I don't see how Mitt Romney can lose his party's nomination. That said, I don't see how he can win it, either.
Dana Milbank:
But [McCain] grimaced when he was introduced, and as Romney delivered his own stump speech, an increasingly impatient McCain pulled up his sleeve and checked his watch. McCain gave his endorsement address without mentioning Romney’s Iowa win until the end. “By the way, we forgot to congratulate him on his landslide victory last night,” he said, laughing. Romney ignored him.
Then came the questions: First, one from an Occupy Wall Street infiltrator needling the candidate about his belief that “corporations are people.” A second questioner wanted to know why Romney flip-flopped on universal health care when he was governor of Massachusetts and why he would not increase health-care costs. Later, a Chinese American woman accused Romney of saying “degrading” things about China, and she complained that “after 20 years of Reagan trickle-down economics, it didn’t help me. My tin can is still empty.” [...]
When the end mercifully came, the candidate gave a final rallying call to “get the White House back.” All but a few rose and put on their coats without applauding.
That's an account the New Hampshire rally in which Sen. John McCain was hauled out to give an excruciating-to-all-involved endorsement of Romney. It did not go well. Roger Simon has a similarly brutal take, calling it "the event from hell":
Then Romney announces this is going to be a two-person town hall and that McCain is going to stay on the stage and take questions, too.
This is odd enough — the crowd has probably come to see and hear Romney — but doubly odd since McCain hates public speaking and is no good at it, which he immediately proceeds to demonstrate. [...]
McCain tells an anecdote involving Grantland Rice, Joe Louis and Billy Conn, who everyone as old as McCain (75) no doubt still remembers, bashes President Obama and then wraps up with patented “heh-heh” McCain sarcasm.
Turning to Romney and then the audience, McCain says, “We forgot to congratulate him on his landslide victory last night!” Heh-heh.
Both pieces are worth a full read. The picture they both paint of Romney is about as unflattering as you are allowed to get in mainstream reporting. His campaign is desperately seeks polish and organization, but even the audiences at his own events aren't that into him—but his behind-the-scenes treatment of reporters is, if anything, just as agonizingly awkward and staged as his public persona. It hurts to read it.
I think probably the only way Mitt Romney could become even remotely likable is if he just started dropping bushels of money from the ceiling, during his campaign events. That wouldn't do much to deflect from the perception that he is the candidate for and by the One Percent, however.
It's going to be interesting to watch what happens. The reporters don't like this guy, a large swath of the Republican establishment doesn't like this guy, and the socially conservative Republican base doesn't like this guy. He will probably still be able to struggle through the primaries thanks to the same decided dearth of non-crazy alternatives that has blessed him so far, but it will be a coalition of malcontents, at best. I wonder if Republicans will close ranks around him, after the primaries, or be so irritated with having to support him that many of them just sit this one out.
