APOPKA, Fla. — It took six years of running for president, but Mitt Romney has realized one month before the 2012 election that he cannot depend on family and surrogates to humanize him. 
 
 He must do it himself. 
 
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 The Republican is using a three-day Florida swing to make a direct emotional appeal to voters. He is for the first time speaking more candidly to voters about his good deeds on behalf of others, a trait he has stubbornly shied away from during the majority of this campaign even as Democrats have painted him as an unfeeling corporate raider. 
 
 Starting on Friday night, Romney devoted nearly one-third of his stump speech to telling three revealing and personal stories that have been related before by other Romney allies — his wife, his friends — but never by himself. 
 
 It’s a dramatic, and seemingly intentional shift for the Republican, who until now had avoided such personal sharing in favor of portraying himself as a competent economic manager. 
 
 The GOP nominee is looking to build momentum from Wednesday’s first presidential debate by trying to do the one thing he hasn’t succeeded at for the entire campaign — convincing voters he is a regular guy to whom they can relate. But impressions of him as heartless have cemented in the minds of many voters — who want a president who feels at least a little of their pain — so it may be too little too late. 
 
 One of the stories references Romney’s religion in a prominent way, something he has generally avoided. He spoke of ministering to 14-year-old leukemia patient David Oparowski as “Brother Romney”when David questioned him about the afterlife (although the “Brother Romney” reference was dropped in the second telling). 
 
 The campaign has also been playing the biographical video from the Republican National Convention in Tampa that features home video from the Romneys’ private life. 
 
 “If you really want to know how a person will operate, look at how they’ve lived their life,” Ann Romney says in the video. “I trust Mitt. I trust him with my life.” 
 
 The campaign realized that it had made a mistake playing the video before prime-time during the convention so that they could show Clint Eastwood’s monologue to an empty chair. They’ve begun playing it on big Jumbotrons set up at some Romney rallies, including here on Saturday night. 
 
 At this rally outside Orlando, Romney auditioned to be healer in chief. 
 
 He recalled seeing a friend from graduate school, Billy Hulse, at an event in Atlanta a few weeks ago. After an accident paralyzed him, Hulse devoted himself to supporting medical research. The governor said that when he saw Hulse, he leaned into his friend’s wheelchair, put his arm on Hulse’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. 
 
 “I said, ‘Billy, I love ya and God bless ya’,” Romney said. ||||| Romney represents the GOP's old guard as younger Republicans such as Marco Rubio and Rand Paul are in spotlight at conservative event. 
 
 Mitt Romney thanked activists at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference for supporting his failed presidential campaign. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP) Story Highlights The 2012 GOP presidential nominee has kept a low profile since losing election 
 
 Romney was viewed warily by conservatives in two White House bids 
 
 More than a dozen 2016 White House hopefuls are speaking at conference 
 
 Mitt Romney returned to the stage where he once proclaimed himself "severely conservative" to thank thousands of activists for supporting his unsuccessful White House bid. 
 
 In remarks Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee touted the problem solving done by GOP governors such as Nikki Haley of South Carolina and expressed his optimism for the future of the conservative movement. 
 
 "It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party," he said. "I utterly reject pessimism. We may have lost Nov. 7, but we have not lost the country we love, and we have not lost our way." 
 
 STORY: Paul Ryan talks budget at CPAC 
 
 Romney told the audience, who enthusiastically stood and cheered as he came onstage, that he was "sorry" he would not be their president. "But I will be your co-worker, and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you," he said. "In the end, we will win just as we have won before, and for the same reason: because our cause is right ... and just." 
 
 The event known as CPAC often shines the spotlight on the up-and-comers of the Republican Party and is a critical proving ground for presidential hopefuls. More than a dozen potential 2016 presidential candidates — including Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, Rep. Paul Ryan and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — are all on this year's program and represent a new generation of Republican leaders. 
 
 The emergence of the GOP's new guard is part of what makes the speech by Romney, who turned 66 years old this week, interesting. The other is that during the former Massachusetts governor's two unsuccessful presidential campaigns, he was viewed warily by conservatives for his changing views on issues such as abortion. 
 
 Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose own presidential bid fizzled last year, got in a jab at his 2012 Republican rival during his CPAC remarks Thursday as he criticized the news media for suggesting the losing GOP presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 represented a defeat for conservatism. 
 
 MORE: NRA chief denounces background checks at CPAC 
 
 "That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates," said Perry, who is considering another White House bid in 2016. 
 
 Rubio and Paul both called for a new message from their party during their CPAC speeches — one that would attract younger and more diverse voters to the GOP fold. Rubio, who was considered as a possible Romney running mate, even implicitly criticized Romney's dismissal of 47% of the electorate when he said the nation doesn't have "too many people who want too much from government." 
 
