Will the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up?

Jonathan Chait heralds the return of Massachusetts Mitt, the moderate:

Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity — and, when necessary, making them up — to shove his way to the center. Why he did not attempt to restore this pose earlier, I cannot say. Maybe he can only do it in debates. Or maybe conservatives had to reach a point of absolute desperation over his prospects before they would give him the ideological space. In any case, he dodged almost every point in the right wing canon in a way that seemed to catch Obama off guard.

Ezra Klein, like Chait, saw Mitt Romney the Moderate at last night's debate:

Early in the campaign, Team Obama made a crucial decision: They weren’t going to run against “multiple-choice Mitt.” Rather, of the various Romneys on offer to them — the Massachusetts moderate, the tea party conservative — they were simply going to choose one and stick with it. 

According to Yglesias, "The problem with all of this is exactly what you'd expect the problem to be with an Etch a Sketch move—it's inconsistent with things he's committed himself to previously." Take Romney's comments about Simpson-Bowles. In the universe the rest of us inhabit, Obama proposed a "grand bargain", but Paul Ryan vetoed it and made sure it never got a congressional vote; in fact, Ryan advised GOP leaders not to work with Obama to reduce the deficit because it would be better for his re-election prospects. Then Romney makes Obama's delay and unwillingness to embrace the plan on his own the lede of his argument. Because he was operating in the itinerant Moderate Romney universe, was able to say that Obama and Pelosi and everyone else had little capacity for bipartisan cooperation. In the real world, however, the history of obstructionism within the GOP is well documented.

Romney has his nod to the GOP base in Paul Ryan. Now he's prepared to play a different game, or at least change the rules to suit himself. Did you hear the Etch-A-Sketch shaking?

(Image via Daily News)