Willard Mitt Romney is a man who has it all. A vast personal fortune, a successful private career, a perfect family life, a sharp mind, a charismatic personality, and he is very easy on the eyes (heck, even his name has a touch of stardust about it). So why does 64-year old Romney continue to struggle to capture the hearts and minds of the Republican heartland?
His poll numbers have consistently hovered in the 23-25% region, and despite the short term hiccups caused by the mini-surges of Bachmann, Perry and now Cain, his support base seems to have held pretty solid over the past two years. His critics charged that his greatest strength, the ability to build a consensus from diverging factions, is also his biggest weakness. He appears to be intent on pleasing everyone, which lends an appearance of him being a flip-flop on his stances. This characteristic was used in devastating fashion in 2007/08 by Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and John McCain to derail his campaign.
Perhaps a better way to look at the quarter billion dollar man is through his own eyes, that of a financial investor. Mitt hedges his position across a broad portfolio, which, while preventing the chance of a mega payday, also drastically reduces the chances of a catastrophic loss. In other words, he doesn’t believe in putting all of his eggs in a single basket. Instead, the grandfather of fourteen is intent on keeping hypothetical baskets of varying sizes to hypothetically fit as wide a spectrum as possible of the hypothetical egg demographics.
Cognizant of this perceived vulnerability, Mitt has adopted a very organized and low-keyed strategy for this nomination cycle. He has chosen to skip all the straw polls and remain in the shadows of his rivals, and only making controlled media appearances. Mitt remembers very clearly how brightly his star shone in the 2008 race, and how quickly it faded as well. He has revealed his hand only several times the past year, and Rick Perry unfortunately, appears to bear the majority of those excursions.
Former advisor to President George W. Bush, and 2008 Republican nominee John McCain, Mark McKinnon, concurs, stating,
"Romney is playing things very methodically and deliberatively. I think he understands the physics of this game very well now and is carefully calibrating his approach to 2012."
