Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican Party's nomination for this year's American presidential election, suffered a major setback this week. His poor showing in his birth state of Michigan dealt a big blow to his campaign despite his winning two primaries this week.

Romney has long been a favorite to run on the Republican ticket later this year. Given his political acumen, the former Massachusetts governor's failure to carry forth the momentum from favorable primary results was surprising to say the least.

Despite a thorough campaign that covered all the key areas of Michigan, Romney wasn't able to wow Republican voters there. After what seemed like a certain defeat for him in the state, the considerations committee of the Republican Party awarded him a very narrow victory on a 4-2 vote.

For his opponent, Rick Santorum, this result comes as major respite after a spate of overwhelming losses. His campaign certainly got an unexpected boost this week.

This doesn't bode well for Romney, who intends to run against the incumbent president, Barack Obama. He will have to do much better as he will also need to impress a majority of unregistered voters, who'll need a compelling reason to vote Republican later this year.

For now, Romney will have to focus on Super Tuesday--which is when primaries for 41 percent of Republican delegates will be held. This year, Super Tuesday is on March 6, and Romney will have to pull out all stops to secure the Republican nomination.

The most disappointing fact for Romney is that this should have been a cakewalk--Santorum is a fringe conservative who could have easily been portrayed by the Romney campaign as too extreme to be elected by the US' moderates/independents--a key voting bloc in any Presidential election. Romney's campaign made several key errors and now he finds himself in a gutter knife-fight in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination!

Unfortunately, as of now, he has lost some vital ground on his campaign trail, and he is our political loser of the week!


-Picture courtesy Reuters-

political, loser, mitt romney, republican, presidential elections

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