BOSTON — Mitt Romney’s weaknesses show no sign of going away. 
 
 He struggles in the South and with evangelical voters. He’s not conservative enough. He loses among rural voters and with voters down the economic scale. 
 
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 reset Romney confident after Super Tuesday Romney after Super Tuesday 
 
 All of his flaws were on full display Tuesday as he failed to wrap up the GOP nomination on an evening when it was within his grasp. 
 
 Romney’s still likely to be the GOP nominee. But Super Tuesday demonstrated again that getting to Tampa is going to prove longer and costlier than he and his advisers had hoped — a predicament that has Republicans increasingly anxious and President Barack Obama’s high command downright gleeful. 
 
 What worries Republicans is that the cost of the extended primary season isn’t just financial, but also can be measured in the impact of the beating Romney is taking from, and administering to, his GOP rivals: plunging poll numbers with independent voters and a focus on issues that won’t help the party recapture the White House. 
 
 Romney supporters have begun talking openly about the bruising the front-runner has received. 
 
 “This is kind of a painful chapter,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “There is a point at which we’re going to have to conclude if we’re going to win in the fall we have to get behind a nominee and start focusing on our real opponent.” 
 
 “While they’re duking it out and beating each other up a little bit, I think there’s pros and cons that you’re hearing about in the media and so it dampens enthusiasm a little bit,” conceded Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, noting that “nobody’s really laid much of a glove directly on President Obama.” 
 
 But perhaps no Romney backer was more to the point about her desire to take the campaign away from discussions of contraception and gender than the candidate’s wife. 
 
 “Women care about jobs,” Ann Romney told supporters here Tuesday night, adding: “This is our message.” 
 
 Yet for a sizable element in the Republican Party, nominating a Mr. Fix-It to tackle the economy isn’t sufficient. This bloc wants an authentic conservative, a candidate who is happy to suit up for the culture wars. 
 
 A look at where — and who — Romney lost Tuesday illustrates why, despite all his advantages, he’s still laboring to secure his party’s nod as winter turns to spring. 
 
 The former Massachusetts governor continues to have trouble in the South. He couldn’t crack 28 percent in any of the contested Southern states and in Tennessee, a state where his advisers thought he was closing strong, he lost by 9 percentage points. ||||| Super Tuesday confirmed anew that Mitt Romney remains the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, but his slow, unsteady march is coming at a steep price. As he advances toward victory in the primaries, he is losing ground in the general election. 
 
 Nomination battles often strengthen the winner, but some take a toll. Rarely is there a straight line between March and November that predicts the outcome of a general election. Still, Romney is in worse shape at this point in the campaign than virtually all recent previous nominees. 
 
 Demographically, his image among independent voters, the most critical swing group, is more negative now than it was when the primary battle began. He could be hurt among women. He is in trouble with Latinos, a growing part of the electorate that is tilting even more Democratic than it was four years ago. He is not as strong as he needs to be among working-class white voters, among whom President Obama has been consistently weak. 
 
 Geographically, the numbers from several key states have been discouraging for the former Massachusetts governor. Pre-primary polls in Ohio, Virginia and Michigan showed him running behind Obama by low double digits. Ohio is a must-win for the Republican nominee in the fall, and Virginia is a state the GOP is determined to take back from the president. Republicans once thought Michigan would be a possible battleground, but at this point it isn’t. 
 
 Karl Rove, the GOP strategist who guided George W. Bush to his presidential victories, said it is far too early to know what effect the nomination fight will have on Romney’s fall prospects, should he become the nominee. “It’s way premature to say it’s dispositive” about the outcome of the general election, he said. 
 
 No one on either side is predicting anything but a close contest in November, given the state of the economy and the nation’s partisan divisions. Obama may look stronger in head-to-head matchups with his Republican rivals today than he did a few months ago, but vulnerabilities remain. 
 