 Romney acknowledged Friday he might not be the best person to give advice to Republicans because of his defeat in November, but he said he still wants to try to help expand the GOP tent. 
 
 "A conservative vision can attract a majority of Americans," he said, heralding the work of GOP governors such as Michigan's Rick Snyder. "They're winning elections but more importantly, they're solving problems." 
 
 Romney is no stranger to using CPAC as a venue to deliver major addresses. Last year's comment that he was "severely conservative" came as he was wrestling with Rick Santorum for the GOP nomination. In 2008, he chose to end his presidential campaign with a speech to CPAC. 
 
 (Contributing: Jackie Kucinich) ||||| It's not just Akin. By pushing some of the most invasive state policies in modern history, the men of the GOP are driving their party off a cliff. 
 
 Blame it on the “idea cloud”—that cumulus cartoon bubble that dumps the same idea on diverse populations at once. Alternatively, blame Todd Akin, the Missouri congressman and Senate candidate who infamously asserted that “legitimate rape” victims don’t often get pregnant because the female reproductive system has a way of shutting itself down under such circumstances. 
 
 Illustration by Dress Code. Source Photos: John Giustina / Getty images (shirt & tie); Rubberball / Getty Images (Blonde Hair); Fotosearch / Getty Images (Suit); Emmanuel Dunand, AFP / Getty Images (Romney); John Adkisson / Getty Images (Ryan) (Illustration by Dress Code) 
 
 Whatever the prompt, millions of Americans simultaneously have been slapping their foreheads and exclaiming: “What the *#@% is wrong with Republicans?!” 
 
 To be fair, we can stipulate that Akin is sui generis, occupying a realm of nitwittery uniquely his own. Taken in isolation, his comments might have been only a blip in the news cycle. But his timing was, shall we say, immaculate, coinciding with GOP platform committee meetings and Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. The platform includes one of Ryan’s signature issues—a human life amendment to the Constitution that could preclude abortion even for rape or incest. And Ryan, in addition to being the party’s budget genie, happens to have coauthored with Akin legislation seeking to redefine rape as “forcible” (as opposed to statutory) as a way of limiting public spending on abortion. 
 
 The human life amendment is actually a relic, having been part of the platform since 1984, but the platform also includes new language for the first time declaring abortion bad for a woman’s “health and well-being.” It is certainly bad for some women, but also certainly not for all. Who exactly is making this determination for womankind? 
 
 In the wake of Akin's controversial comments, Mitt Romney said he's good for women. 
 
 In any case, a storm more perfect than Isaac (it seems impossible to discuss Republicans in non-biblical terms) has formed to the benefit of Democrats—and not just the metaphorical kind. That hallelujah chorus you hear is coming from David Axelrod’s Chicago office, where he and other campaign strategists were seen performing grand jetés in celebration of their good fortune. What more delicious manna than the opportunity to conjoin in the public’s mind the idiocy of Akin, who weirdly serves on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and Romney’s sixth son, Ryan. Such a GOP twofer can only be a gift from You Know Who. 
 
 Alas, Akin’s comments were not in isolation. They followed a year of explosive events and remarks involving Republican lawmakers and leaders—and the women they seek to “protect.” A one-man firing squad, Akin simply provided the exclamation point at the end of a Faulknerian paragraph of Republican offenses, from laws attempting to require transvaginal probes for women seeking abortion to promises to defund Planned Parenthood to Rush Limbaugh’s calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” when she testified about the need for insurance coverage for contraception. Agree or not with her argument, powerful men shouldn’t call young women sluts for attempting to participate in a grown-up debate about health care. Agree or not with a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy, elected officials shouldn’t parse the definition of rape as “legitimate” or otherwise. For the record, the bill to redefine rape as “forcible” had 227 Republican cosponsors. 
 
 Reality Check 
 
 “77% of Americans believe birth control shouldn’t be part of the national political debate.”—Bloomberg National Poll 
 
 _____ 
 
 
 
 Conservative Donor Foster Friess: 
 
 ‘Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The Gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.’—MSNBC 
 
 The cumulative effect of these episodes, combined with Democrats’ carefully crafted GOP “war on women” narrative, have boxed Republicans into a corner of stubborn self-defeat. Hackneyed and contrived as this “war” is, there’s a reason it has gained traction. “Because it’s true,” says Margaret Hoover, a leading voice in the young conservative movement, CNN contributor, gay-marriage advocate, and author of American Individualism—a call to arms for her great-grandfather Herbert Hoover’s rugged individualism tempered with a community spirit suitable for the millennial generation. 
 
 Opting for a vernacular expression of her frustration, Hoover queries: “What the (*#@%) is wrong? What has happened within the party infrastructure that has malfunctioned so desperately, so that this minority of representatives are in such positions of power that are so out of step with the majority of Republicans?” 
 
