Mitt Romney after 2008 speech in Colorado (Evan Meyer/Dreamstime.com)
Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times thinks Mitt Romney has found his groove (my emphasis):
Mr. Romney makes the case, in private meetings with business owners and in appearances like a dinner speech here Saturday, that the halting economic recovery — even after solid job growth in February, the unemployment rate remains at 8.9 percent — provides a compelling rationale that he is the strongest candidate to create jobs and take on President Obama.
“I like President Obama,” Mr. Romney said, “but he doesn’t have a clue how jobs are created.”
The message is well suited to Mr. Romney’s background as a successful executive and former governor, as well as the man who rescued the 2002 Winter Games from financial trouble. But it may also be his best opportunity to try to steer around criticism over the health care plan he created in Massachusetts, which to many Republicans looks distressingly similar to the federal law signed last year by Mr. Obama.
Nowhere in Zeleny's piece does he question the premise that Mitt Romney is some sort of economic savant. He simply asserts that Romney was a "successful executive" and that his success in business means he is the perfect standard bearer for a message about jobs and the economy. That might be true if Romney had actually run a company that built products and created jobs, but Romney was an investment banker. Whatever you think about investment banking, I fail to see how in this climate being associated with Wall Street and the financial industry is a political plus, either in the primary or the general election.
To prove my point: Romney has already come under withering attack in the pages of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post for his track record at Bain Capital. According to The Post, Murdoch Romney "made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers." That record may have proven Romney's skills as a business executive, but as soon as his political opponents start to use it against him in the campaign, it won't be an asset, it'll be a liability. A big one.
If Mitt Romney is indeed the GOP's best choice, the reason has nothing to do with his business background. It's that he's got a less extreme track record than any of his rivals. Unfortunately for Romney, while the perception that he is more moderate than other Republicans might help him with the electorate at large, it makes him toxic to the teahadists and social conservatives who make up the core of the GOP's primary electorate, effectively blocking his path to the nomination.