Among Republicans, Romney had the most backing among party insiders, with 20% support, followed by Giuliani with 14%, McCain with 10% and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia — who has said he might enter the race in the fall — with 8%.

In a potentially worrisome sign for McCain, just over 1 in 10 RNC members said they would not support him if he won the party’s nomination in his second attempt.

“It shows just how much resistance there is within the Republican establishment to McCain and how open the party is to candidates who either aren’t very conservative, like Giuliani, or only recently minted conservatives, like Romney,” Cook said. “McCain has worked pretty hard since 2000 to be a team player, but these numbers would suggest that there is still a problem for him.” ~The Los Angeles Times

Via Evangelicals For Mitt

So the party doesn’t like McCain, and the sun rises in the east.  But that is a nice phrase from Charlie Cook: “recently-minted conservative.”  Of course, it gives him too much credit as a conservative to say that, but I think Romney would have had a much more interesting reaction if his audience yesterday fully appreciated just how recently this recently-minted conservative was minted.   

It’s understandable that the Romneyites would be excited about this news, since they haven’t had much else to get excited about recently.  But what does this tell us?  It tells us that the supposed outsider, the man who is running against the broken Washington establishment, is the favoured candidate of many in the broken Washington establishment.  When it comes time to organise and turn out supporters in actual primary states, how does his campaign do?  Naturally, he fares poorly.  Today will be the test among conservative activists in a straw poll that Romney has been desperately seeking to win.  Obviously, Romney knows how relatively important these straw polls can be for building momentum for a struggling campaign, such as his certainly is.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have wasted a lot of money bringing in his loyalists and/or what are effectively paid supporters from Michigan and Massachusetts.  All the insiders in the world mean nothing if they cannot actually bring people to the polls come the time to vote, just as all of the enthusiasm and fundraising Dean was able to bring together didn’t mean a thing if he didn’t have an organisation on the ground.  Romney’s organisation is apparently much more extensive and well-connected than Dean’s ever was, yet for some reason people still don’t want to vote for him.  That spells trouble.