Last things first: Electability matters, but it’s not trump. What’s more, it’s an asset that ebbs when a candidate falls behind the incumbent in national polls, just as the aura of inevitability fades when a front-runner stumbles.
What the former Massachusetts governor needs is a compelling issues-based argument. But instead of peddling a package of policy prescriptions, Romney has simply declared that he can jump-start the economy and fix our fiscal problems. His pitch boils down to: Trust me, I can do this.
Maybe, but until he guys his lofty claim to specifics, it remains a vague and nebulous boast. Although they lack Romney’s executive experience, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul all anchor their candidacies with more concrete ideas.
They also draw much sharper policy distinctions with Romney than he does with them, for two reasons. Whenever he can, Romney pivots and tries to run against Barack Obama rather than his intra-party rivals. A standard front-runner’s tactic, that hasn’t worked in this race because it assumes a willingness to unite around a front-runner that Republicans simply don’t feel. Not yet, anyway.
Secondly, there aren’t many big issues where Romney is genuinely more conservative than his principal rivals, and with starboard-siders already skeptical of him, he clearly doesn’t want to draw distinctions that would leave him defending more moderate ground. (One notable - and effective - exception came last year, when he took on Rick Perry over Social Security.) To differentiate himself on something like, say, fiscal policy, could play into Newt Gingrich’s assertion that he’s really a Massachusetts moderate, while Gingrich is a Reaganesque supply-sider.
