Despite the daily pounding he is getting from other candidates, by some conservative talk show hosts and his many gaffes, in the end former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney has emerged as the only candidate acceptable to GOP conservatives, moderates and liberals, a new Gallup Poll finds:
Mitt Romney is now the only candidate that a majority of conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans nationwide see as an “acceptable” GOP nominee for president. Conservative Republicans are more likely to say Romney would be an acceptable nominee than either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.
a href=”http://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/thisone.gif”>
Fewer than half of conservative Republicans see Rick Perry, Ron Paul, or Jon Huntsman as acceptable nominees.Romney’s broad acceptability across ideological lines is decidedly not the case for his competitors. Conservative Republicans view Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry as more acceptable than do moderate/liberal Republicans. On the other hand, moderate/liberal Republicans on average view Paul and Huntsman as more acceptable than conservatives.
Fifty-nine percent of all Republicans nationwide perceive that Romney is an acceptable GOP nominee for president, the only candidate with majority support on this measure. Slightly less than half say Gingrich (46%) or Santorum (45%) would be acceptable, while a majority of Republicans say that the three remaining candidates — Perry, Paul, and Huntsman — would be unacceptable as their party’s nominee.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.