Romney spent more than $35 million of his own money trying to get himself elected, but his campaign faced challenges from the start, some from obstacles beyond his control.

Suspicions about Romney’s Mormon faith consumed his campaign early on, only to seem to fade from view. But his advisers and outside experts agree that the unease ultimately helped pave the way for Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, to emerge from the backbench of the Republican field to win the Iowa caucuses, a central, costly goal of Romney’s strategy. Then Romney’s aides failed to anticipate the collapse of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s candidacy, leaving no one to halt Senator John McCain’s resurgence among moderate Republicans and independents.

The authenticity issue was a problem his advisers recognized early on. As Romney was laying the groundwork for his run back in 2006, Alex Castellanos, one of the campaign’s chief media strategists, put together a 77-slide PowerPoint presentation, first reported by The Boston Globe, which listed some of Romney’s vulnerabilities, including the perception of him as an ideological panderer, as well as his Mormonism and his inexperience in military affairs.

But his advisers perceived there was a gap in the field for an electable conservative and pounced on that opportunity in recasting Romney’s image. They believed that he could overcome the more moderate views he had espoused in the past as governor of Massachusetts.

One of the campaign’s fears all along was that someone would outflank them on the right. Huckabee’s sudden emergence in November still caught many of his advisers by surprise.

... contd.