A gunman leaps from the shadows and confronts a Republican voter.

"Who's gonna win the nomination?" the gunman asks. "McCain, Giuliani or Romney?"

The Republican voter thinks on it for a while, then shrugs his shoulders and says, "Aww, go ahead and shoot me."

Many Republican voters are faced with a "lesser of three evils" problem when it comes to their top tier:

Rudy Giuliani is too liberal on social issues for them. John McCain is too liberal on immigration and too old. And Mitt Romney is a chameleon. (And a Mormon chameleon to boot, which poll after poll shows is a significant problem for him.)

Dan Schnur, a Republican operative in California who worked for McCain in 2000, says there is a slot in the Republican field that currently remains unfilled: the establishment candidate.

"The two top seeds for that spot — George Allen and Bill Frist — are out," Schnur said. "For conservatives who don't trust McCain, there is a hole in the field."

That hole is very important for Republicans, because Republican primary voters tend to value hierarchy.

Though a recent Romney campaign document indicates that he is going to try to sell himself to Republican voters as an outsider, Republicans rarely nominate outsiders.

"We typically look for the next person in line," Tom Rath, a top Republican operative from New Hampshire, told me at the Republican straw poll in Tennessee last year. "We want to know: Whose turn is it? It is very hard to come from nowhere in the Republican Party."

Rath said that while it was not impossible for a long-shot to win the Republican nomination, "This party likes long-shots that they know."

"In 1976, Reagan was a long-shot,'' Rath said. And Reagan lost the nomination to incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford that year.

"But by 1980, Reagan had the party's hearts and wallets," Rath said.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush not only represented Reagan's "third term," but had punched his ticket with party regulars and was the establishment choice. In 1996, Bob Dole was clearly the next person in line. In 2000, George W. Bush, by virtue of his family ties, was also the Republican establishment candidate.

So how does Romney win the nomination as an outsider? Since I talked to Rath last, he has become a Romney senior adviser, giving up his seat on the Republican National Committee to do so.

And Wednesday, Rath told me events have changed the "next-person-in-line" rule.

"It is not as compelling an argument after the results of last November and current Republican poll numbers," Rath said. "Those argue for more openness."

In other words, the Republican loss of Congress in '06 might serve as a wake-up call to the party for '08.

But is Romney the guy the party is going to turn to?

Poll numbers say no. Today, Romney's poll numbers are very low.

In the Washington Post-ABC News poll published Wednesday, Giuliani got 44 percent, McCain 21 percent, Newt Gingrich 15 percent and Romney 4 percent.

Four is not good.

It is early, but there is a far more worrisome number for Romney buried in the poll: his favorability rating.

In the poll, Romney got a 26 percent favorable and a 34 percent unfavorable rating.

Ten weeks ago, in the same poll, Romney had a 22 percent favorable and a 24 percent unfavorable rating.

In other words, his net favorability rating has gone from minus two to minus eight in a 10-week period in which he has been working very hard to educate voters about himself.

That is the wrong direction to be heading in if you want to become president of the United States. Voters don't vote for candidates about which they have unfavorable impressions.

By way of comparison, Giuliani's favorable-unfavorable rating is currently 64-28, or plus 36, and McCain's rating is 52-35, or plus 17. (Barack Obama's is 53-30, or plus 23.)

No candidate besides Romney, either Republican or Democrat, had a net negative rating in the poll, though Hillary Clinton came the closest with a 49-48, or a plus 1, rating.

Rath dismisses early polls as meaningless. "They are measuring fame," he said. "And you become famous when you win primaries."

Which is true.

But something very troubling has happened to Romney over the last 10 weeks: The more voters learn about him, the less they seem to like him.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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