Romney's crunch time

Also like Gramm, Romney's fighting a two-front war, one with Mike Huckabee in Iowa and one with Rudy Giuliani everywhere else.

Gramm had similar problems in ’96. He was fending off a hard charging conservative populist (Pat Buchanan) while also trying to take on the national frontrunner (Bob Dole) everywhere else.

Finally, the most apt comparison to Gramm may be in persona.

Gramm, Inc.
Somewhere along the line Gramm stopped being a person and morphed into an "inc." Gramm’s intellect and down home charm never came through on the campaign trail. Frankly, all I remember from his campaign is the line in his speech bragging about failing the 1st, 3rd and 7th grades. At least, that's how I mimick his stump speech for the 5 people that get the reference. (I have since fact-checked this and apparently I had two of the grades right, but he did pass the 1st grade. It turns out Gramm failed the 3^rd, 7^th and 9^th grades. I'll have to update my standup routine.)

This leads me to write one of the more cliched pieces of advice political backseat drivers offer up: Romney needs to figure out how to be Romney again.

Thursday's speech on faith is one of the moments that the Romney camp hopes serves as the beginning of the turnaround. But if religion were the only issue Romney had to deal with, he’d be a more formidable frontrunner.

Right now, no campaign has struggled more with finding its center. The guy who had the best shot at becoming the "change" candidate inside the Republican Party morphed into someone who is trying to assure primary voters he'll be no different than any other Republican nominee before him.

The good news for Romney is that while this GOP campaign has gone through different phases – the rise of McCain, the yearning for Thompson, the fight for evangelicals, battling Rudy, and now the rise of Huckabee – one constant has remained: Romney.

But it's crunch time now. The candidate knows it. Looking back, if he fails, then backseat drivers galore will opine that Romney stopped being the Mitt Romney who figured out how to win in a state like Massachusetts.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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