"Romney deserves a lot more out of his staff," said one senior Republican operative who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They have mishandled him. It has been a clumsy campaign that lacks a message and has relied on a crutch of negative ad spending to make up for its weakness."

Myopic, insular and overconfident, Team Romney has squandered the candidate's strengths and exacerbated his weaknesses, these critics charge.

Myopic, insular and overconfident, Team Romney has squandered the candidate's strengths and exacerbated his weaknesses, critics charge.

They point to specific strategic miscues: the failure to cultivate low-dollar donors; a lack of outreach to the conservative movement and the media generally; and the fateful decision to overlook the Feb. 7 contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, where surprise wins for Rick Santorum catapulted him back into contention as Romney's principal challenger. The campaign has also repeatedly signaled that it's expecting the next primary to deal a knockout blow, only to be rebuked by too-close-for-comfort wins (Michigan and Ohio) or humbling defeats like this week's third-place finishes in Alabama and Mississippi.

But those who find fault with Romney's operation also see a larger failure to grasp the political terrain ahead of their candidate and adjust accordingly. The result is a campaign that has repeatedly been caught flat-footed by circumstances and events that should have been foreseeable, from questions about Romney's personal wealth to the standoffishness of hard-core conservatives.

"I think they're extremely competent at the tactical things. They run a tight ship in terms of the nuts and bolts," said John Weaver, the former strategist to John McCain and Jon Huntsman. "But their messaging is a head-scratcher at times. ... Can they grind it out, run more negative ads, do more robocalls, that kind of crap? Yeah, they can do that better than anyone else. But what has it got them?"

While this kind of second-guessing is endemic in politics, and all too easy in hindsight, the Republicans expressing these misgivings largely want Romney to win and are anxious about the way the primary has dragged on. They worry that Romney's team has shown little self-doubt even as its best-laid plans have gone repeatedly, flamboyantly awry -- and that those same tendencies could spell doom in a general election.

Another McCain campaign veteran, strategist Steve Schmidt, praised Romney's "staying power" and said the campaign has been "technically proficient." But, he noted, Romney has repeatedly "been put on defense" in ways that have obscured his positive pitch.

"The campaign hasn't articulated a very positive, forward-looking, voter-focused vision of what prosperity looks like in the 21st century," he said. "What are his plans that are understandable and connect with people's minds? Instead, what they've found themselves in is an ideological contest against Republicans, which is a difficult fight for Mitt Romney for a lot of reasons."