There also appears to be more than a little animus for Romney from the tea party wing of the GOP:
"With filing deadlines looming and state parties pushing early primaries ever earlier, the Republican field may not yet be set, but it is clearly settling. And with that settling come more and more stories of how
the GOP establishment is squaring its shoulders, holding its nose, and lining up behind the enduring yet uninspiring Mitt Romney. Most notably, Georgette Mosbacher, co-chair of the RNC finance committee publicly said this week of her big-money brethren: “We’ll be contacting one another and probably put something together with Romney … And
I would say that the race is now Romney and Obama.”'
"But while the establishment may be ready, in the name of party unity, to look past the former governor’s flaws—the flip-flops, the heresies (Romneycare!), the stiffness, the excessive hair product—
out among the grassroots, the mood remains less forgiving.
“Just as none of the candidates want to talk about being vice president, there is no way on God’s green earth I will think about Romney getting the nod,” Gregg Cummings, Iowa coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, emailed me.
“We the people are doing all we can to get a true conservative in the White House, and Romney is not that person.”
"At the offices of FreedomWorks, the Tea Party–promoting group chaired by former House Republican leader Dick Armey, there is much talk of what can and should be done to stop the former governor. “We have strategy discussions all the time about, how important is it that Mitt Romney doesn’t get the nomination—for the party, for the cause? And how involved and engaged should we be to prevent him from doing so?” says Brendan Steinhauser, the group’s top field organizer. “I’ve been arguing
it’s vital that we take him out.”
Tea Party Targets Mitt Romney to Block His Nomination in 2012 - The Daily Beast