 Republicans say the president’s weaknesses will appear more significant once their candidates stop pounding one another and focus the full force of the GOP machinery — including their super PACs — on the president. Romney’s allies think he ultimately will be strengthened by the nomination fight, saying his opponents have helped to make him a tougher campaigner and a better debater. 
 
 Romney has been squeezed between the demands of winning the nod of a party that is more conservative than it was four years ago and the realities of a general election in which winning the middle is crucial. 
 
 The more successful he has been at fending off his GOP rivals, and the longer he has had to fight to prove his conservative bona fides, the more conflicted he is about the need to woo the fall electorate. 
 
 “He’s sitting there thinking, ‘This will all dissipate when these other guys get off the stage and stop attacking me,’ ” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said. “History suggests that’s not likely to happen. Once you reach a plateau, the negatives are hard to shake, absent some dramatic event.” 
 
 There are many reasons Romney is in this position. The party’s rules for this primary contest were designed to stretch out the battle, meaning the front-runner cannot wrap things up quickly. Super PACs have helped keep competitors alive longer than they would have been in the past. 
 
 The GOP fight has been extremely negative, and super PACs have contributed significantly to the tone of the contest. Former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) have attacked Romney throughout the winter, and their super PACs have done more. 
 
 But Romney’s campaign and super PAC have aired more negative ads than the others by far. Some Romney supporters believe the former governor’s image has been damaged as much by the tactics he has used to go after his rivals as by the attacks they have aimed at him. 
 
 Beyond the tone of the campaign, Romney has hurt himself with some key constituencies. He accused Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry of being soft on immigration. That helped dispose of Perry, but it appears to have offended Hispanic voters. A poll by Fox News Latino, released Monday, showed Romney winning just 14 percent of the Hispanic vote in a general election against Obama. 
 
 The degree to which the campaign has tarnished the Republican Party was highlighted in a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart, was quoted by the two news organizations as saying that the primary season has had a “corrosive” effect on the GOP. 
 
 Hart said Romney has two problems. First, a portion of Republicans “can’t stand” the former governor. They represent a fraction of the fall electorate but Romney must have their support to win a close race. 
 
 Hart said Romney’s other problem is one of perception, which could be far more difficult to solve. Voters still aren’t sure they know who Romney is, or what his core values are. Nor has he found a way to connect with them. “That’s where he really has a major difficulty,” Hart said. “People look and say this guy just doesn’t relate. It’s a problem with Republicans. It’s a bigger problem with independents.” 
 
 Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael S. Steele said Monday on C-SPAN that Romney missed an opportunity last week to reach out to independents by not taking a stronger stand against Rush Limbaugh after the conservative talk show host attacked Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for her position on health insurance coverage of contraceptives. 
 
 Steele said Romney had an opportunity “to look America in the eye and say this is not what conservatism is about, this is not the party that I want to lead, this is not the country I want to lead. . . . Why not begin to make that pitch . . . to independents?” 
 
 Kevin Madden, a Romney loyalist and GOP strategist, said current polls are not predictive. He argued that a fall campaign in which the economy is the focus will play to Romney’s strengths. He argued that Romney’s verbal gaffes, which have reinforced his image as a wealthy businessman who is out of touch with ordinary Americans, would fade in the general-election battle. 
 
 “When this is a campaign that the governor makes about the voter, about their concerns about the economy, about their aspirations for the future, I think he will have a greater ability to connect with voters,” he said. 
 
 A Democratic elected official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment, said he worries that many people in his party are overly confident. “Romney will move back to the middle,” he said, “and I think the race could look very different in September than it does today.” 
 
 No doubt that things could change by then. But that depends on how well Romney manages the twin challenges of winning his nomination against stubborn opponents while trying to undo the damage that the struggle has inflicted on him. ||||| BOSTON Mitt Romney's campaign told his Republican presidential rivals on Wednesday they could not catch him and nudged them to quit the race even though he failed to deliver a knockout blow in the biggest round of nominating contests. 
 
 Romney won six of the 10 "Super Tuesday" states, including a narrow victory in Ohio's marquee match-up, expanding his lead in delegates and solidifying his frontrunner status in the race to find the Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in the November 6 election. 
 
