Does Mitt Romney have a woman problem? (Updated)

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Does Mitt Romney have a woman problem? According to Steve Kornacki, the Mittster "doesn't exactly shine" when his political opponent is female:

Oh boy, here we go again. Mitt Romney has his eyes on a major political office -- if only that damned woman would get out of the way!

Romney, of course, is running for president in 2012, and has been from the moment he used a comically red meat-laden CPAC speech to depart from the 2008 GOP race. And his prospects, at least for the Republican nomination, aren't bad: He's the next-in-line guy, he'll have plenty of cash, and there just aren't that many other options.

But then there's Sarah Palin. She may ultimately decide not to run, but this past week brought fresh evidence -- in the form of her suddenly ramped-up and professionalized national political organization -- that she's serious about it.

It was certainly enough to catch Team Romney's attention. On Thursday, a Romney advisor -- unnamed, of course -- told Time's Mark Halperin that Palin is "not a serious human being," while another Romney "intimate" opined that "if she’s standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she’s in trouble." The Palin camp then fired back (anonymously) and Romney took to his Twitter feed in an effort to put the fire out.

With the Iowa caucuses now 18 months away, the episode offered a preview of coming attractions. If Palin does run, she will be one of Romney's biggest threats -- maybe his biggest. Romney, in other words, may end up being the first GOP presidential front-runner in history whose chief rival is a woman. Which is very bad news for Mitt, because it's a role in which he'd be horribly miscast.

Three times in his relatively limited political career Romney has found a woman standing between him and his political goal. In each case, he ended up getting what he wanted -- but it was always awkward, ugly and downright nasty, with cries of chauvinism and sexism along the way. The man just does not know how to look good while competing with a woman...

Kornacki's conclusion is that, yes, Romney has a woman problem. When a woman is his opposition, the flip-flop guy "has a knack for making himself look bad." If Sarah Palin runs in 2012, Kornacki says, it's something not widely known about Romney that "all of America may soon discover."

Now bear in mind that this criticism of Romney is coming from far to the political left in Salon's War Room. But we found it both unusual and quite interesting to see the leftists beating up on one of Gov. Palin's potential political opponents, for a change, instead of engaging in their favorite activity of Palin-bashing. We wonder if this is just an outlier for the left, or if we will see them begin to shift some of their focus to each of the "Four Horsemen of the Rinocolypse" -- Romney, Pawlenty, Gingrich and Huckabee. Stay tuned.

Related: "Women, know your limits!"

Update: To absolutely no one's surprise, Allahpundt rushes to Romney's defense.

- JP