Romney shifts to center as his confidence grows

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks in Den­ver Thurs­day. Rom­ney is shift­ing sharply to the polit­i­cal cen­ter as he begins to deliver a clos­ing argu­ment aimed at a slice of mod­er­ate, unde­cided vot­ers a month before Elec­tion Day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Charles Dharapak)

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney is shift­ing sharply to the polit­i­cal cen­ter as he begins to deliver a clos­ing argu­ment aimed at a slice of mod­er­ate, unde­cided vot­ers a month before Elec­tion Day.

On taxes, immi­gra­tion and more, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor has toned down his heated, cam­paign trail rhetoric this week, includ­ing dur­ing his strong debate per­for­mance Wednes­day night, as he looks to gain ground against Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in the hand­ful of states that will deter­mine the out­come of the com­pet­i­tive race.

“I know this is going to be a close-fought bat­tle,” a jubi­lant and invig­o­rated Rom­ney said in Col­orado before he flew to Vir­ginia for an evening rally with run­ning mate Paul Ryan.

In the com­ing days, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee will try to cap­i­tal­ize on his well-received appear­ance by mod­er­at­ing his pitch and work­ing to nar­row Obama’s advan­tage in swing-state polling that aides say showed signs of tight­en­ing even before Rom­ney and the pres­i­dent sparred. The Republican’s aides played down the notion that the debate was a game-changing event. But they appeared more opti­mistic about Romney’s chances than they had been dur­ing a trou­bled stretch that lasted sev­eral weeks.

“We’ve got over a month here,” Rom­ney strate­gist Stu­art Stevens said. “That’s an eternity.”

Rom­ney will use that time to drive the cen­trist mes­sage he out­lined in the debate. He empha­sized sup­port for pop­u­lar ele­ments of Obama’s health care plan, embraced gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion as nec­es­sary and hinted that he may elim­i­nate gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for oil com­pa­nies as part of a larger tax plan he insisted would not cut taxes for the wealthy.

In some cases, the mes­sage is a dra­matic depar­ture — in tone, if not sub­stance — from a can­di­date who has for more than a year assailed the president’s “gov­ern­ment takeover” of health care and “job-crushing reg­u­la­tions,” and who has promised tax cuts for all.

While mod­er­at­ing his mes­sage, Rom­ney will also deliver a series of pol­icy speeches, begin­ning with a for­eign pol­icy address in Vir­ginia on Mon­day, to help crys­tal­ize dif­fer­ences with the Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent. Future speeches are expected to focus on job cre­ation and fed­eral debt — areas where Romney’s inter­nal polling sug­gests there is an oppor­tu­nity to win over so-called “per­suad­able voters.”

A recent Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll found that the vast major­ity of vot­ers already have set­tled on a can­di­date, but 17 per­cent of likely vot­ers are con­sid­ered per­suad­able — either because they’re unde­cided or show­ing soft sup­port for Obama or Rom­ney. The group is gen­er­ally less informed than the aver­age voter and more mod­er­ate polit­i­cally. Roughly 56 per­cent of per­suad­ables approve of the way Obama is han­dling his job as pres­i­dent, but fewer, 47 per­cent, approve of his han­dling of the economy.

Start­ing Thurs­day night, Rom­ney also planned to lean more heav­ily on Ryan, the Wis­con­sin con­gress­man, to help con­nect with vot­ers. While Romney’s cam­paign can cover more ground if they hold sep­a­rate events, the two typ­i­cally draw larger crowds when they appear together and Rom­ney tends to be more ener­gized with his No. 2 along­side him.

As he headed to Vir­ginia on Thurs­day, Rom­ney was more upbeat than he had been in weeks. He grinned widely as he laughed and talked with aides at the front of his cam­paign plane. The atmos­phere among his staff and advis­ers on the plane was jovial.

Obama’s cam­paign wasted lit­tle time try­ing to dampen the mood, with David Axel­rod, the president’s cam­paign strate­gist, say­ing: “It was a very vig­or­ous per­for­mance, but one that was devoid of hon­esty.” ”…. I don’t think he helped him­self last night with his ser­ial eva­sions and deceptions.”

To a cer­tain extent, there’s a fis­sure between Romney’s mes­sage on the cam­paign trail and in tele­vi­sion advertising.

He declared in the debate, for exam­ple, that gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion “is essen­tial.” Asked whether he thought it was exces­sive under Obama’s lead­er­ship, Rom­ney told a Den­ver audi­ence a day later: “In some places, yes. Other places, no.”

But Rom­ney is run­ning an ad on Col­orado tele­vi­sion on the same topic that says: “Exces­sive gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions are crush­ing job creation.”

On health care, Rom­ney said in the debate that “pre-existing con­di­tions are cov­ered in my plan,” a ref­er­ence to the pop­u­lar pro­vi­sion in the president’s health care over­haul that pre­vents insur­ance com­pa­nies from deny­ing cov­er­age to cer­tain people.

But in recent months, the Rom­ney cam­paign has repeat­edly clar­i­fied that only those who main­tain con­tin­u­ous health care cov­er­age would be protected.

And while immi­gra­tion was not addressed in the debate, Rom­ney ear­lier in the week told The Den­ver Post that he would honor tem­po­rary work per­mits for young ille­gal immi­grants granted by the Obama administration.

Through­out the Repub­li­can pri­mary, how­ever, Rom­ney took an aggres­sive tack on immi­gra­tion, say­ing in debates that he approved of “self-deportation,” where ille­gal immi­grants would choose to leave on their own because they couldn’t find work in the U.S. He assailed rival Rick Perry, the Texas gov­er­nor, for allow­ing ille­gal immi­grants to attend Texas state col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties at reduced, in-state tuition rates.

Posted by AP News on Oct 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.