7 reasons voters are souring on Mitt Romney

[CountAllVotes]

The number of Americans who have negative views of the longtime GOP presidential frontrunner skyrockets in January. What gives?

"The main reason the Republican establishment overwhelmingly favors Mitt Romney over Newt Gingrich is that Romney stands a better chance of beating Barack Obama," says Jonathan Chait at New York. So it's a problem for Romney that "as the campaign goes on, this seems to be growing less true." A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that negative views of Romney have "spiked" over the past two weeks, from a net +4 favorability rating (39 positive/34 negative) to a -18 rating (31 positive/49 negative) — very similar to Gingrich's -22 rating (29/51).

The shift is most notable among independents, who went from generally liking Romney (41/34) to disliking him by a 2-to-1 margin (23/51). Democrats (21/62) and Republicans (58/32) have soured on Mitt, too. What's behind Romney's newfound unpopularity? Here, seven theories:

1. Voters are turned off by his wealth Americans have long known that Romney is rich, but his just-released tax returns highlight just how much he earns from doing so little, says Peter Foster at Britain's Telegraph. Someone who rakes in $60,000 a day from personal investments is clearly "part of the elite – the '1 percent' that lives by different rules from ordinary Americans." But "the raw amount of money isn't really Romney's problem," says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. "It's the exoticness of his finances" — a Swiss bank account, money parked in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. "There is nothing more dangerous in politics than 'otherness,'" and Romney's fortune reeks of it.

[link:http://news.yahoo.com/7-reasons-voters-souring-mitt-romney-094700884.html|

[customerserviceguy]

1. Mittens' strategy

of trying to appear above it all worked marvelously when his dwarf opponents spent their time going after each other, but now that they've boiled down to pretty much a single anti-Romney, and a nasty one at that, he's out of strategy.

He's never been past this point in the nominating process, and like the Peter Principle tells us, he's risen to the level of his incompetency.

[FreeState]

2. I still think part of it is religious bigotry

What I see happening on some level is people seeing an out of supporting a Mormon. It's a bit like the prop 8 yes campaign. They held up children as a reason to vote on civil rights, it was a way to say you wanted to vote yes without coming across as a bigot. I see Gingrich winding a similar unspoken reality. He can have many flaws as long as he can be a valid excuse to chose someone else.

[mulsh]

3. Willard Romney's repellant personality doesn't help him with voters.

n/t

[and-justice-for-all]

4. I would enjoy President Obama giving that clown

a verbal smack-down on the telly.