 There is something wrong with the Republican Party, the survival of which demands more than a few moments of self-examination and reflection. I wouldn’t use the word “stupid,” though it is tempting. Suicidal seems more apt. The GOP, through its platform, its purity tests, pledges, and its emphasis on social issues that divide rather than unite, has shot itself in the foot, eaten said foot, and still managed to stampede to the edge of the precipice. Is extinction in its DNA? 
 
 Maine Sen. Susan Collins pulled her car off a rural road in her home state to give full expression to her own dismay at her party’s death spiral. She points to a series of problems, ranging from the absence of women in leadership positions, which sends a bad message to women—“role models matter”—to the party’s illogical emphasis on divisive issues when they should be focused on Republican strengths. 
 
 “It seems like we’ve been thrown back decades into debates most everyday people think were settled years ago. This doesn’t mean we’re disrespectful to people who hold a different point of view, but the platform seems designed to alienate a lot of moderate women. I don’t get it.” 
 
 Comments like Akin’s aren’t only embarrassing, but they divert attention and allow Democrats to change the subject. Collins is chauvinistic on her party’s economic plans, but dumbfounded by certain suicidal moves. “Tone deaf” is how she describes the 31 Senate Republicans who voted against refunding the “Violence Against Women Act,” which has been renewed for years without controversy. 
 
 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “I join many Alaskans in finding Rep. Todd Akin’s comments incredibly offensive and I strongly encourage him to step aside… I can’t believe a guy running for the U.S. Senate but also a current congressman would make this kind of statement.” 
 
 Sen. Olympia Snow (R-ME): “Such extreme and ill-informed comments are particularly offensive to victims of sexual assault… [the comments were] repugnant and outlandish.” 
 
 
 
 “We just hand these issues to Democrats on a silver platter and they’re clapping their hands with delight. They can’t believe this! And instead we’re not focusing where my party has by far the better plans, the better approach, where President Obama has utterly failed.” 
 
 When the conversation shifts to abortion and contraception (contraception!), women begin to fear that their rights are in jeopardy. “They’re not,” says Collins, one of the party’s staunch pro-choice voices. This view is widely shared within Republican circles. Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere, the consensus seems to be. But fellow Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, who is retiring after more than 30 years in office, isn’t so sure. 
 
 “Don’t underestimate the force of those views,” she says. “At one point I would have thought so, too, but now I wouldn’t minimize it.” 
 
 “At one point” refers to the mid-1980s, when Snowe organized Republican women in the Congress (there was only Nancy Kassebaum in the Senate) to meet with then-president Ronald Reagan to discuss women’s concerns. “Can you imagine that happening with a Republican president today,” she says. 
 
 Times—and things—have changed. Abortion is still front and center, yet women’s concerns, like men’s, are more centered than ever on the economy and jobs. Snowe, having just returned from a tour of the Eurozone, fears we are on the brink of disaster, tethered as we are to Europe. She urges Romney to distance himself from some of his party’s extreme positions and forcefully convey that the economy is the central issue—and that frankly we’re in a crisis. 
 
 “He’s got to reiterate that. This campaign is about the future of our economy and the future of our country ... Social issues are the Achilles’ heel of our party, but the economy is the Achilles’ heel of the Obama administration.” 
 
 “We should be sitting pretty,” says Collins, who is equally grim about the future. Instead of focusing on economic policies and pounding messages of renewal that appeal to all people, social conservatives push issues that relatively few care about at the moment. You have to have food on the table, after all, before you can start contemplating the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Arguments that social issues fire up the base are fine to a point, but as Collins points out, “I keep reminding them that not everybody’s base is the same and presumably we want to control the Senate. We can’t do that without winning seats in states like Maine.” 
 
 Abortion 75% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest.—Gallup 2011 
 
 _____ From the proposed GOP platform: 
 
 ‘We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.’—as reported by CNN 
 
 
 
 Former first lady Laura Bush has often told me that nations can’t survive without the full equality and participation of its women, which at a minimum should allow for differences of opinion. Does the Republican Party really think it is a nation apart, exempt from this obvious truth? Polling figures provide at least part of the answer. 
 
 A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Obama still leads Romney among women by 51 percent to 41 percent. The gap is even greater among other demographics: African-Americans favor Obama 94 percent to 0; Latinos by 2 to 1; and voters under 35 by 52 percent to 41 percent. How long will the party of white males survive once the women (and gays and blacks and Hispanics) have left for more hospitable environs? Exactly who is left for the GOP? 
 
 Even among pro-life Americans, there is little support for the social agenda being pushed by the Republican Party’s leadership, with pro-life voters overwhelmingly holding the belief that abortion is ultimately the woman’s choice. According to a 2008 poll conducted by American Viewpoint for Republican Majority for Choice, 66 percent of self-described pro-life voters said abortion should be the choice of the woman and not the government. 
 
