"shrewdly shying away from identification with its true believers." Really? Is that why he's flipped on abortion and his own medical care system? This month the campaign is on true believer turf, let's see if he decides to play to the elusive middle or to the true believers.
Those Reagan Democrats (a tired 30 year old concept) are going to be leery of a man who made his hundreds of millions by slashing jobs and who thought it was a good idea to let Detroit go bust. Let's not forget his economic and financial grounding comes with his close ties to ever popular Wall Street.
Honest men aren't on both sides of issues (can't wait for those ads). As a 1950's guy yourself, it's no wonder why you think he's good for November. I'm old at 15 years younger, and times have changed and the electorate has too. Women and hispanics are bigger blocs than Reagan Democrats, and you haven't mentioned how he plans to appeal to their concerns.
You overlook Romney's skills as a campaigner, which make Kerry look good. The Obama campaign didn't make contraception an issue, the Republicans and a number of Bishops did. The Obama campaign hasn't written any remarks that Santorum or his campaign have made, and Rush does his own material. Rush made it easy for the Obama campaign not to have to do anything, that response was and is coming on its own.
You also include your conservative talking points when discussing Obama: ruthless Chicago pol, Hillary to VP, George Soros! You'll want to include in an upcoming column a reference to 'ramming down our throats' of something or other for completeness sake.
On the other hand, you are correct about the two big issues being central. Obama has weaknesses on the economic side, but they're defensible and he's good at making his defensive points. His foreign policy has us getting out of 2 wars without disaster and with the death of the terrorist #1, and no new wars (yet). What's Romney got to say on what he'd do abroad? Start another war in Iran? That'll be popular. Anything else you'd care to add?
This was not one of your best efforts, Mr. Van Dyk.

Nice analysis, Ted. One of your best analytics!
Always enjoy, if not agree with your stuff.

The Geezer

"...in the end, an Obama presidency and Romney presidency would not be all that different. There is some truth in that. The Republic will not crumble with either in office."

Surely you jest. Saying there is some truth in that is like saying that there is some truth in the sun rising in the West and setting in the East--it does, after all, rise and set! A Republican president and congress, at this juncture, could have dramatic impacts on the Republic: from Supreme Court appointments, corporate 'rights,' deregulation, health care, the environment, to social issues.

NickBob and Bobo make excellent points. More false equivalence from TVD. There are very large differences between Obama and Romney, and if Romney is elected with a hard-right Republican Congress, Romney the "moderate" will have to implement a hard-right agenda. To refer to Romney as honest is quite amazing. This is the worst flip-flopper I've seen in my lifetime watching presidential candidates. Under pressure from the right wing, he just flipped on his long-standing position of raising the minimum wage in line with inflation. The average voters TVD likes to cite hates that kind of flip-flopping from politicians and they definitely see it. You can hear this in the comments even from Republican primary voters. All this is not to say that I disagree with TVD's point that this will be a tough, closely fought election. With all that superPAC money flowing it, it also will be immensely ugly, particularly from the Romney side. I just hope enough Americans are sickened by the spectacle to pressure Congress to do something about superPACs and the catastrophic Citizens United ruling. I still await TVD's close look at Romney's "moderate" positions on military spending, taxation, Iran, health care, immigration, Social Security, unions, the environment, energy, etc. He started out the campaign far to the right and has only moved further. And TVD, please tell us how Romney's solutions on "gut economic issues," like opposing the successful auto bailout, are going to appeal to Reagan Democrats. That seemed to work real well for him in Michigan and Ohio, didn't it? Oh, by the way, in terms of whether GOP voters will be energized and turn out in November, how does TVD explain the significantly lower Republican primary turnout this year in key states like Ohio and Florida compared with 2008, when Republicans were offering the electrifying John McCain? Finally, it's absurd to say Obama has tried to divert attention from the economy and national security. Based on reading the NY Times and listening to NPR every day, it looks like Obama has been focusing on little else, which is exactly as it should be. Once again, TVD's bias against Obama is showing.

TVD offers some good points. As matters currently stand, right-wingers hate Obama much more than they are alienated from Romney. So the Republican base is not going to wander off the reservation...unless there is a credible right-wing third party candidate. I think that risk should have been assessed.

I'm also not sure that there might not be a Mormon backlash waiting to happen. And not just among evangelicals who accuse Mormons of being untrue Christians. Mormon theology happens to be one of the most bizarre cult belief systems on the face of the planet and is resolutely misogynistic. Mormons have been backpedaling furiously since the days of polygamy and have achieved considerable recent success in rebranding themselves as ordinary and conventional (Romney's cartoonishly fake 50s persona is a prime example). Yet Mormons remain intensely separatist and secretive in their social relations with outsiders, indicating their ongoing deep awareness of their cult status. These matters are a delicate topic among the self-consciously tolerant set, but don't be surprised if this bomb doesn't manage to get detonated before we reach November.

Certainly, the health of the economy will be the biggest single determinant of the election outcome. If the euro zone implodes, any Republican would be elected in a landslide. But absent a traumatic economic or international disaster, the election will be close. And despite the obligatory surface attention to the usual menu of legitimate political issues, this war will continue to be fought primarily on a visceral level. One cannot begin to explain the parade of buffoons across the the GOP political landscape and their absurd and contradictory statements except in terms of an emotional appeal that lies beyond the realm of rational discourse. The fundamental limitation on TVD's analysis is that he desperately wants to view homo politicus americanus as a more sensible and logical animal than he really is. It's a charming delusion, but one unsupported by the facts.

"Thus far the Obama campaign has been quite skillful in diverting attention from these two central issues to matters such as contraception, Rush Limbaugh, and Santorum's controversial social-issue views. But that won't last."

The Obama campaign? I would say the media has done its job by reporting on newsworthy events. This editorial may have some valid points, but overall the analysis is too slanted to convince me of anything. By the way, Woofer has made some excellent points about Mormonism.

The popular press, of course, has a vested interest in propagating "Romney can't win" stories because they are trying to fashion a self-fulfilling prophecy. Something like 80% of the "traditional" press corps reliably vote democratic, and they see Obama's election as a grand historic moment that must be perpetuated. (The grand historic moment happened on inauguration day, however, and the rest of Obama's administration has been an anti-climactic shirking of the consensus-building ideals he ran on.) Neither Santorum nor Gingrich can win in November, which is why the press wants to keep their hopes alive. The Reagan Democrats, or Joe Sixpack, or however the swing vote is styled, will not vote for a candidate who vomits at the thought of the separation of church and state. Nor will they vote for a man with zero attention span who's always reaching for the next bright, shiny thing.

Romney's depiction as an "evil businessman" only gets traction in the salons of the left. After four years under a president with such a tin ear on economic issues, a person with an actual understanding of the workings of markets may strike the voters as a pretty good deal. And economic issues are going to be the primary driver of this election. Is Romney a flip-flopper? Flip-flopping usually implies going back and forth, not going one way and staying there. The press has a term for moderates who become more liberal: they've "grown in office." When a moderate becomes more conservative, well, that must be bad, right? How to describe such a calamity. It must be duplicity on his part because to "grow" means to reject conservatism, right? So is the world view of the majority of the press covering the campaign. But just as they were caught flat-footed by the "voters' temper tantrum" that ushered in the Republican Congress in 1994, they may very well not see that Americans concerned for their future could actually vote for Romney until the election returns start coming in. It will be interesting to watch.

I remember this ritual in 2008; as was pointed out in the article, predictions that Democrats would be divided come November due to the long primary slog turned out to be false. Anyone could have seen that they would be false. As anyone can see that similar prediction for 2012 will be false.

But pundits need to make a living too, and they do so by manufacturing controversies and tabloid-like analysis of the candidates. To say that Romney has the nomination sewn up, as should have been obvious for a while now, doesn't sell as much ad time.

@dbreneman- President Gore wouldn't be where he is today without his many friends in the liberal media. I've read comments at Free Republic complaining about the liberal coverage Fox is giving the campaign, so you're not alone in your assessment. "Grown in office"? Care to point out an example of this trope, one that's been used since 1990 by someone employed by a major media outlet? Next you'll be complaining about the liberal Supreme Court.

Did you know Mt. RAINIER National Park was established by a conservative Republican president, McKinley? There's bi-partisanship I can support.

Thanks for your commments. This piece apparently got further exposure
via the internet and/or among media. Thus I've gotten a number of independent responses from out of town, including a couple from the pundits
I faulted in the piece. (The latter were relatively good humored, by the way).

I think of various groups as riding daily in the same elevators containing the same passengers, in the same high-rises, and generally adhering to the conventional wisdom within those elevators. There is a D.C./N.Y. media elevator, for instance, where it is bad form to stray too far from current
consensus opinion. Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy put it another way when he referred to the "birds on a telephone wire" habits of media---that is, repeating over and over the chirps originally emanating from birds further down the wire. When it comes to partisanship, I often think of avid Democrats in an elevator whose occupants tune in only to MSNBC and Bill Maher and of their GOP counterparts in another elevator whose occupants access only Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. There are millions of ordinary citizens not falling into these categories, however, and they are the ones who are the deciders in national elections.

