Ron Kaufman, the longtime Romney confidante and Massachusetts Republican committeeman, is the liaison with members of the RNC and is in Arizona this week working the party leaders.

“The campaign is very focused on doing this sort of outreach in a very methodical way and we’ll do it through Election Day,” said Romney adviser Kevin Madden.

Text Size -

+

reset

Some of the grumbling is from conservatives who were sympathetic to Romney rivals in the primary and believe firmly that the party will have a difficult time beating President Barack Obama with a less-than-pure nominee.

Asked why a conservative-dominated party keeps nominating establishment candidates for president, Perkins carped: “Maybe Republicans don’t like to win?”

Privately, some Republicans are dispirited because their Mormon, mandate-backing standard-bearer gives away two lines of attack against Obama – that he’s an exotic figure who pushed through a massive health care overhaul.

Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator and editor-in-chief of the The Daily Caller, said publicly what many on the right are thinking at a speech last week to the Cato Institute.

“There are only two people in world history who have signed laws containing an individual mandate,” said Carlson, according to The Washington Examiner. “One’s the president, the other’s running against him. So somehow, out of 315 million Americans, the Republican Party managed to find the one guy who couldn’t run on Obamacare.”

Some Republicans are making the best of it by noting that the party’s conservative base will keep Romney’s feet to the fire and asserting that he’s largely a vessel.

“This is not Taft-Eisenhower or Goldwater-Rockefeller,” said anti-tax leader Grover Norquist, who said he feels better now about winning than he did a month ago. “We’re not nominating a candidate to tell the party what direction to go. All of them ran as Reagan Republicans. We know what we’re doing and who we are — we just want a guy to sign the bills.”

Put simply, “We’re electing a coach of a team that knows the plays,” Norquist said.

John McLaughlin, a longtime GOP pollster, lamented some of the self-inflicted wounds from the primary – “He’s been running for president for five years and he hasn’t released his taxes?” – and said Romney had to craft a concise message.

“They have the opportunity to win because the country is in serious economic trouble,” McLaughlin said. “What’s missing is Romney has yet to develop a message of hope and confidence that he can pull America out of its decline.”

What’s notable is the degree of pessimism from establishment Republicans, the crowd that was deathly afraid of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich becoming the standard-bearer this fall. It may be a temporary affliction, but it seems as though the fatalism that traditionally marked the Democratic Party has taken hold in the GOP.

“You go through two cycles when incumbents win and people will talk themselves into thinking it’s historically inevitable,” said Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol.