on by a thread now and it's one of the reasons (or the ONLY reason) he chose Paul Ryan.

Which sorta leaves me to believe that somewhere and somehow Mr. Romney expects some outside assistance to persuade more moderately inclined voters. Be it a deluge of ads from the likes of his SuperPACs and Rove, Adelson, etc. or some disastrous or potentially disastrous world event (domestic or international).

All options are extremely unnerving, to me.

He had real problems with his base and was trying to bring them around right up until the 1992 election.

Krystal Ball explained the situation very eloquently last week on Lawrence O'Donnell's program on Wednesday night.
I'm pretty sure it was on Wednesday night, but it might have been on Thursday night.
Anyway, she said that every time that Romney made any kind of overture to the middle, he got blasted for it by people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Huckabee, and Laura Ingraham.

So, the tea party faction has in effect, handcuffed Romney, so he has to take the hard stands that he does.
For example, his position against abortion, with Mitt saying stupid shit like he would prefer that Roe v Wade be overturned.

The tea party faction won't let Romney get away with even mentioning Bush's 8 years in office that caused the economy to get so bad the way it has been for so many years.
And that causes Romney to say other stupid shit, like "Obama's economic policies don't work".
Even though the stock market has recovered everything Bush lost in the last 2 years that Bush was in the White House.
Plus, President Obama stopped the loss of nearly 800,000 jobs a month when he took over, and he has created 4.5 million jobs in the private sector in the last 3½ years that he has been President.

Krystal Ball said that she didn't think anyone else, like Rick Perry, or Herman Cain, or even Rick Santorum, could do any better than Romney has under these same conditions that his campaign has been operating under.
Romney's campaign is hampered by the tea party faction's insistence that he take the most extreme positions on all of the issues and not budge, even a little bit.

republican candidates have been purged by the voters in the recent primaries. IMO the middle that used to be for eons has evaporated. One has now, for the most part, republican extremists or democrats. Now, I might be biased because it's like that where I live. Around here republicans now stand for authoritarianism, religion, guns and austerity. This is Koch Brother territory. As least to me, we have no middle here to appeal too. And, they all wanted Santorum in the primary, not Romney. I'm planning my escape.

but I do think it exists among independents and within the dem party.

There would be the risk of alienating his base, but he may be willing to risk that if he decides that he simply has to gamble an appeal to the middle to have any chance. He might justifiably think that the base (teabaggers) will still vote against Obama and for him regardless. And it he might hope to throw Obama off stride in the first debate this way. It would expose him the 'flip-flopper' charge that already dogs him, but that might be the lesser-of-two-evils by that point in the race.

He'll incur huge wrath from his base if he moves toward the middle in the debates- but of course I could be flat wrong. It'll be interesting to see what he does, eh?

Looks like Mitt is trying to do the same thing, base voter turnout, voter suppression, and big bucks are their game plan.

"QueenAnne's " fancy pony would have been a better choice.

they don't really care about Mitt winning, they care about how far they can go to cheat. There are the voter ID laws that are getting overturned by judges left and right (but put right leaning judges on those benches and those laws stand). The rich of the GOP are watching to see if they can buy elections, cheat the voters and take over the nation because their numbers are dwindling. They are losing their power. I think they also want to see how far right they can take things. I know it sounds tinfoil-hattery but I think they want a theocracy, they want to rewrite the constitution and if something isn't done about money in politics, our "christian nation" will end up looking a lot like the nations we're currently bombing and ridiculing for their religious beliefs.

He's about the only one in my memory.