Nate Cohn at TNR fires up the Wayback Machine, and conjures up Bill Clinton's 1992 Sistah Souljah moment. He thinks that Romney needs to pivot to the center, and he can't understand why Mittens doesn't do it:
This is a unique moment. Here’s a candidate completely dependent on winning moderate, independent, and perhaps even Democratic-leaning independent voters making no effort to reposition himself toward the center at a time when his party is unpopular. At the same time, a relentlessly negative campaign has begun to define him as the worst manifestation of the forces responsible for undermining the economic security of the middle class, and the Obama campaign is poised to highlight the most severely conservative elements of Romney’s agenda.
Well, Nate has half the point. Romney needs a sizable slice of the
vanishing undecided vote to win. However, Nate misses the other half of the point. Mitt cannot do the jujitsu necessary to pull this off. Why? Simply put, Mitt's support among a substantial portion of the base is squishy, precisely because they fear this move. And why wouldn't they? Mitt's prior positions on virtually every issue important to Republicans today were diametrically opposite to his current ones. Any Sistah Souljah moment will crystallize the base's distrust of the man. They'll vote for him as long as he's the anti-Obama, but as soon as he appeals to swing voters, a sizable slice of them will stay home. In state after state -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa -- a move to the center likely will lose him as many votes as he gains.
This explains what Nate finds inexplicable: that Romney so far has doubled down on crazy. It's the only chance he has. Unfortunately for him, it ain't gonna work.
Now, where's my fork?