This graphic from the NY Times about their most recent CBS/NYT poll sums up the problem for Republicans: since the GOP is all tea party all the time (see the media attention given to Eric Cantor, the Donald and the junior and senior Pauls), the candidates whom the GOP really gets excited about can't win the general. In fact, Mike Huckabee (who has never shown himself either an overly hard worker or a good fund raiser) has the best "all voter" favorable minus his unfavorable at an anemic +7, while Republican tea party stalwarts like Palin (-29) and Gingrich (-14), liked well enough by GOP primary voters, do abysmally with "all voters".
The Donald, the current GOP heart throb and Clown Caucus chairman, comes in at an all-voter -21, so he's in Palin territory but without the love from the GOP. In fact, he barely breaks even there, despite the media attention from the pack animals in the press. The other Clown Caucus members, including Bachmann and Santorum, aren't well known enough to dislike by the general public and even within the GOP don't spark any recognition.
And the Very Serious (But Very Flawed) Candidates? That would be Pawlenty, Barbour, Daniels and Huntsman. It's pretty clear from the polls that no one even knows who they are, and that's even with GOP voters.
Conclusions? It's very hard to find data to support a case that:
• T-Paw has caught fire (or has any chance to do so)
• Romney will be any better liked in the fall than he is in the spring
• Trump is a serious candidate
• Daniels and Huntsman can ride an enthusiasm wave out of obscurity
• Anyone is ahead, and this somehow helps Romney, the likely nominee
I've made an argument elsewhere that Huckabee is the real front runner, but that may be only because he's not running.
Oh, and one more thing: drop the nonsense about birthers being a "small subset" of Republican voters (see Top Republicans try to scotch birther theories.)
The data:
Over all, it showed that Republicans who are considering making presidential bids will have to woo a party that largely identifies with the Tea Party movement — more than half of Republican voters said they considered themselves Tea Party supporters — and has questions about President Obama’s origin of birth.
A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.
Welcome to the 21st C Republican Party. Two parts ignorance, three parts insanity.
And that's just their economic plan.