Why? A two point swing wouldn’t even win Virginia. Maybe Florida swing with Jewish support but Ohio? At least Paul Ryan voted for the auto bailout.
And why on earth is a Jew from Virginia more likely to help the ticket in Ohio than a Midwestern Catholic? Ohio is only 1.3 percent Jewish.
Ohio and Virginia are close enough that, with stronger Right support, Romney can tip those states. Plus, with Cantor having served in Virginia for nearly 20 years and who knows the area, he'd be able to organize Romney's VA campaign well enough to tip the state. Florida (less than 1%) is close enough that Cantor is a boon. I see those three states swinging to the GOP - 272 Obama/Biden, 266 Romney/Cantor.
Florida wasn't flipping, for what it's worth. That was won by having unusually high elderly black turnout, surpassing 2008. A few more Jewish Republican votes doesn't surpass that.
I disagree here. Florida was a
very close election (50.01 to 49.1) and I think it's entirely possible that the Romney/Cantor ticket could swing Florida.
If you want to look for a Romney path to victory, honestly, it was the Trump path to victory of staking out hardline positions on trade and immigration in the Upper Midwest, OH, and PA. That is where he most narrowed the gap in the last few weeks using those ideas. Obama had to deploy Biden and Bill Clinton to hold on.
I agree that if Romney played his cards right, I think he'd win Pennsylvania. It'd be close (IOTL 51.9 to 46.5, I could see maybe a slight edge with both in the 49%s) but I think he could win PA.
I disagree with the 2016 playbook. Obama was an incumbent who was a very weak spot. If Romney does better in the Iowa primary, he takes the wind out of Santorum's sails. Romney, riding that Iowa win, and with a fractured anti-Romney GOP, sweeps NH, SC, FL and the remaining states ahead of Super Tuesday and unites the party before the convention. Unifying the party behind him puts him in a much better position to win.
Unifying the party means that Romney can define himself. One big weakness in OTL was he couldn't respond to the Obama campaign portraying him as some corporate vulture until he became the nominee at the Convention. ITTL, with the party behind him, he could very easily portray himself as the "get-it-done" businessman - create jobs, save companies, help the economy. Positive stories about his family and their philanthropic/charitable works would also work.
Now, this strategy has its pitfalls in that the GOP at the state level had not made its massive 2014 gains that helped so much in 2016 there, and Romney obviously was less talented and passionate on those topics, not to mention the slandering he had taken in the summer that made him seem particularly unlikely to take up that mantle. But they were the one bright spot he had after the first debate.
Now the issue is finding the right next state to tip in order to win. Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa. These are the big three that if I were the Romney campaign, I'd be looking at these. Romney nearly won Pennsylvania (IOTL it was 51.9 to 46.5) so he has a chance at tipping this. Iowa (51.9 to 46.1) and Colorado (51.4 to 46.1) are, with the right amount of work, in the realm of possibility. After the first presidential debate, 538 was projecting him to win Colorado.