It's not an encouraging sign for the Romney campaign that
his base continues to doubt he has the
cojones to be their nominee.
One in four self-identified Republicans has an unfavorable view of how Mitt Romney is running his campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll represents the latest evidence of unease within some segments of the GOP about how the former Massachusetts governor is progressing in the 2012 race.
Even if it doesn't mean the bottom is falling out, it's still a point of evidence that GOP enthusiasm is not outweighing that on the Democratic side. That's one of two interesting take-aways.
The other is that the idea from some of the pundits that "this risks bruising Obama's knuckles as he smashes the Romney campaign" is not borne out by this poll. Obama has the more favorable numbers of the two campaigns.
Another point of interest is the regional breakdown. I had assumed Obama would run best in the Northeast, which hates Romney. Well, they do hate Romney (36/54 fav/unfav about the Romney campaign), but look how Romney is playing in the Midwest:
Contrast and compare:
Keep in mind the Midwest is where the ad dollars are. There, Obama's favs are 51, Romney's 34.
When you hear the line from Republicans that the Bain ads aren't working, don't you believe it. There's the poll data in the Midwest, and there's this: Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Romney's bad week continues.
Let's leave the last word to Byron York:
So at least at the moment, the vaunted Romney death star, the machine that flattened his Republican opponents, just isn’t working. Romney is trying to get traction — this week, he’s focusing on Obama’s crony capitalism — but he is struggling. To fix things, he’ll have to put out more facts about his own record, plus capitalize on more bad economic news for Obama (that’s a sure bet at this point), plus gain access to the money he’s raised for the general election, plus find a way to sharpen the SuperPACs’ games. And then he’ll have to regain the back-against-the-wall fighting spirit he had in the Florida primary. If he doesn’t, the Obama campaign will run over him.