Suddes, a member of The Plain Dealer's editorial board, writes from Ohio University.

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