 But rival Rick Santorum won three states and Newt Gingrich captured one, keeping their hopes alive and raising the chance the divisive Republican fight could drag on for months. Both vowed they are in the race for the long haul. 
 
 Romney's wins on Tuesday gave him more than 400 delegates, according to many media counts, more than doubling Santorum's second-place total and moving him closer to the 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination at the party's August convention. 
 
 With few big voting days left in the Republican race, Romney's campaign advisers briefed reporters and issued a memo to argue that his rivals were fighting "basic principles of math" and had little chance to reshape the campaign given rules that award delegates proportionally in most of the remaining states. 
 
 "Super Tuesday dramatically reduced the likelihood that any of Governor Romney's opponents can obtain the Republican nomination," Romney adviser Rich Beeson said in a memo to reporters. 
 
 "As Governor Romney's opponents attempt to ignore the basic principles of math, the only person's odds of winning they are increasing are President Obama's," he said. 
 
 Santorum's campaign said Romney wanted the former Pennsylvania senator out of the race so he could move to the political center and abandon the conservatives who still distrust him for his past moderate positions on issues including abortion and healthcare. 
 
 "He wants us out so he can stop talking about conservatism," Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley said. "There's a whole game to be played here. There are 28 states left. They are going to get a chance to voice their opinion in this race, too." 
 
 Santorum's allies urged Gingrich to quit the race so Santorum could consolidate conservative opposition to Romney. Gingrich won Georgia, the state he represented in Congress, but finished third behind Santorum and Romney in Tennessee and Oklahoma. 
 
 "Newt has become a hindrance to a conservative alternative," Stuart Roy, an adviser for the "Super PAC" political organization that backs Santorum, said in a memo. 
 
 The strong showing by Santorum on Tuesday underscored Romney's continued inability to win over large swathes of the party's core voters. But Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive, said the party would unite once he secures the nomination. 
 
 "When we have a nominee we will come together because Barack Obama has organized the conservative community," Romney told CNBC, referring to the strong opposition to Obama's presidency among U.S. conservatives. "We're going to come together because we really believe that he needs to be replaced." 
 
 'WE'VE GOT TIME' 
 
 Romney's margin of victory was uncomfortably slim in Ohio, the night's biggest prize. Unlike some previous presidential campaigns, this year's Super Tuesday outcome failed to anoint a nominee. 
 
 He hailed his Super Tuesday performance as a success and sought to dispel speculation among dissatisfied Republicans about new candidates jumping into the race or a brokered party nominating convention in Tampa, Florida, in August. 
 
 "We've got time, the resources and a plan to get all the delegates, and we think that will get done before the convention," Romney said. "There's not going to be a brokered convention where some new person comes in and becomes the nominee." 
 
 Romney's troubles with evangelical Christians and working-class voters are likely to persist in the next few contests. As the candidates spend millions of dollars attacking each other, polls show the lengthy nominating contest may be alienating voters. 
 
 The next nominating contest in the state-by-state battle for the Republican nomination is in conservative Kansas on Saturday, with the conservative southern states of Alabama and Mississippi voting on Tuesday. 
 
 Romney's strong organization and robust fundraising operation give him a strong leg up on his opponents. 
 
 In addition to Ohio, Romney won in liberal-leaning Massachusetts and Vermont on Tuesday, and also in Idaho, where his fellow Mormons make up a substantial slice of the electorate. He also won in Alaska as well as in Virginia, where both Santorum and Gingrich failed to qualify for the ballot. 
 
 Santorum said his victories in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota proved he was the best candidate to represent the party's conservative philosophy. 
 
 Exit polls showed that Ohio voters viewed Romney as more likely to defeat Obama, but thought Santorum was more sympathetic to average Americans' concerns. 
 
