This is one time where I fear the great Mikado is wrong.
I think Romney can win NH in a 50-50 election. He could also win Maine but only at 53-47 or higher for him. ME and NH both gave the GOP strong results and thus it is feasible that a tied environment could produce a narrow win for Romney in NH and at a strong margin, ME. All the others are off limits except for CT in a very unrealistic 57-42 type landslide and thats a big if even then.
Romney's advantage is not so much that he is a moderate on the issues because he isn't and there isn't a such thing as a Moderate GOP nominee in the vain of McCain 2000 or Rudy. That's done. Boom Over!!! (to sound like Charlie Sheen
) Romney's focus will be on non-social issues because he wants to de-emphasize his rather recent pro-life conversion, and his pro-family crusade in 2008. His advantage will be that his style on approaching them will be different then Huck or Cain or Rick and the Last Crusade.
I think that it is a mistake to lump all social issues together and label them as divisive and demand they be ignored. There are some serious social problems in this country that need addressing. If you read his book, which I am currently in the process of doing, he approaches the out of wedlock birth rate from a practical standpoint of its effect on education and he even states the need to ensure that we don't appear to be judgemental of single parents, while working to decrease this trend in the future. It's this nuance that makes social conservatism more palatable to many people who would be turned off by the moralistic crusading.
Rockefeller Republicans weren't just social liberals. They were also very much in favor of the New Deal, welfare state, high taxation, and big gov't. This canard irritates me to no end. The social issues of abortion, gays etc, didn't heat up in the modern era until the mid 1970's. The 1964 primary was waged primarily on a big gov't versus less gov't paradigm. If it was all about social issues then Mike Castle would be a Senator today because 2010 would have been the best year to be a Moderate Republican since economics dominated. It turned out to be the worst. His problem was that when the issues turned to ones of economic and the size of gov't, his record wasn't solid there either and hence he lost because O'Donnell took advantage of his weaknesses, and he wasn't prepared to respond. I guess its like the word "neocon" has been expropriated by libertarians and liberals, so too has the term "Rockefeller Republican".
