Three Reasons Why Romney Will Lose to Obama

By Whitney Levon, Yahoo!

06 April 12

fter sweeping the primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the nation's capital, Mitt Romney can be considered the presumptive nominee for the Republican party. Now Romney's focus must turn to President Obama if he hopes to win the general election. The question remains; can Romney actually defeat Obama in the fall, or will he fall victim to the same tactics that won the GOP primaries?

Outspending the Competition

Though Mitt Romney was never an enthusiastic choice for GOP voters, his ability to outspend the other candidates played heavily into key primary victories. In Wisconsin alone, Romney and the Super-PAC backing him spent a little over $3 million, while RIck Santorum and his Super-PAC spent only $800,000, according to CNN.

If campaign dollars are going to win the election, Mitt Romney's campaign may already be over. According to OpenSecrets, Barack Obama's campaign has raised $160 million, including $20 million in February alone. Mitt Romney has only raised $74 million, but only has about $7 million on hand. President Obama still has $84 million on hand. With those kind of numbers, Romney's spending can't come close to the president's.

Anyone but Obama

The GOP's mantra, 'anyone but Obama,' didn't work very well in the primary phase of the election. In fact, it may have kept a clear frontrunner from emerging earlier in the contest. Republican voters all agreed that they didn't care who the nominee was, as long as the president isn't Barack Obama at the end.

How will the 'anyone but Obama' platform work against the president? The Republican Party may be forgetting that in order to win the election, Mitt Romney will have to win over independent and moderate voters. Romney has spent so much of his time trying to convince his own party that he is ultra-conservative that he may have alienated the base needed to win the election. What made Mitt Romney an ideal candidate in the beginning was his ability to appeal to moderates. A platform that focuses only on defeating Obama and not on who is the best man for the job will only go so far with voters.

Mitt Romney's Track Record

Romney's stance on abortion and healthcare have been the focus of many attacks by the other GOP candidates. Accusations that he has 'flip-flopped' on his stance on issues hurt him early in the race. Now that he will be facing Obama in the fall, he may have a tough time campaigning against Obamacare given his creation of Romneycare in Massachusetts. The same can be said of his stance on abortion. At one point in his political career, Romney was a pro-choice conservative, which he freely admitted back in 2007, according to MSNBC.

Romney is going to have to prove to moderates and independents that he is a compassionate conservative on these issues while at the same time convincing the Tea Party conservatives that he is staunchly conservative. He can't do both, which may just allow Barack Obama to win the election.