Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado: all Somebody Who Isn't Romney states.
And of the Not-Romney candidates, Rick Santorum is the smartest, the hardest-working, and the least obviously corrupt and/or crazy. He can actually campaign for higher office without saying a whole lot of things that will make people who should back him, hate him. (hint to Gov Romney and disgraced former Speaker Gingrich)
So I will be surprised if Romney even manages to pull off a squeaker in Colorado; he's getting trounced in Missouri and Minnesota, both of them non-Establishment states, dominated by Movement Evangelical religious conservatives. Florida was his to lose; Colorado is his to win, maybe. Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota were bound to be uphill fights, and he so far has shown his biggest weakness is he cannot, cannot campaign from behind.
If Gov Romney should be nominated, this will be a major shortcoming in the general election, where executing "stumpspeech.exe" with "inevitable.win" script is absolutely not going to cut it with a majority of the public. Works great for Establishment Republican voters, who are barely a majority of their own party, or roughly one in 6 or 7 voters overall.
If I'm a campaign operative at Romney HQ, I don't like those numbers one bit. He needs to quit worrying so much about winning over the ultra-religious voters, who will probably never like him, but likely will vote for him in November, and demand the votes of the center-right, fiscally-minded business conservatives like himself, who are still the muscle (if not the heart) of Establishment conservatism. Expect a shakeup at Romney HQ right about Super Tuesday, maybe within the next week, in favor of old-school money managers and rough-and-tumble street fighters who know how to play "Chicago style" politics, which is to say, big machine organization and lots and lots of spoils bargained and traded.
Without a shakeup, I'm honestly not sure I can call who wins the nomination in August, and I honestly don't think it'll be obvious after Super Tuesday, either.
So I will be surprised if Romney even manages to pull off a squeaker in Colorado; he's getting trounced in Missouri and Minnesota, both of them non-Establishment states, dominated by Movement Evangelical religious conservatives. Florida was his to lose; Colorado is his to win, maybe. Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota were bound to be uphill fights, and he so far has shown his biggest weakness is he cannot, cannot campaign from behind.
If Gov Romney should be nominated, this will be a major shortcoming in the general election, where executing "stumpspeech.exe" with "inevitable.win" script is absolutely not going to cut it with a majority of the public. Works great for Establishment Republican voters, who are barely a majority of their own party, or roughly one in 6 or 7 voters overall.
If I'm a campaign operative at Romney HQ, I don't like those numbers one bit. He needs to quit worrying so much about winning over the ultra-religious voters, who will probably never like him, but likely will vote for him in November, and demand the votes of the center-right, fiscally-minded business conservatives like himself, who are still the muscle (if not the heart) of Establishment conservatism. Expect a shakeup at Romney HQ right about Super Tuesday, maybe within the next week, in favor of old-school money managers and rough-and-tumble street fighters who know how to play "Chicago style" politics, which is to say, big machine organization and lots and lots of spoils bargained and traded.
Without a shakeup, I'm honestly not sure I can call who wins the nomination in August, and I honestly don't think it'll be obvious after Super Tuesday, either.