Shake and erase could work

LITTLE ROCK — The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn noted a fascinating irony about the Etch-a-Sketch controversy over whether Republican front-runner Mitt Romney intends to remake himself as a moderate in the general election. It broke “the same day that Romney embraced the new Paul Ryan budget—a radically conservative plan that, if enacted, would take health insurance from tens of millions of people while effectively ending the federal government except for entitlements and defense spending.”

This underscores a point that continues to get lost in discussions of Romney’s ideological makeup—one that, I think, suggests why it just might work for Romney to give himself an Etcha-Sketch makeover when he pivots to campaign against President Barack Obama in the fall.

Economics—at least as evidenced by his embrace of Ryan’s plan—is probably the area where Romney really does hold radical views that are far more heartfelt than his positions on social issues. But many people—commentators included—judge a politician’s ideological makeup by focusing on tone and on a candidate’s instincts on social issues, if not his stated positions. Sure, Democrats will seek to draw attention to the extreme positions he has taken on contraception and other issues during the GOP primaries. But by and large, many leading commentators are likely to treat those positions as stuff Romney just had to say to get through the nomination process.

Effectively, it will play as: He didn’t really mean those things, because the former governor just doesn’t seem radical. He doesn’t come across as captivated by social issues and doesn’t treat them as something to go to war over unless he absolutely has to.

Meanwhile, Romney appears to hold genuinely extreme views about the proper distribution of wealth and about government’s proper role in combating the excesses of unfettered free-market capitalism. But because radicalism and moderation are so often ascribed based on tone and social-issue instincts, he may well be able to sell himself as a moderate to large numbers of swing voters despite his economic worldview.

Obama and Democrats may be able to convince voters that Romney hews to a failed economic ideology, one that the country tried, to disastrous effect; that his priorities are out of whack; and/or that he’s just too out of touch with ordinary Americans to address their problems.

But when it comes to escaping the label of extremist, Romney may well be able to just . . . shake and erase.