Will the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up? Ctd

Steve Kornacki isn't buying the "moderate Mitt" idea. According to him, not much has changed:

Romney has long been aware that he can’t actually run on the ideas that his party has generated these past few years, but he’s been further constrained by the right’s deep suspicion of his own ideological credentials. Thus, Romney has spent most of the general election campaign awkwardly switching between vague, broad-stroke pronouncements aimed at swing voters and gestures that mesh with the radicalized, Obama-phobic spirit of today’s GOP base.

What’s changed in the last week or so is the balance: Romney is now primarily pitching his message at non-GOP base voters – people who are likely to recoil at the implications of the policy ideas that the national Republican Party has embraced – and skipping the red meat.

And, because it amuses me, the New Yorker's take on the debate, in the form of a cover.