Jeff Smith: Can Romney Shake Off Romneycare?

If Romney’s problem were the health care law, per se, then I’d attempt to answer this question directly. But I don’t think it is. His problem is that too many Republicans primary voters neither like nor trust him.

The list of his flip-flops is well-known. In his ’94 Senate bid, he said he would be more pro-gay rights than Teddy Kennedy. At various junctures over the course of the next decade, he took mildly progressive positions on immigration, abortion, guns and most prominently, health care.

It is one thing to flip-flop on an issue, and then apologize unequivocally for it. Before his implosion, Edwards did it effectively on Iraq (the “I Was Wrong” Washington Post op-ed), and Pawlenty is following a similar model on climate change.

It is quite another thing to flip-flop on nearly every major social issue of concern to primary voters, and then a) claim that you have been consistent, and b) have the audacity to attack your primary opponents on said issues, as Romney did throughout ’08 – earning special enmity from his competitors in the process.

The sad thing (for him, not for the country) is that the economic collapse beginning in late ’07 and climaxing in late ’08 had voters thirsting for a capable steward of the economy — exactly his profile had he simply been true to himself and not taken the cultural red meat detour. That has to gnaw at him.