Romney’s terrible week takes sudden turn for the better

“Mitt Romney was having a terrible week.  His speech on health care was terrible.  With Massachusetts up in arms over Romney-care and Republicans dead set against the individual and employer mandate, his failure to repudiate his program would have cost him dearly.  But now he is sitting on top of the world.”

So writes pundit Dick Morris.

The reason Romney’s week improved so dramatically? Morris says that he’s the chief beneficiary of the withdrawn presidential aspirations of Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump.

“Romney will inherit a large proportion of the votes left on the table by Huckabee’s and Trump’s withdrawal.  My polling suggests that, based on the expressed second choices of the Huckabee and Trump voters, Romney will get 30% of Huckabee’s voters and 40% of Trump’s.  These additions should lift him over 30% of the vote and give him a 2:1 lead over the nearest contender (Newt Gingrich).”

It’s only Tuesday, but Gingrich has already had a worse week than Romney after attacking Paul Ryan’s budget plan on “Meet the Press,” as the Examiner’s Byron York reports.

“It is now a rebuttable presumption that Romney will likely be the nominee,” Morris predicts.  “And that’s huge.” 

That’s debatable, of course, and the race is still too early to call. But Romney clearly had a turn of Vegas-style good luck when, despite having a terrible, no good, very bad week himself, he somehow winds up minus his top three opponents for the Republican nomination.

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