At the starting line, Romney sees presidential race as he envisions it

STRATHAM, N.H. — Front-running candidates like to imagine a path to victory if only they run the race as they envision. On the wind-swept farm from which he launched his presidential campaign here Thursday, Mitt Romney no doubt hoped that will be the case.

But like all front-runners, no matter how strong or fragile, Romney’s struggle will be trying to stay on the course he has set, to run his race and not the race that his rivals and others attempt to make him run.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

Archive

• E-mail
• Twitter

Video

Republican Mitt Romney says President Barack Obama has failed the United States and is pitching himself as an alternative who can fix the nation's ailing economy. (June 2)

Can he make this campaign all about the economy and President Obama’s stewardship in office? Or will he find himself in constant conflict over his Massachusetts health-care mandate, his conservative credentials, his “authenticity” and questions about whether he can connect with and truly rally the entire Republican Party?

Romney begins his second bid for the White House in far stronger shape than he started his first one four years ago, with a plan and a message sharply honed and more narrowly focused. He is better positioned than his rivals, and more experienced, too. It is an enviable but hardly an impregnable position, given the questions that surround him and the narrowness of the margin in the polls atop which he sits.

His message Thursday was pitched more to a general-election audience than to his party’s base, which is a page from successful candidates. Boiled down to four sentences, it went like this: “Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer.”

That’s the message he wants to carry through the nomination battle, if only it were that simple.

Romney’s front-running status owes as much to his prowess as a fundraiser as to the depth and breadth of his political support. He is capable of raising more than $10 million in a single day, a prodigious achievement. He threatens to leave his rivals in the dust at the end of this quarter in money raised and banked. That is an enviable position.

Yet he is a front-runner who must still decide whether he can risk anything approaching a serious effort in the Iowa caucuses or how he will maneuver in South Carolina. He and his advisers can try to dismiss the Iowa contest as not truly representative, even of a conservative party. Iowa will not decide the nomination, but his position speaks to one of the vulnerabilities he carries at the start of his race.

Romney and his advisers know that presidential campaigns are won in the middle and that nomination battles are a series of continual choices between catering to the base and keeping the center squarely in view. New Hampshire, where he announced, is obviously a must-win for the former Massachusetts governor, and it is the place where his advisers think the center of the electorate, in the form of thousands of independents, will assert itself in the GOP nominating contest.

His Republican rivals may acknowledge Romney’s leading position in the race, but they are showing him little respect. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin arrived in New Hampshire as Romney was breaking camp after his announcement, crowding a stage that should have been his alone. Reporters asked Romney about her pending arrival as he worked the crowd before his speech. “New Hampshire is action central today,” he said. “I love it.”