 Santorum has won support of religious conservatives thanks to his opposition to gay marriage and his views on other hot-button social issues. His controversial comments about birth control and the role of religion have alienated moderate-leaning voters, especially younger women who will be a key constituency in November. 
 
 He has also focused on the white working-class voters who have moved increasingly to the Republican column in recent decades as their economic fortunes have stagnated. 
 
 Ron Paul, a U.S. congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, had hoped to score his first win in Alaska, but came in a distant second behind Romney. 
 
 In recent presidential campaigns, the Super Tuesday wave of primaries and caucuses has often settled the Republican race. But this year's campaign is likely to stretch until April or May - or possibly until the last contest on June 26 - under new rules designed to attract more voters and boost enthusiasm. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Sam Youngman in Massachusetts, Lily Kuo and Emily Stephenson and Susan Heavey in Washington and Colleen Jenkins in Atlanta; Writing by Matt Spetalnick and John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Will Dunham) ||||| Analysis 
 
 (CBS News) Growing weary of the battle for the GOP presidential nomination? 
 
 Tough luck. 
 
 Rick Santorum's relatively strong night on Super Tuesday - as of this story, he won three states and came within a percentage point of a win in the closely-watched contest in Ohio - means that Mitt Romney has missed a huge chance to start wrapping up the GOP presidential nomination and focusing on President Obama. 
 
 Complete Republican primary results 
 
 CBS News estimated Republican delegate scorecard 
 
 To be sure, Romney is still the frontrunner for the nomination: He will wake up on Wednesday with more delegates than any of his rivals, along with a significant financial and organizational advantage over the rest of the field. According to exit polls, Republicans overwhelmingly continue to see Romney as having the best chance to beat Mr. Obama in the fall - and more than four in ten Ohio voters chose electability as the most important factor in their vote Tuesday. While CBS News is still estimating Romney's delegate haul as well as that of his rivals, Romney's big wins in Massachusetts, Virginia and Idaho netted him a big chunk of delegates in the race for 1,144 needed to win the nomination. 
 
 
 
 But Romney's weak performance Tuesday renews questions about whether Republican voters will ever be able to warm to the former Massachusetts governor. Romney simply hasn't shown the ability to break through and connect with a diverse coalition of Republican voters. Exit polls show that Romney struggled to attract very conservative, born again and evangelical voters; Ohio Republicans under 45 years old favored Santorum over Romney by double digits. Meanwhile, just 35 percent of Ohio voters who backed Romney said they "strongly favor" him. 
 
 And all this comes despite Romney's camp significantly outspending their rivals on the airwaves. Romney and the super PAC backing him outspent Santorum and his super PAC by about a 4-1 margin in Ohio, according to a Wall Street Journal tally of ad spending. The Associated Press reported Sunday that Romney and the super PAC backing him have been responsible for more than half of the more than $75 million in GOP ad spending thus far. 
 
 
 
 Appearing on Fox Business Network Tuesday, Tea Party hero Sarah Palin - who says she voted for Newt Gingrich in the Alaska caucuses - said her "brutally honest" assessment is that Romney simply is "not garnering a lot of that enthusiasm right now." 
 
 
 
 The former Alaska governor, who says she will support Romney if he is the nominee, said Republicans are concerned that Romney is the frontrunner only because he has more money and better organization than his rivals - an advantage the GOP nominee will not have in the general election. 
 
 It all adds up to a situation in which the nasty GOP race appears likely to slog on into the summer and possibly all the way to a contested convention in August, to the chagrin of Republicans worried that a long primary process could doom their nominee in November. 
 
 If the race does indeed become a slog, Romney has to hope that Gingrich doesn't drop out. The former House speaker won only his home state of Georgia on Wednesday, but he cast the outcome as a triumph anyway and said he would stay in the race. 
 
 "I am the tortoise, I just take one step at a time," said Gingrich, who complained the "elites" and the media and Republican Party have long been too quick to write him off. 
 
 Santorum on the other hand, has to hope Gingrich drops out as soon as possible. If he doesn't -- and it depends significantly on whether billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson keeps pouring millions into the super PAC backing Gingrich -- it would mean that the "anti-Romney" conservative vote continues to be split. 
 
