After writers finished dissecting Romney’s wins, the wins seemed more like losses. | REUTERS Conservatives: Romney's weak wins

Mitt Romney awoke after Super Tuesday only to face a fresh barrage of criticism, doubts and second-guessing from influential conservatives.

“Rarely has a candidate seemed so inevitable and so weak at the same time,” the National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote Wednesday in a piece titled, “The Candidate of ‘Eh.’”


“Romney remains on a seemingly inexorable path to the nomination, the only GOP candidate with a clear path to a majority of delegates. But he is not winning rock-ribbed Republican hearts at exactly the time he needs to be,” noted John Podhoretz in the New York Post.

By the time conservative writers, bloggers and editorial pages were done dissecting Romney’s wins in Ohio and five other states, even those victories seemed more like losses.

The Wall Street Journal, which has been cool to Romney throughout the primary, summed it up with an editorial that repeatedly praised Rick Santorum and noted his strengths, while calling the Super Tuesday results a “split decision.” The Journal had little good to say about Romney.

“We’ve long thought RomneyCare was the former Governor’s great vulnerability, and he would be wise to come up with a better explanation for how his views differ from Mr. Obama’s,” the Journal’s editorial said. “Voters want to hear him do what Mr. Santorum does and take ObamaCare apart as policy and philosophy.”

Conservatives noted that Romney’s lingering weaknesses as a candidate were brought into glaring relief by sometimes narrow wins, like in Ohio, that come at a bruising cost, despite large fundraising and organizational advantages.

“I’d be wondering who on my campaign staff gets fired first,” wrote Erick Erickson at the conservative blog RedState. “Were I Mitt Romney I’d be wondering how I spent 5.5 times as much money as Rick Santorum and barely won Ohio… Mitt Romney has been running since 2006, has the best organization, and the most money. He won his home state of Michigan by less than 3%. He won Ohio barely after pouring in money.”

“A win is a win is a win. But with each Romney win, he comes away even more badly bruised,” Erickson added. “What a mess.”

John Hawkins at the RightWingNews blog agreed, saying, “[G]iven his crushing advantage in money, organization, endorsements, and conservative media help, his performance was underwhelming.”

“Mitt Romney will exit the ten Super Tuesday contests with more delegates than anyone else, but his political reputation damaged,” said conservative writer John Fund at National Review. “Given his crushing financial advantage, Romney should have done better tonight.”

The problem, conservative writers noted, is that Romney cannot win convincingly enough to seal the nomination and shut down talk of his faults.

“Despite his near-prohibitive front-runner status, Romney still cannot convince a sizable chunk of the GOP electorate to hop on his bandwagon, particularly Southerners and evangelicals,” writes Guy Benson at Townhall.com.

Meanwhile, while Kathleen Parker had some kind advice for Romney in her Washington Post column - be yourself - her words came couched in backhanded criticism of the candidate’s style.

“No one in this country thinks you’re a cool, with-it kind of guy — and they’re fine with that. They don’t want you to be cool. They want you to fix the economy. They want you to be serious, presidential and the grown-up you are,” Parker wrote.

“Be as liberated in seeking victory as you would be in defeat. This includes being outraged at the outrageous, willing to tell unpleasant truths, temperate in matters grave (steering you away from statements such as Iran will have nukes if Obama wins) and being willing to lose,” she added.