United States:Romney never overcame charges that he had flip-flopped his way through his political career, writes Janet Hookin Washington.
For many Republican insiders, it was love at first sight: Mitt Romney had an exquisite curriculum vitae, a command of the issues and boatloads of money to finance a presidential campaign.
As Romney started wooing support in Washington, some lawyers and lobbyists were so smitten that they endorsed him after meeting him only once.
But the collapse of Romney's campaign contains a reminder that what impresses in political back rooms does not always impress voters. A long list of political assets, and the support of party leaders, are not enough to make up for a failure to connect with voters and to deliver a clear, consistent message.
While much of the Republican establishment called him an authentic conservative, Romney, in his appeals to voters, never overcame charges that he had flip-flopped his way through his political career - on abortion, gay rights and other issues of importance to those he was hoping to win over.
"People fundamentally understand where John McCain and Mike Huckabee are coming from. But in Mitt Romney's case, that was harder to discern," said Terry Holt, an adviser to President George Bush's 2004 campaign.
Being seen as "authentic" has ended up being more important than a big bankroll in winnowing the field. The top survivors in the Republican primary season, McCain and Huckabee, are seen in public opinion surveys as "straight talkers," even though they have run shoestring campaigns against candidates with huge war chests, such as Romney and one-time hopeful Rudy Giuliani.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, raised $90 million for his campaign, including $35.5 million of his own money. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, raised $61.6 million and spent almost $49 million last year. McCain, by contrast, raised $42 million in 2007, while Huckabee was an also-ran in the money race.
The once-crowded candidate field was a reflection of divisions within the party at a time when there was no undisputed heir apparent to Bush.
Romney tried to position himself as the conservative standard-bearer - but with only limited success. Many conservatives remained suspicious of his more-moderate past, and other candidates competed with him for the conservative mantle.
"We were not able to get the race in a form where there was a straightforward contrast" between Romney and less-conservative Republicans such as McCain and Giuliani, said Tom Rath, a Romney adviser.
Romney also suffered from running against a well-known war hero who had already run for president - an asset for McCain in a party that tends to favour candidates, like Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole, who have run for president before and are seen as next in line for the office.
Because he started out as a little-known former governor of Massachusetts, Romney was particularly vulnerable to efforts by his opponents to define him before he defined himself for the public. And from early on, he was portrayed as an opportunist who had changed his position on important issues for political purposes - tacking to the left while governor, then to the right as he prepared to run for president.
He explained himself over and over again, pointing to the challenges of running a liberal state. But he never quite got off the defensive.
And he himself made it harder to escape charges that he was shading his past for political gain. For much of the campaign, he was burdened by having to explain his claims of being a "lifelong hunter," then admitting he only shot "small varmints" - and infrequently.
He claimed he saw his father march with the Rev Martin Luther King, then conceded he did not mean "saw" literally.
Meanwhile, the rationale for his candidacy seemed to be in constant flux: he was the conservative candidate, the candidate of change, the candidate best equipped to deal with the economy, the outsider.
He also may have been hurt by mistrust of his Mormon faith. But that probably was not as big a factor as concerns that he was not straightforward with voters.
In a poll late last year, voters were asked which of the top-tier candidates was "best at saying what they believe, rather than saying what they think the voters want to hear". Only 8 per cent named Romney.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)