Eye of the Needle

[NHI]

The 2012 Presidential Election: Prologue

President Barack Obama boarded Air Force One, bound for Chicago. Election Day had become Election Night. The most expensive Presidential contest in American history was nearing its apex. He was tired; tired from crisscrossing the country. In the last forty-eight hours he had been to five states, including a four AM rally in Florida. He blitzes the country, all the while dealing with the ongoing response to Hurricane Sandy.

He was also tired from the slog

Four years earlier, he stood at the height of political power and glory. His election as the first African-American President had been historic, and his victory was overwhelming. The country responded to his message of hope and rallied to his vision of change. Now, four years later, jaded, fractured and for him, grayer the electorate was hungry. Not hungry for hope and renewal, but hungry for change, though not with the same enthusiasm on which he was elected. The people were angry.

Angry on both sides. Angry to defeat him, return Republican Rule to Washington, DC and confine his legacy to the dustbin of history. Angry to re-elect him, and vanquish the charlatans in the Grand Old Party, who were trying once more trick to pull the wool over the American people's eyes.

"Turnout is through the roof," David Axelrod, the President's old friend and chief strategist told him as he boarded the plane. "Makes 2008 look like 2004."

"That's good," Obama replied, though his voice softened. There had to be bad news coming, or at least a long pause and 'but'.

On cue, Axelrod painted a picture, less cherry than the one four years earlier. "We will not be flipping any red states this year." 2008 saw The Obama Campaign topple Republican locks on Ohio, North Carolina, even Florida. Indiana, even answered the calls of, 'yes, we can,' and both Missouri and Montana were decided on razor thin margins for the Republican nominee John McCain. Obama, won the biggest victory for the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton toppled George H.W. Bush in 1992, and won the largest share of the popular vote of either parties since 1988.

However, 2012, was not 2008, despite the surge in turnout. This Election was not 1984. It was 2004, on steroids. This was about holding court. This was about protecting what they won and forgetting the rest. "270," Obama often quipped, "that's all we need."

"You're winning right now, based on the numbers," Axelrod said scratching his grizzled face. "In Pennsylvania, but Ohio is going to be tight." Axelrod had more to say, but he sensed a disinterest in his boss. He never cared for politicking and scouring over polling memos.

"Need Ohio," Obama said, and that was the end of the conversation. He knew there would be pontificating and posturing. He knew Jim Messina and the others would be running around like moths to the flame in Chicago. All the craziness would be there when they touched down at O'Hara. Now he wanted to sleep, even just nap.

Win, lose, or draw, he told himself. This has been one hell of a ride.

America's Choice: Election Night 2012

Coming Next... Chapter One: Why Don't They Like Me?

[Ferguson97]

Guessing this will either be a narrow Obama victory (giving him no control of the Senate and less of a mandate) or a Romney victory. Should be interesting either way.

[Nightcore Nationalist]

Interesting!

Guessing this will either be a narrow Obama victory (giving him no control of the Senate and less of a mandate) or a Romney victory. Should be interesting either way.

Assuming Romney is even the nominee in this TL;)

[Chips]

Knowing that this is an alternate timeline, It's probable Romney or another Republican wins.

[Orwell]

Of the Republican also-rans in 2012, I don't think any of them had a chance of beating Obama as 2012 was an extremely weak field outside of Huntsman and Romney general election speaking and Huntsman wasn't really palatable to the base. I think Haley Barbour could have done well, but he had the problem with his lobbyist days, there is also Mike Huckabee who would have had the problem with Ed Rollins running his every move. Mitch Daniels is someone I think could have been very successful he had the unofficial support of McCain and Dubya's people.

[America Needs R'hllor]

NHI Timeline? COUNT ME IN!
I hope the Republican nominee is Huntsman, if he wins, but from the description I doubt it.

[Mike Thick]

Looks phenomenal, NHI. As always.

[tmthforu94]

Great start, your timelines are always stellar!!!

