And it isn't just Romney's crushing defeat in South Carolina three days ago, where he lost to Gingrich by about 74,000 votes (or about 13%). In the last week alone, Romney has seen a nationwide lead over Gingrich go from a 23 point lead to being virtually tied (a 1 point lead). Here are the latest numbers from the nationwide Gallup Poll (with last week's numbers in parentheses):
GALLUP POLL
Mitt Romney...............29% (37%)
Newt Gingrich...............28% (14%)
Ron Paul...............13% (12%)
Rick Santorum...............11% (14%)
The news that Romney is guilty of most of the actions of other Wall Street denizens -- actions which triggered a recession and seriously damaged the American economy -- has wounded the Romney campaign in a big way. And the bleeding from that wound has yet to stop. Romney has changed his mind about not releasing his tax returns in an effort to stop that bleeding. He now says that today he will release his 2010 tax return and an "estimate" of his 2011 taxes.
It remains to be seen if that will be enough. I doubt it though -- especially considering Romney's own father released his last 12 years of returns when he ran for president, Mitt has already admitted to paying a tax rate of only 15% (lower than most of the middle class pays), thousands of people lost their jobs due to Mitt's actions at Bain Capital, and it has become known that Mitt is hiding millions of dollars in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes on it.
Romney has tried to defend himself by saying his critics are just engaging in a "politics of envy". That argument is unlikely to work with millions of people out of work and millions more living in fear that their next paycheck might be their last one. The truth is that a significant majority of Americans no longer believe in the fairness of our economic system. A Pew Research Center Poll, taken last month, shows that only 36% of the population thinks the economic system is fair to everyone while about 61% of the population thinks the system unfairly favors the rich.
Many Republicans, including Romney, tell us that the issue shouldn't be a fairer distribution of income and wealth, but instead it should be about the "opportunity" to acquire a large income and wealth by everyone. That argument is not going to work either. A poll done by The Hill shows that 66% of Americans think it is much harder to move up in this country now than it used to be, while only 21% believe it is easier and 7% say it is the same. Most people are just not buying the lie anymore that "anyone can get rich".
The people have seen too many Wall Street greed-mongers get rich off the misery of other Americans, and they are sick and tired of it. And as the poster boy for Wall Street, Mitt is now paying the price for that. Frankly, I think many voters have decided they would prefer to vote for a person completely devoid of ethics (Gingrich) over a Wall Street hooligan (Romney).
The next state to hold a primary is Florida on January 31st. And new polls are showing that Romney's popularity is also dropping like a rock in that state. His double-digit leads of a couple of weeks ago has turned into second place behind Gingrich. Here are two of the latest Florida polls (taken after Romney's South Carolina defeat). Romney's best hope now is that he did very well in the large absentee vote cast before his recent fall from grace.
RASMUSSEN POLL
Newt Gingrich...............41%
Mitt Romney...............32%
Rick Santorum...............11%
Ron Paul...............8%
Undecided...............9%
INSIDER ADVANTAGE POLL
Newt Gingrich...............34%
Mitt Romney...............26%
Ron Paul...............13%
Rick Santorum...............11%
Other...............2%
No opinion...............14%
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