Thanks for your replies.
I'm still not convinced. Certainly hindsight is 20-20 and had Nicholas realized the his own fate and that of both his family and country one would have to believe he'd have rolled the dice and pressed ahead with military action. I'll have to go and look back over some of my readings, but do we know for certain that the Tsar didn't command enough support to launch a counter-attack against the revolution in its early stages?
The fact that he was at HQ and most of his loyal subjects off fighting on the front is largely the reason why the revolution was successful in the first place. We also know that Nicholas had finally consented to changes in the government. Had Nicholas rallied what was left of his loyal troops and publicly promised a "responsible government" appointed once tensions subsided could he have put down the revolution?
I don't believe the "loyalty of the people" argument rests on a solid foundation. After Bloody Sunday Nicholas supposedly didn't have the loyalty of the people either and yet that didn't stop them from rallying around their Tsar like a conquering hero nine years later at the start of WWI. The Bolsheviks never obtained anything near a majority of the support of the people, and even the Nazi's never cracked 44% of the popular vote in any election...yet it didn't stop either of them from coming into power.
My first point? The will and loyalty of the people is perhaps a bit overrated. Most will fall back in line once they realize their efforts at regime overthrow (violent or not) can be sufficiently repelled, so long as they are given some small ounce of hope...and the promises Nicholas appeared ready to make would have been that hope. What's more, it's not like the Duma had the loyalty of the people either.
Into this confused mess stepped Kerensky, Lvov, Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, etc. The latter three of course representing the Bolsheviks and Petrograd Soviet. The most renowned of all, Lenin, was in Switzerland finishing up lunch and ready to head to a library (probably to philosophize more about a revolution that he wasn't part of and wasn't, to that point, happening) when he got the news of the revolution taking place in his homeland. Lenin couldn't even find his way back to Russia and needed others to negotiate safe passage (with the assistance of Germany) for him. The Provisional Government had an arrest warrant out for him. I read elsewhere that he once forced to hide from authorities in a barn. Another time he barely got past a surprise check point in the back seat of a car because the policeman/guard thought he looked too disheveled to be anyone of great significance!
My other point? No one planned more for the revolution than Vladimir Ilyich. Certainly not the disgruntled Russians in the bread lines or the regiments in Petrograd who spontaneously, and reluctantly in certain instances, finally turned their backs to the Tsar. Yet in spite of this Lenin had almost nothing to do with the events of March, 1917, and only with a lot of dumb luck was he able to avoid arrest, return home, and lead the movement. Bottom line is that the revolution in its early stages was extremely disorganized and vulnerable. And had Nicholas shown some muscle while appeasing (temporarily at least) the Duma via the concessions he was already prepared to make, I feel like he could hung onto power as an unpopular (think George W. Bush circa-2008) but semi-stable leader.