This weekend, CNN released results of general election trial heats, pitting each of the four leading Republican candidates for President against both of the leading Democrats.
The unmistakable message from this national exercise (surveying 840 voters on January 9 and 10th) is that Mitt Romney unequivocally qualifies as the weakest candidate the G.O.P. could field.
In the head-to-head contest with Barack Obama he is utterly wiped out, losing by a margin of 22 points (59% to 37%). Against Hillary Clinton, Romney fares little better, falling 18 percentage points behind (58% to 40%).
The results for other candidates show that this is a Romney problem, not a Republican problem.
John McCain, for instance, virtually ties both Obama and Clinton – running 48%-49% against Obama and 48%-50% against Clinton. In other words, in a trial heat against Barack Obama, Senator McCain runs a startling 21 points closer than does Governor Romney.
Even Mike Huckabee (despite remaining virtually unknown to many Americans) draws slightly stronger support than Romney – running 3 points closer to Obama and 4 points closer to Clinton.
After spending more money than his major opponents combined, Romney appears more and more clearly unelectable, and a Saturday column by Gail Collins in the New York Times gives a clear explanation why. “Unfortunately, there’s something about Romney’s perfect grooming, his malleability and his gee-whiz aura that seems to really irritate both the other candidates and the voters,” she writes. “What bothers voters about Romney, as it turns out, is not his Mormonism but his inherent Mitt-ness.”
She’s right, of course. As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several weeks, the problem for Romney isn’t his faith, it’s his phoniness. It’s even worse to see that in-authenticity combined with an all-too-visible mean and nasty streak in going after his rivals.
I know many good people and committed conservatives who say they like Romney and insist, despite his back-to-back losses against flawed candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, that he’d still be the strongest Republican in November.
How then, do they explain his devastatingly poor performance in the latest trial heats – a performance that corresponds to his similarly feeble showing in prior polls (particularly against Obama) conducted by Rasmussen, USA Today/Gallup, and Zogby?
With key primaries coming up in Michigan and South Carolina, support for Romney would seem to indicate a powerful and problematic Republican death wish.