 The Santorum campaign has so far stopped short of calling on Gingrich to leave the race for the good of the conservative movement, but it's certainly putting the pressure on. 
 
 
 
 "There's been poll after poll after poll that shows if Rick Santorum were just to have a one on one shot with Mitt Romney that the Gingrich supporters go right to Rick Santorum in big numbers," Santorum senior strategist John Brabender told reporters Tuesday. "So conservative and Tea Party folks are going to have a decision to make: Do we want Mitt Romney to be the nominee or not, or do we want to just keep splitting our vote." 
 
 CBS/AP 
 
 Both Santorum and Gingrich are now focused on winning the two southern states holding primaries next Tuesday -- Alabama and Mississippi -- with a focus on building up delegates in the South through the Texas primary in May. If Gingrich drops out, Santorum could end up winning many of those contests and putting even more pressure on Romney. 
 
 Still, none of the GOP presidential candidates other than Romney -- among them Ron Paul, who has focused on building up delegates in caucuses but has yet to win a state -- seem to have a clear path to the nomination. Nonetheless, their continue presence will make it difficult for the former Massachusetts governor to reach the 1,144 threshold before the convention - if he gets there at all. 
 
 Had Romney won Tennessee - a state that isn't a natural fit for him - and taken Ohio handily, it would have made Romney appear inevitable, which could have helped skeptical voters in the GOP base get over their misgivings and get on board. That, in turn, could have led to a series of wins that would have forced the other candidates out of the race. Instead, there's a good chance that every state in the union will have a chance to feel politically relevant this cycle, with political watchers paying close attention to every contest straight through to the Utah primary in late June. 
 
 
 
 The Romney campaign certainly hoped to wrap up this nomination early, but it has the resources and organization to fight for every last delegate. Despite Tuesday's outcome, most political watchers still expect the former Massachusetts governor to be the last man standing in this turbulent campaign cycle. But Super Tuesday has not settled the GOP race, and Mitt Romney has not settled GOP voters' doubts. Which means the fight for the Republican presidential nomination likely just got a whole lot longer. 
 
 
 
 Super Tuesday results by state: Alaska | Georgia | Idaho | Massachusetts | North Dakota | Ohio | Oklahoma | Tennessee | Vermont | Virginia 
 

– As the dust from Super Tuesday settles, the good news for Mitt Romney is that he won the most states, including the grand prize of Ohio. But he definitely wasn't crowned the champion. Rick Santorum scored decisive wins, and those victories—plus Romney's narrow margin of victory in Ohio—highlight the former governor's continued failure to win over much of the Republican base, Reuters notes. What the pundits are saying: Romney's weak showing—especially in Tennessee, where he came second to Santorum—"renews questions about whether Republican voters will ever be able to warm to" Romney, who "simply hasn't shown the ability to break through and connect with a diverse coalition of Republican voters," writes Brian Montopoli at CBS. Romney's "slow, unsteady march" to the nomination "is coming at a steep price," writes Dan Balz for the Washington Post. "Nomination battles often strengthen the winner, but some take a toll." Considering his demographic (possible trouble with Latinos, women, and independents) and geographic (polls show him behind Obama in Ohio and Virginia) woes, "Romney is in worse shape at this point in the campaign than virtually all recent previous nominees." "All of his flaws were on full display" last night, agrees Jonathan Martin for Politico. And here's one tough lesson that emerged: "Getting to Tampa is going to prove longer and costlier than he and his advisers had hoped—a predicament that has Republicans increasingly anxious and President Barack Obama’s high command downright gleeful." Last night could have had a very different feel, writes EJ Dionne for the Washington Post. Because some "Ohio counties reported so late, [Romney] didn’t get full credit for that this evening." And that means that "the impact of this Super Tuesday will depend a great deal on spin. Over the next couple of days, Romney has to win the interpretation wars."