There are only rich white men who make up the internals of the GOP. Occasionaly they let in a dark skinned man, or a woman (especially as media mouthpieces and some elected officials), and there are rumours of gay republicans a little further down th in the party, stuffed away in a log cabin.
This year, they are doing their best to make sure that their electorate is made up of their righ white buddies, as they're one by one alienating every other voting bloc.
For some unclear reason, the four clowns (no offense meant to clowns) left standing have just been competing in who can out-crazy the others.
Gingrich and Santorum are completely incompetent at running campaigns. They're so incompetent at it that they can't even see when their own campaign staff is incompetent. If you can't be the executive of a functioning campaign, how are people going to expect you to be the executive of a functioning anything? It does't even matter what you believe in, guys, you simply couldn't handle the presidency. And Newt, here is a sandcastle. You're the president of that, and people love you there. Now go play.
Ron Paul has a functioning grass-roots campaign. Definitely some similarity to that of Obama. He's competent at organizing them, but his position on almost every issue is so off the main track that nobody outside that grass-roots movement takes him seriously. As kos pointed out, the people who go to the rallies are the same people who vote for him. That's not a political campaign -- it's a cult.
Then there is Romney. A well-oiled campaigning machine. Seriously, if you can organize the Olympics (not that it was perfect, by a far stretch, but it was a huge event, and it worked), you can be pretty sure that he has the skill to hire some competent veteran campaign people. They're absolutely killing in campaigning. So what's Mitt's problem? Well, the problem is that Mitt Romney is an intolerable over-privileged douchebag (no offense to douchebags), and he can't connect with anyone who is not. That's number one. The other big one is that in order to even win the nomination (against three people who most certainly could not ever become president under any circumstances), he's been forced out of his political comfort zone. He's been forced so far right on the social issues in order to win some of "the base", that he's practically unelectable come the general election, as backed up by current polls. No wonder he's trying to force the other guys out. If they would just go away already, he could move back to things that he wants to talk about, and that we should all be talking about. On that arena, he can compete with Obama. Romney can talk about job-creation. His policies would likely create jobs. Shitty jobs, and all the money would go to him and his über-rich buddies, but he would definitely create jobs. People want to hear that now, and they don't necessarily think through the other consequences of his policies. But instead, he will now only get a few months to prepare for the general, and Obama's machine will hammer him relentlessly on all the crazy stuff that he's had to say that he didn't mean (and some that he did mean). So the three stooges have forced Romney into a place where he is guilty both by association and by not having the courage to do what Jon Huntsman did, which is to write off the crazies as crazies. Of course, Jon Huntsman's political courage won him approximately 1% of the votes from his party. Not even in the republican party can the 1% rule the 99%.
Now, there is no doubt that Romney's handlers told him to do this. His own instincts are to steer toward the issues that matter to him (and for most people's everyday lives, but in such a very different way), and not get involved in the rabble of his party talking about taking away substantial parts of health care for women. When he is finally cornered on the issue, he quickly dismisses it as a crazy issue worth talking about. His handlers grab him, beat him senseless with the "you can't win the presidency unless you win your primary" mantra, and out comes Mitt and stammers a completely fake apology and retraction. Mitt Romney's problem is that he is a centrist republican in a popularity contest decided by a primary electorate that has no interest whatsoever in a centrist republican. He has to win some of those people over if he is even going to get the nod. As he has successfully destroyed the other candidates with negative ads, it is now all but certain that he will be the nominee, so it is likely that we will soon see him move back toward the center.
As soon as we notice a real shift in the Romney message, away from the social isues, that is when Obama will hit him over the head with the fact that he and his associates have alienated bloc after bloc of voters. They will not let anyone in those blocs forget that until after election day. Assuming people do get that message, and don't forget it, here are some voting blocs where Mitt Romney will not get a majority:
* Women
* African Americans
* Latinos
* Other people of color
* Poor people
* Other people who are not rich
* Gay people
* Heterosexuals who are OK with gay people
* Educated people (thanks Santorum, or this could've been close)
Go down the list, and they've all been completely alienated by the modern GOP. Does anyone think you can win a national election when your enemy list is that long?
So if you can't win them over, how do you stop them? Well, there is legal precedence against making it illegal to ban black people from voting, so that's out. But how about something that takes care of the poor (which has a big overlap with the racial minorities)? Let's invent something we call "voter fraud", and put restrictions in place that make it just a little bit more difficult to vote? Doesn't affect the middle or upper class, so no votes lost there. Fewer polling stations in poor areas, ID restrictions, no voting for college students, voter intimidation, and so on. Great, now you've taken away lots and lots of those pesky people who would never vote for you. And you did this by saving the country from roughly zero cases of voter fraud.
But look again at that list. Mitt, you did it too much. You can not credibly distance yourself from the crazies, because you had to sound like them in order to court the bigots (a.k.a. "the republican base"). You tried too hard to win your primary that you practically guaranteed that you could never get elected.