Romney memo says media ‘ready to anoint’ McCain

A memo from a senior strategist for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says that the media are ready to give the Republican nomination to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), but if Romney can attract more conservatives, he will win the nomination.

“We still have an uphill battle in front of us,” Romney strategist Alex Gage wrote in the memo. “The mainstream media is (sic) ready to anoint John McCain and he will have advantages in many states running for president for the past eight years – but Gov. Romney has a clear path to victory on February 5th and beyond.”

{mosads}The memo, obtained by The Hill, outlines how McCain has failed to win over conservative voters in the states that have voted so far, and it details how Romney could have won if only a few more percentage points of that bloc had come over.

“The coalitions that John McCain assembled in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida have been strikingly similar – and are strikingly tenuous,” Gage wrote.

The Romney campaign confirmed the authenticity of the memo Thursday afternoon.

The memo goes on to say that Romney and McCain “are now in a two-man race and a few points’ movement among conservatives is all that’s needed to tip the scales in favor of Gov. Romney.”

Gage writes that in the early three states McCain won, his margin of victory was the result of the support of moderates, independents and voters that disapprove of the Bush administration.

“None of these groups is a majority of the Republican electorate,” Gage wrote, adding that this is the reason “McCain has failed to win more than 36 percent of the vote in any of them.”

The memo zeroes in on McCain’s recent win in Florida, where Gage said exit poll data showed that “if Gov. Romney had won conservatives in Florida 41 percent to 25 percent over McCain, rather than 37 percent to 29 percent – just a four-point shift – he would have won the state.”

“Former Giuliani and Thompson supporters in February 5th states will be looking for a new candidate over the next week, and it will not take very many conservatives moving to Romney to disrupt McCain’s victory formula,” Gage wrote.

Gage also says that it is “easy to see how we defeat McCain in a two-main(sic) race by focusing on traditional Republican primary voters.”