Romney was my preferred candidate at the beginning. He has run a very poor campaign so far, and is only now starting to be the “real” positive Mitt Romney.
If he had adopted that persona to begin with, instead of pandering to the right of Huckabee in Iowa, he could well be the leader now.
I am going to sit back and see how he does in Michigan. If he wins, great. If not, I don’t want to hear his excuses about why he lost.
He himself said, “If I can’t win in Michigan, where can I win?”
Has it been a perfect campaign? Of course not. But nobody else has been savaged in the MSM like Mitt has been. And, to date, nobody else has had his record, or decades old statements, scrutinized in the same fashion. Being the early frontrunner with the biggest target on him, Mitt's had to wage a two-front battle against his opponents and the MSM. He's held up pretty well.
Also, we could argue that Iowa and NH were not true tests of his strength. In Iowa we saw an unprecedented number of first-time evangelical voters turn out and in NH we saw democrats and independents vote for McCain (it's unclear whether they actually support McCain or were just attempting to weaken Romney). In one of the most conservative states, Wyoming, Mitt won by a large margin.
Given the fact that it's an open primary in MI, I don't think MI is do or die for Mitt either. People are not stupid (well, not all of the people) and they can see what is going on with the cross-over voting.