The benefits for Romney of moving to the middle (in tone if not also in policy) are obvious:
1. To the extent that there are any undecideds left in the race — and there may be 5 percent or so of people who genuinely haven’t made up their minds — casting yourself as a pragmatic, solution-focused businessman is much more appealing to those folks than giving off the image of an uncompromising ideologue.
2. Romney is tonally a moderate. While he — like virtually every politician who has managed to rise to such a high level — has been required to adjust some of his policy positions to suit the party base, Romney’s natural inclination is to be the problem-solver in the room, not the partisan warrior. And, the more a politician can be publicly who they actually are at their core, the better chance they have of winning. George W. Bush and Barack Obama are both examples of politicians who were comfortable in their own skin — publicly and privately — and who parlayed the power of being themselves into electoral success.
