Mitt Romney No Longer in the Race?

The slap in the face that the three Midwest primaries just gave Mitt Romney, the pre-designated winner of the Republican nomination contest, should leave a mark. Paul Begala — former cabinet member under Bill Clinton — is not alone when he claims that the former governor of Massachusetts was knocked out standing up. Begala gives Romney the harshest criticism in an article posted on The Daily Beast. The web site itself commits an “error” by placing under the AP photo of Mitt Romney a caption describing “Rick Santorum at a primary-night party Tuesday in St. Charles, MO.” This photographic dyslexia is troubling in and of itself: It not only presents the wrong person but also shows Romney with a lowered head and truly not the winner he was in Florida. Is Romney done for?

In his piece, Paul Begala rips Romney apart over the huge and unavoidable regression of his performance as compared to 2008. Romney has recently lost states that he’d won four years ago. In Colorado, where he got 60 percent of the votes in 2008, only 35 percent voted for him this year, leaving Santorum to win with 40 percent. In Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty, himself a former presidential candidate, supported Romney and his share of the vote still fell from 41 percent to 17 percent. In Missouri, he lost five points compared to 2008.

With so much money, his 2008 experience, advice, campaign teams and even better hair, how could he lose? And if he loses how can he keep up? His superPAC spent 40 times more than Santorum, yet he found a way to lose against the former senator, a man who lost in his own state the last time he was on a ballot. As a New York Times political commentator cruelly pointed out about Santorum, “In a fair one-on-one fight against Romney, we’d win.”*

We reiterate over and over that Americans find Romney’s personality less than amiable. He’s still a big upper-classman of the establishment who made his fortune in the financial sector that sank the American economy. People think of him as a job destroyer from his years in Bain Capital. His mistakes haven’t made anyone laugh: when he says he doesn’t worry too much about the “poorest,” or he would have “fired” Gingrich (if he’d been part of his team) after one of his contemptuous speeches, or when he thinks he’s funny by describing himself as “jobless,” when the unemployment numbers were 8.3 percent this month. That he continues to make so many gaffes shows that he is neither liked nor accepted.

The leaders of the Republican Party and tea party seem to have agreed not give Romney a platform for the much-desired momentum that would bring him the nomination. The caucuses very easily relay that agreement when it’s “convenient,” e.g. each time Romney thinks he’s finally gotten the upper hand.

Without a doubt, the absence of a true credible candidate allows Romney to continue, for the time being, this perverse game that delays the moment when Obama will have a true adversary. Just as long as the other, equally perverse players don’t tire of it.

*Editor’s Note: This quote was misattributed in the original article. The statement was made by John Brabender, an advisor on Rick Santorum’s campaign, during an interview with John Harwood, a CNBC correspondent and contributor to the New York Times. In the interview Brabender stated, “MO tells me that in a clean one-on-one against Romney, we beat him.”