Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney revived his bid for the White House last night with a convincing victory over main rival John McCain at the GOP primary in Michigan.
Mr Romney finished with 39 percent of the vote, compared to Senator McCain’s 30 percent and Mike Huckabee’s 16 percent.
“Tonight marks the beginning of a comeback,” the former Massachusetts governor declared as he claimed victory in Southfield. “Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism.”
The latter comment refers to interpretive differences between Mr Romney’s and Senator McCain’s takes on the decimation of Michigan’s manufacturing base and its economic decline after corporations shifted major plants and jobs to overseas countries.
"The jobs that are leaving the state of Michigan have left and are not coming back,” said Senator McCain of Arizona as his Straight Talk Express made its way across the state over the weekend. “We're going to try to create new jobs."
Mr Romney seized the opportunity to play a more pleasing tune to local voters, who are deeply anxious about Michigan’s troubled economy and its 7.4 percent unemployment rate. The economy rated as the number one issue among primary voters.
"I hear people say, 'It's gone, those jobs are gone, transportation's gone, it's not coming back,'" Mr Romney had told his supporters. "I'm going to fight for every single job. I'm going to rebuild the industry. I'm going to take burdens off the back of the auto industry."
Mr Romney blames national fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry’s decline, despite widely documented evidence that labor issues figured far more prominently in the transfer of plants and jobs overseas.
Columnist Edward McClelland quipped in Salon, “If Romney wants to bring auto plants back to Michigan, he'll have to fund research into a shop rat who works for $2 an hour, never gets sick, and dies on retirement day.”
To convince voters that he can revive the state’s auto industry, Mr Romney emphasized his Michigan roots, his business background and his father’s former position as the head of American Motors.
Meanwhile, differing turnouts for the two candidates’ core political bases also helped determine the result.
More than two-thirds of primary participants described themselves as Republicans, up from 48 percent in the state’s 2000 Republican primary. This group strongly favored Mr Romney.
Meanwhile, only 32 percent of voters described themselves as independents or Democrats, down from 52 percent in 2000 when Senator McCain won the Michigan primary.
Voters from high-income districts and those earning more than $50,000 per year tended to support Mr Romney.
