More Bad News For Romney

For the first several months of this presidential campaign, the leader in the Republican race for the party's nomination was Mitt Romney. But in all those months where he led the race the candidate showed a basic weakness by being unable to extend that lead. It seems that the teabagger base of the party, who will most likely determine who the nominee will be, doesn't like or trust Romney. They are unhappy with his mormon religious views, and they are distrustful of his flip-flopping on issues that are important to them.

Romney's weakness became more public as the teabaggers ran through a whole list of other candidates trying to find someone to replace Mitt as the favorite -- candidates and possible candidates such as Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. Those candidates all bombed out for one reason or another, but the teabaggers haven't given up. Their current anti-Romney candidate is Newt Gingrich, who has assumed a double-digit lead over Romney in most of the national polls.

Romney is still holding out hope that he could win a couple of early states and re-invigorate his campaign, but a new poll in a state that's very important for Romney shows that hope could be dying. A survey by Strategic National, a Grand Rapids political consulting firm, shows that Gingrich has a slight lead over Romney now in Michigan. If Romney lost Michigan, it could be devastating for his campaign -- since he grew up in that state and his father was Michigan's governor. Here are the latest Michigan numbers:

Newt Gingrich...............30.75%
Mitt Romney...............28.74%
Ron Paul...............7.47%
Michele Bachman...............6.32%
Jon Huntsman...............4.02%
Rick Santorum...............3.16%
Rick Perry...............2.59%
Undecided...............16.95%

The December 8th poll does have a margin of error of 5%, so all that can really be said is that Gingrich and Romney are in a virtual tie in Michigan. But even a tie, or a close second place finish for Gingrich, would be very bad for the Romney campaign. Michigan is a state that he should win hands-down. And to make matters worse, Michigan is a fairly early state -- holding their primary on February 28th.

This doesn't mean Romney can't win the nomination, but it does mean he'd better start turning things around soon or he won't.