Everyone may just have underestimated Mitt Romney.
Serious competitors for the Republican presidential nomination have dropped out of the running. Romney has flexed his financial muscle having a $10 million-plus one-day fundraising haul. Most of all, his narrow, economy-focused message appears to be resonating amid growing alarm concerning the unemployment rate - which rose above 9 percent the day after Romney declared his campaign.
And in one poll, an ABC News/Washington Post survey released last week, Romney actually led The president by 3 percentage points. That’s the very best general election showing any Republican has already established inside a long time.
Add it all together and Romney has already established his best political month in nearly four years. He increasingly looks like the 2012 election’s marathon man, a stable and sturdy candidate who enters Monday’s New Hampshire presidential debate with a better shot than ever before at becoming his party’s nominee.
Long referred to as the GOP’s weak frontrunner, Romney hasn’t actually resolved many of the vulnerabilities in the centre of his candidacy. The Massachusetts healthcare law he signed and his history of shifting positions on social issues, along with his wooden style as a campaigner, continue to be formidable obstacles.
Nevertheless, Romney has watched the 2012 race move gradually in his direction.
“Romney has clearly solidified his role as the frontrunner. He’s shown those funds won't be a problem and he’s made some strategic decisions about the early states,” said Scott Reed, the first kind Bob Dole campaign manager who advised Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on his abortive 2012 bid. “He got a pleasant bump from the mixture of the announcement and also the jobs news that reinforced his campaign message: that Obama makes things worse.”
Former New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Steve Duprey, a 2008 John McCain supporter who is neutral now, agreed that Romney was on the upswing: “The more the national news is one of the economy and just how dreadful it is, the greater that plays to his strengths. He’s stronger, on balance, than he was a month ago.”
The New Hampshire debate will be a test of Romney’s momentum, but there will be more pressure on his rivals to tell apart themselves than you will see on him to say anything new.
sources:www.politico.com
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