Most Republicans still don’t want to nominate Mitt Romney. Mitt: Too unloved to be inevitable?

Mitt Romney has won every Republican presidential debate. He has outraised all of his primary opponents. Polls show he’s the most competitive candidate against President Barack Obama.

And most Republicans still don’t want to nominate him.


For all the talk about his inevitability, after half a decade as a declared or undeclared presidential candidate, Romney can scarcely muster a fifth of the GOP primary vote. Republicans continue to cast about for an alternative — looking to Michele Bachmann, then to Rick Perry and now to Herman Cain.



None of Romney’s opponents has been able to derail him for long. But the simple fact remains: Whether it’s because of Romney’s ideas, his history of flip-flops or his personal political style, much of the Republican Party just can’t embrace its front-runner. The question now is whether the GOP is prepared to live with an unlovable nominee if that candidate has a good shot of defeating Obama.

“People, I think, are looking for more visceral, gut issues. Mitt Romney doesn’t make that appeal,” said New York Rep. Peter King, who is neutral in the GOP primary. “His record in the past on health care and gay rights, obviously, are the opposite of where most Republicans are.”

King said he would probably end up endorsing Romney, whom the New Yorker said was winning the primary on a largely tactical, incremental level.

“There’s no one region and there’s no one issue where he really dominates, but he has the most overall points,” King said. “He’s not the type whose supporters are going to fall on their sword for him.”

And that, more than anything, may be Romney’s most glaring weakness, both in the primary and as a potential general election nominee.

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested that his party’s front-runner would be helped with a “moment” — some pivot point in the race that will finally galvanize reluctant Republicans.

“When you get passion is when you get into a fight,” said McCarthy, when asked about the lack of fire for Romney. “When did we get passion [for] Ronald Reagan in the fight? [It was] when he grabbed the microphone and said, ‘I paid for this microphone.’”

The Californian invoked John Kerry’s quick win in the 2004 Democratic primary — citing another Massachusetts pol who failed to make activists’ pulses quicken — to make the case that Romney would end up stronger if he had a robust primary challenge.

“It collapsed too quickly,” McCarthy said of the opposition to Kerry. “So those who were in the party never got to discuss and decide on the issues and the challenges [their nominee] has.”

Other GOP officials, however, believe the enmity Republicans feel toward Obama is even more profound than it was with Democrats and President Bush in 2004 — meaning that the party will rally with fervor to whoever captures the nomination.

A Republican senator who has yet to endorse but is likely to back Romney acknowledged that “some people on the conservative end are hesitant to weigh in” because of the former Massachusetts governor’s record, most notably his state health care law. But this senator argued those issues “would not be a problem with the base in the general election” because of their intense desire to unseat Obama.

What’s so striking, though, is that Romney is still hitting a ceiling within his own party even though his record on health care, the environment and his multiple reversals on abortion and gay rights have not been dominant issues in the 2012 race, as they were when he ran four years ago. Neither had his Mormon faith, at least not until Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress blasted it as a “cult” during a recent conservative conference in Washington.

And Romney’s image as a stiff rich guy has been somewhat ameliorated because he’s better on the stump this time around and more singularly focused on jobs and the economy — what he incessantly calls his “wheelhouse.”

Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom pointed to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to support Romney as a sign that the GOP is coming around to the former Massachusetts governor.

“We feel good about the state of the race and where things are headed. The Chris Christie endorsement was a great boost,” Fehrnstrom said. “It was yet another sign of the growing recognition that Mitt Romney is the best candidate to beat President Obama and turn around the economy.”

But Romney’s negative attributes, if not dominating the campaign, have still left a palpable discomfort among core Republican primary voters, and the candidate has done little to ease their concern.

Another Republican senator said that “if the primary were held tomorrow, Cain would win” in his state, explaining that there’s “no enthusiasm” for Romney.

“He’s becoming more presidential in each debate, but it’s not translating in the polling,” said this senator, who has yet to weigh in on the presidential race. “He’s distant and exotic — at least his religion is exotic for some people. He’s not a warm person. He’s a fine fellow who is genuine. But he’s almost too perfect.”

Even as Romney’s opponents have stumbled, national and early-state polling has continued to illustrate the fragility of his own position in the race. Last week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Romney with just 23 percent of the primary vote, trailing Cain. The most recent Gallup survey put Romney at 20 percent.

Romney has fared little better in early-state polling from Iowa and South Carolina, where he has held onto about a fifth of the GOP electorate — but not much more.

Only in New Hampshire, where Romney owns a home and has spent the bulk of his early-state campaign time, has he posted more formidable poll numbers, reaching into the high 30 and low 40 percent range.

All that appears to leave Romney exceptionally vulnerable, either to an unforced error or gaffe of his own, or to a multimillion-dollar barrage of negative advertising that spotlights his political liabilities.

Operatives on multiple sides of the 2012 race expect Romney to face that kind of assault before the primary is over, with Perry and his $15 million war chest — along with an independent pro-Perry super PAC — as the likely culprits.

Pete Ernaut, a Nevada political consultant supporting Perry, said there’s still “just something that hasn’t connected” for Romney.

“There’s just not the excitement factor you’d think would be needed, not only to continue the momentum but to knock these states off one by one,” Ernaut said. “By now, you’d think the nomination would be locked up, but it’s not.”

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady, whose state has been a fundraising hub for both Romney and his opponents, rejected talk of Romney’s “inevitability.”

“The conservatives here are very uneasy with Gov. Romney, and I think the conservatives here like Rick Perry a lot,” Brady said, noting that Perry’s debate performances had “shaken some people.” “I don’t think people are fully focused yet, and I don’t think they will be until after the first of the year.”

But while Romney’s Boston brain trust would prefer a quick, January-and-done primary to give them ample time to take on Obama, some senior Republicans want the former governor to fight for the nomination and not just coast to it.

“This is not finished by any means,” said McCarthy, the third-ranking House Republican. “And for Romney’s sake, too, he doesn’t want to finish it.”

Romney has largely avoided confronting his personal and political liabilities and allowed his array of conservative rivals to soak up much of the attention in the race — and fall prey to their own shortcomings.

As that cast of characters thins out, Romney is likely to end up confronting a sharper contrast with a smaller number of opponents, nearly all of whom are more appealing to the GOP base than he is.

It’s possible that Romney may be able to lift the ceiling on his poll numbers as the race advances further and his campaign starts spending money on positive television ads to boost his image. He may also be able to win by being merely likable enough, if conservative opposition remains fractured.

In that event, Romney’s high name recognition and his organizational muscle could power him through the early presidential states and into bigger, more expensive primary contests before a single anti-Romney candidate has the chance to emerge.

But that’s less a strategy for bringing around the Republican Party than for marginalizing Romney’s opponents and minimizing the damage they can do to him.

“Right now, Romney is the one who has shown the staying power, both in terms of organization and finance,” said Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine. “It’s advantage Romney because of organization and infrastructure.”

Dan Schnur, a former adviser to John McCain’s 2000 campaign, said that Romney’s political assets still left him as “the weakest Republican front-runner in a generation.”

“That’s the fault and the changing nature of Republican politics,” said Schnur, who now directs the University of Southern California’s Unruh Institute of Politics. “Mitt Romney is not a worse candidate than [his] predecessors, but he’s dealing with a much more aggressive party base than they ever had to.”

Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.