[NHI]

Chapter 1: Why Don't They Like Me

Mitt Romney was under performing in NH. Heck, he had been under performing the entire campaign. Despite the money, the backing and look of a president, the Former Massachusetts Governor looked poised to be another ALSO-RAN. He learned his lessons from 2008, or so he thought; run as the Mr. Fix-It, and let the conservatives fight among themselves.

But the message was lost in the shuffle and fray. Republican primary voters wanted anyone, except Mitt Romney to be the nominee.

In the early months of 2011 TV personality Donald Trump flirted with a Republican bid for the White House, even after stoking claims that President Obama was not born in the United States. The President upstaged the Donald, by releasing his birth certificate, that Trump had questioned, but that never squashed interest in a potential Trump candidacy. He flew to New Hampshire and met with local politicos, but just as he had in years prior, he passed on another run.

When the primary field appeared settled in early summer, Mike Huckabee, the conservative choice in 2008 and now Tea Party Darling, who hosted a highly rated Fox News Show, seemed prepared to run in 2012. Huckabee, Romney's team believed would be a challenge and could marshal grassroots support, however after dipping his toes in the water, Huckabee decided hosting paid more than bracing the Iowa cold, or standing outside of diners in Manchester, NH. 

There was the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who entered like a lightning bolt and fizzled like a wet sparkler. He shot to the top of the polls after entering the race in August, but fade when it he opened his mouth in the first debate. Perry would linger in the race a few months longer, until the late night jokes drove him back to Texas in December. 

There was also the brief dance many voters did with Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather Pizza, but his star burnt out before anyone realized there was a star at all. 

Romney believed he could ride the wave of influx all the way to the primaries. He had the money to go the distance and the discipline, but what he lacked was star quality and that was something Sarah Palin had in spades. 

Even before her announcement Palin was flirting with a presidential run. She flew to the Granite State the day Romney declared his bid to a lackluster crowd and the following morning, found his campaign launch below the fold in all the state's papers, as reporters locally and nationally chased the Former Alaska Governor on her bus tour across the state.

"We've got to be ready for her," Romney remembered telling his staff, but no one seemed convinced she would even mount a campaign.

"She's playing," said campaign manager Matt Rhodes. "She's not serious. She proved that when she left the Governor's job."

Except, she wasn't playing. She was serious.

In late September as Rick Perry inserted his foot into his mouth, Sarah Palin launched her bid for the White House, firing up grassroots conservatives, by stoking fears and populist resentment. The campaign, the Romney campaign secretly, feared from the beginning launched in Cedar Rapids Iowa, with a clear message. "Take Our Country Back". 

She drew crowds Romney could only dream of. She was loved by her supporters and seemed to strike fear in the hearts of Democrats. Many believing she could tap into a populist streak floating throughout the country.

She should have been easy to beat, but Romney could not shake her, and having been smarted in Iowa four years after spending an arm and a leg in 2008, he was now facing a double whammy. Another reminder he was not the choice of conservatives. He determined to downplay expectations in the state, but the collapsing of the field around him, made a strong showing essential. Palin would win the state, but the question by how much.

Most pundits expected a close contest. No one expected a blowout. Palin scored decisively in the first Caucus State, winning 31% of the vote to Romney's 24%. Another loss in Iowa, and now he was looking for a meek showing in the state which he practically called home.

"He just doesn't excite the base," Romney heard from the punditry class on primary night.
"He's got the resume, the look, but not the spark." 

"He's safe. That's why he's the establishment pick, but the folks in the party, you know the people actually on the ground are thinking, safe will not do this time. We have to go big, we have to go bold, maybe even a little risky."

Romney swallowed his pride. He would be gracious regardless of the final outcome, but he would not be taken down without a fight. If he prevailed in NH, as his Boston gurus predicted the race would be set up perfectly, Romney vs. Palin. 

Huntsman, would be gone. Rumor had it he was thinking of dropping out after New Hampshire, though there were some whispers of him moving resources from South Carolina to Nevada, the next contest after NH. Either way he was no challenge.
Ron Paul would be Ron Paul.

Gingrich would be gone soon. The former speaker saw a small surge when Palin seemed unsteady back before Christmas. Heck he even won the Union Leader's backing, but his campaign was imploding. Staff infighting. Mismanagement. He bet the farm on Iowa, spring boarding him to the nomination he could only muster a 5th place showing. The real trick would be to gather his supporters, or at the least keep him from pulling a Perry and Bachmann move and lining up behind Palin after their campaigns fizzled before and after Iowa.

Santorum had faded after Iowa sent him his walking papers. He backed Palin, albeit begrudgingly. 
This would be his chance, Romney believed. Win NH, even by a small margin and retool the campaign. Set up the dynamic. Tested, proven, conservative versus a rock star. His team was already rolling out a new line of attack on the Former Governor.

"We already have one President, who was more interested in celebrity than governing, why would we elect another." 
Game. Set. Match.  

The results out of New Hampshire would be interesting. Palin never stood much of a chance, even with momentum from Iowa. Sure, she locked up the rural counties, much of the population was found in the southern half -- and Romney had become a known commodity to people working in Massachusetts, but lived in New Hampshire. He dominated the airwaves, and stood poised to lock up the suburbs of the states. 

Except for one problem: Jon Huntsman.

Huntsman had long set his sights on clipping Romney's wings in the Granite State. Running as the other Mormon Moderate, he needed to find an edge, and New Hampshire looked like the place to pull off an upset. He campaigned in the state, consistently since the Fall, and done over one hundred events, the most since John McCain's fabled 2000 run.

He was working it, the only fashioned, New Hampshire way. Meeting people at coffee shops and holding town halls. He dinged Romney for flip flopping and called him "unreliable". In a state where undeclared can vote in the primary, Huntsman needed to build his coalition from independents and Democrats, who otherwise might not vote, given Obama's uncontested primary. It was the John McCain strategy. It worked once, why not again.

Ron Paul saw the Granite State as fertile soil, even in cold January, for his libertarian message. The State's Live Free or Die Motto was right up his alley and yet, Paul had trouble finding his footing. He had been dogged by charges of racism, over newsletters written decades earlier. He had trouble holding his self-described free staters together, many who flocked to the populist laden Palin campaign, who while the pinnacle of a conservative seemed to be speaking their language when she talked about 'government' 'corruption' 'and the march of Obama Socialism'.

Paul was also, almost eighty and while his campaign never intended to make a serious run, it did hope to lay the ground work for his son, Senator Rand Paul, for his likely Presidential bid in 2016, that now looked in question.

Palin and her campaign expected New Hampshire to be tough. Conservatives rarely did well in the state. Typically, more establishment backed candidates won the primary. There had been Pat Buchanan's win in 1996, but the field was larger and more fractured allowed for a narrow 27% to 26% over eventual nominee Bob Dole. For Palin, New Hampshire was less about winning and more about doing well enough.

After Iowa, they surged, but it would not enough to win the day. They blitzed through the state after Iowa, but following the final debate two days before the vote flew straight to South Carolina, the next big contest and where the race for President would likely be decided. 

In Columbia, Palin prepared for a rally, while her staff fed her exit polls from New Hampshire. She was performing better than expected and could even finish second. Palin, smiled with a twinkle in her eye, "it's all God's plan."

Back in New Hampshire, the networks readied their projections. Romney Wins New Hampshire. The headline was what mattered, he told himself, but he knew deep down everyone would be dissecting the margin. How did he lose a one time twenty point lead? There would analysis for the days leading up to South Carolina, but Romney seemed to know the answer before he stepped out onto the stage to greet his beleaguered supporters.

"Maybe, they just don't like me."

New Hampshire Primary Results: 2012

✓ Mitt Romney: 33.4%

Sarah Palin: 24.6%
Jon Huntsman: 23.5%
Ron Paul: 14.6%
Other: 3.9%

[NHI]

Chapter 2: Sarah Rising

Sarah Palin never expected to run for President. She loved the media attention. She adored the cheering fans. She tasted the spectacle of a presidential bid during her book tour and midterm campaigning events, but she never intended to become an official candidate.

"She wanted to milk the limelight," said her one time adviser Corey Lewandowski, who briefly helped the campaign until early 2012. "She wanted to influence the debate without being in the debate and yet, in somehow she became the whole debate."

Her running mate in 2008, John McCain privately worried over a Palin candidacy. "I don't think it will be good for the party," McCain privately told aides and close friends. "I made a mistake four years ago." The feeling that his campaign created a media superstar was not lost on the Arizona Senator. The grievance politics stoked by Palin in the waning days of the 2008 campaign had only continued on full throttle in the age of Obama. "We're at a tipping point as a party."

McCain, who was not the biggest Romney fan, felt drawn to support his chief rival in 2012 campaign, but his aides cautioned him from weighing in. Endorsing Palin would be logical in an ideal world, she had been his running mate four years earlier and anything short of an endorsement would trip alarm bells. McCain found himself in a box, and while there were some in the Palin campaign who privately courted McCain for his endorsement, feeling it would bolster Palin among the Republican establishment, there were others in the campaign, including the candidate who felt McCain not endorsing her, or even backing someone else would be a more lucrative argument.

"They were running a base campaign," said MSNBC's Jon Heilemann. "And John McCain is not the base of the Republican party, so in a weird kabuki theater type way, by her not receiving the endorsement of McCain was a major boost, because it showed to the party faithful, she was the real-deal and not an establishment sellout."

In the wake of John McCain's landslide loss to Barack Obama in 2008, Republicans found themselves jaded. Would the party pursue cooperation with the new President, or launch a scorched-earth campaign and oppose him at every turn. The latter option won the day, and for Palin, the target of criticism and jeers from the establishment and media elites in both parties, seemed perfectly poised to capture the anger and resentment billowing within the ranks of the Grand old Party.

"Regardless of how the media portrayed her," said Heilemann, "the rank and file, the so-called base never blamed Palin in the wake of McCain's loss. They blamed the media or even McCain himself, but never Palin. And the campaign will tell you, even begrudgingly so that Palin fired up their campaign in the final months of 2008 in a way that no one could have anticipated."

Most losing Vice Presidential candidates do not advance to win their party's nomination, the only other person to accomplish feat was Franklin Roosevelt, who had been the Vice Presidential nominee in 1920. The comparison, strangely enough was not lost on Palin and her team, who sought to use the FDR framework as their strategic thinking. Capture the heart and minds of the party and surge like a tsunami towards the establishment, leaving them no choice but to bow to the inevitability.

In public opinion polls, primary voters traded candidates throughout the summer and into the Fall. When Palin entered the race, she immediately jumped to the top of the pack, even eclipsing Mitt Romney as the top choice for primary voters.

Where Palin seemed locked, however was in the general election match ups. Even, with Obama's approval ratings underwater and the economy sluggish, Palin struggled in head-to-head polls against the 44th President, compared to Mitt Romney, who consistently tied or lead the President.

Even a Fox News Poll found Obama would soundly defeat Palin 51% to 42%. By comparison Romney tied Obama 46% to 46%.

The general election would take itself, Palin often told her campaign staff. They could not worry about future polls, until they won the primary.

"We're going to win and win big."

[NyIndy]

This is great. Looking forward to future updates.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Oh no. President Palin is gonna be interesting

[Biden his time]

What an excellent timeline. I hope to see the ending one day.

[Utah Neolib]

What an excellent timeline. I hope to see the ending one day.

Yep

[frozenman]

Like the intro to your  story.