Monday night, ahead of the Michigan primary, the Rick Santorum campaign unleashed a last-ditch robo-call reminding voters of Mitt Romney’s staunch opposition to the auto-industry bailout. This, argues Romney, was a “dirty trick” to lure Michigan’s Democrats to the Santorum side.

“It’s outrageous to see Rick Santorum team up with the Obama people and go out after union labor in Detroit and get them to vote against me,” Romney said Tuesday, insisting that “we don’t want Democrats deciding who our nominee is going to be.”

The Santorum call said, “Romney supported the bailouts for his Wall Street billionaire buddies but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we’re not going to let Romney get away with it.”

Romney may denounce Santorum's lastest effort to get Democrats involved in the Republican primary, but it has not been forgotten that Romney himself voted in the 1992 Democratic party in an effort to nominate his opposing party's weakest candidate to go up against incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/election.html

He has his own wing of the party following him.

National Republican leaders are voicing increasing dismay over the course of the party’s presidential primary, which has fallen into such a negative grind that they warn could cost them the White House.
At the core of their concern is the atmosphere of daily vituperation among the top candidates. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are now engaged in a seemingly constant knife fight, interrupted by only the sparest of positive, policy-oriented debate.

Worst of all, there is no clear end in sight for what has become, in the eyes of many Republicans, a joyless and prolonged nomination fight. Even Romney victories in Michigan and Arizona, the two states voting Tuesday, have little chance of forcing his aggrieved opponents out of the race. With a vast personal fortune at his disposal, there’s no prospect of Romney being shunted aside by his foes.

Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor and Republican Governors Association chairman, warned in a CBS interview Monday that the savagery of the campaign carries risks for Republicans and has “taken [attention] away from Obama’s policies.”


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The longer-than-expected Republican primary has given many more voters a chance to meet the candidates and cast ballots in meaningful elections, but it has caused some in the party to worry that it is weakening the eventual winner in his confrontation with President Obama.

Mitt Romney is still the heavy favorite to win the nomination, with 75.2 percent odds to Rick Santorum's 9.8 percent, but the data suggests he could be looking at a Pyrrhic victory. The president's odds of re-election jumped to above 60 percent in the days after Santorum's big wins on February 7, according to prediction markets.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/republican-nomination-extends-march-candidates-face-weakening-odds-152347629.html