Pepper2000 makes a good point that cable-news types need to maintain
their ratings and revenues---thus come up with formulationa aimed at generating drama and conflict where in fact there may be little of either. The last thing the cable-news nets want is a Republican nominating race ending right now. How in that case to maintain political viewership until the two party conventions this summer? That is why so few
on-air commentators even suggested Tuesday night that Romney had pretty much wrapped things up.

I mentioned in this piece the state-by-state nominating strategy being pursued by Romney, putting time and money into those states which give him the clearest route to a delegate majority. In the fall election, both
candidates will be pursuing similar state-by-state strategies, fishing for
electoral votes in the waters they see as most promising. In the end,
the race will be decided in about 8 key states, with moderate and independent voters making the ultimate decisions in each. Later we'll take a look at those states, one by one.

I would agree with Mr. Van Dyk on a couple of points.

I don't think conservatives will sit out the election if they don't like the GOP candidate. They really dislike Obama and are quite passionate about it.

I also don't think this GOP in-fighting for the nomination means Obama will win. I certainly think it makes more interesting and it would be great fun to see them scratch and claw their way into the convention. But, in the end, they'll have a candidate they can agree on (unless Sarah Palin gets nominated from the floor).

But there are three factors that I think favor Obama. One, Romney's Mormonism. I grew up with Mormons and never gave them a second thought. But boy, people on the East Coast and in the South are very suspicious of them and I have to wonder if they will truly trust Romney. Two, Romney is a pretty dull candidate. I'm not sure he will inspire the "get out the vote" push that he will need to win. Three, Obama is a great fundraiser and a great campaigner. And in a debate? I'm pretty sure I know who will win there.

It will be an interesting campaign season.

If TVD looks around, I would say he's the one riding in the conventional wisdom elevator. The major media are dominated by ideologues of the "bipartisan centrist" variety who obsess about the costs of social insurance programs and hardly ever speak to ordinary working Americans, mostly talking to other desk jockeys with nice sinecures and secure health care and retirement benefits, reading Robert Samuelson and David Broder and David Ignatius et al. What I find most disturbing about TVD's commentaries is his disrespect verging on contempt for progressives with passionate committments to the social welfare and civil rights of the masses of the Americans (and for partisans on the right as well). "Partisan" seems to be the worst insult he knows of. But he won't engage us on facts or evidence, constantly hiding behind his perception of what the "public" thinks though often reading only the polls results that support his arguments. The best commentators openly and generously engage with their critics rather than dismissing them with putdowns. That isn't TVD's approach.

Harris Meyer, David Broder is dead. Your analogies are dead also: the major media are idealogues of the right end of the political spectrum now, not the central.

@sarah90, Mr Meyer's position is closer to yours than most readers of this column are, and while David Broder has left this world, his attitudes and and ways of thinking are very much alive in the village that is Washington DC and in the writings of the author of this post. I think more of the major media aren't ideologues at all, they're simply careerists that give little though to policy matters but consider personalities and the horserace of the day as their major focus. E! for politics. There are plenty of real ideologues, though, not saying you're about that.

Update: Since I wrote this piece, it appears that Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are in fairly tight races in Alabama and Mississippi. That would show surprising strength for Romney in states where Santorum and Gingrich
would be expected to do better. If he runs close to them there, he'll get some bonus momentum.

Another P.S. I'll share a good line I heard today from an eastern-seaboarder who knows both men well: "Romney is John Kerry without the medals." Not entirely accurate but worth a smile.

Republicans have had a long time to get used to the idea of Mr. Romney as their presumptive nominee, and they have yet to really embrace it.

The fact that Mr. Romney cannot outpoll Mr. Gingrich in next two state races, Alabama and Mississippi, at this stage in the nominating process speaks loudly about the softness of his support.

While I have no doubt that stalwart Republicans would support him (or Mr. Santorum, or Mr. Gingrich, or Mr. Potatohead if he were to win the nomination) in the general election, a nominee's appeal must extend beyond the party faithful to win the presidency.

A few months ago I, too, expected a close battle between Romney and Obama. I no longer do. Why? In the last few weeks I've had conversations with more than a dozen Republican women who have told me that they will not be able to support a Republican candidate this year. Two told me that after listening members of their party debate birth control and mandate intrusive and unnecessary medical tests as a precondition for abortion, they have determined they can no longer remain Republicans. All of these women are fiscally conservative professionals between 55 and 70. My banker is typical. "I'm not sure I would call myself a Democrat," she said "but I will vote for Cantwell and Obama in November." This is a woman who once campaigned for Jennifer Dunn.