This piece by Ross Douthat strikes me as being a pretty good summation of where Mitt Romney is at the moment and where he's going to have to be soon if he's going to get to the White House. I'm going to guess that his soon-to-be-disclosed running mate has been selected with some of this in mind.
But I also think this campaign is ultimately not going to be about Romney's fitness to hold office. The folks wanting to unseat Obama have to make it about Obama…and I can't shake the feeling that at this very moment, they're meeting and talking and crafting the big story for September-October, which will be some scandal or revelation about Barack. Ideally, they'll want it to achieve three things. One is that it'll have to be the kind of thing which cannot be decisively disproven by Election Day or maybe ever. Secondly, it'll have to be one of those personality-oriented scandals that will make people who think he's a level-headed family man think that's been a façade and that there's some dark, aberrant side to the guy. And thirdly, it will have to be something that sets up the fear that if Obama gets four more years, you will die and the United States of America and your religion will cease to exist.
I have the feeling they're digging, trying to come up with it. It might be 100% fiction or it might be grounded in some small bit of reality twisted or enlarged to suit. But if Romney's going to have a shot at winning, his side has to fire up that base that equates a slight tax hike on millionaires with Socialism and lives in constant fear of a 9/11 on every block. They've got to be convinced that their lives are on the line in this one.