 More broadly, 52 percent of all Americans think abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in May. Furthermore, it seems people may be tiring of this whole conversation. A Bloomberg National Poll done earlier this year found that a full 77 percent believe that birth control shouldn’t be part of the national political debate. 
 
 Finally, even though the May Gallup Poll indicates that more Americans are becoming pro-life, which is surely a positive development, this doesn’t translate to mean that they support government policies further restricting abortion. In fact, at no point does a majority favor limiting access to abortion as the Republican Party seems committed to doing. 
 
 Even so, states have been busy in these vineyards. In the past two years, states have introduced a total of 2,000 reproductive health provisions, mostly restrictions, according to Planned Parenthood. While 12 states require verbal counseling or written materials before an abortion to include information on ultrasound services, both Texas and Louisiana mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound (not necessarily invasive) on any woman seeking an abortion and also that the provider show and describe the ultrasound image. 
 
 Same-Sex Marriage 54% of American adults say gay marriage is morally acceptable.—Gallup 2012 
 
 _____ Mitt Romney: ‘I think from the beginning of my poliitcal career, I’ve made it very clear that I believe marriage should be a relationship between a man and a woman.’ 
 
 
 
 Twenty-six states require that a woman seeking an abortion wait some period of time—usually 24 hours—but Utah requires 72 hours. 
 
 This is not to suggest that the only thing contributing to the expanding gender gap is the GOP’s position on reproductive issues. Not for one instant do I equate the pro-life position with being anti-female. Heaven forbid we should live in a world where no one struggles with the termination of a pregnancy. This is not a ridiculous conversation. It is, however, an often poorly executed one. 
 
 Style matters. Empathy counts. And many women—even those sympathetic to these issues—feel that Republican men aren’t listening to them, or are off on some crusade that has nothing to do with them. Raymond Arroyo, news director and lead anchor of Eternal World Television Network, may have put a finger on part of the GOP’s women problem: 
 
 “If the GOP has a ‘problem,’ it may be that their principles usually supersede their communications skills. What I mean by that is they often launch into well-intended initiatives (a virtue) giving little thought to messaging or style,” he told me by email. Perhaps an unfamiliar name to non-Catholics, Arroyo is a familiar voice to 250 million households worldwide who tune into his live news show, The World Over, on EWTN, the Global Catholic Network. “The fact is,” he says, “people are either receptive or hostile to a message based on their first impressions of the messenger. If they are repelled by a politician’s style, the message will never be heard. So many conservative pols—good as they are, smart as they are—consider things like style and presentation to be superfluous to their work, so they give it no thought.” 
 
 To whom, then, are these Republicans talking? Apparently not to women, whom they treat not as equals but as totemic and unknowable. Which is to say, they don’t “get” women. As such, they risk losing not only independents and moderates, whose votes they desperately need come November. They also risk losing their own women, who want very much to cast a ballot for smaller government, reduced deficits, and a confident, job-producing business environment, but don’t want to belong to a club that seems aggressively hostile to women and whose members can’t keep their mouths shut about issues that only reinforce the notion the Republicans are intolerant and rigid. 
 
 “I’m upset,” says Hoover, and she’s not alone. 
 
 It is noteworthy that so many Republican men are focused on women’s reproduction and issues of the hearth, while veteran Republican women leaders are riveted on the economy and jobs. Could it be that the liberal goal of reversing sex roles finally is manifesting, most vividly within the party least likely to have advanced the cause of evolution? If only men could get pregnant, then we’d really have a rollicking debate. If only ... 
 
 Meanwhile, Romney had better speak often and with conviction about his own disagreement with some of his party’s platform, or the anti-woman narrative will become so entrenched that the 2012 GOP may go down in history as having sacrificed the nation’s economy to protect the rights of human embryos. He will have to speak loudly, too, if he is to be heard over the iconic women the Democratic Party has assembled for its own convention stage—from the famous Ms. Fluke to the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL. The 2012 election seems to have devolved from a debate between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes to “The Clash of the Embryos.” Perhaps the math is just too hard for either party. 
 
 How tragically ironic that the party of small government and individual liberty may have orchestrated its own defeat by insisting on some of the most invasive state policies in the history of man. Perhaps it is time for a new kind of history. ||||| Shortly after Election Day in 2012, a Mitt Romney supporter moaned to POLITICO about the failed GOP nominee’s performance: “We had no message, and we gave it to the worst communicator in the world.” 
 
 Two years later, Romney is mulling over another campaign for the White House, and this time, he says, things will be different. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 In meetings with and individual calls to donors, supporters and former staffers, Romney is making it clear that he is likely to run, putting his time frame for a decision at “weeks, not months.” 
 
 Romney, who made a fortune in the financial sector and was cast by Democrats in 2012 as a heartless businessman, wants to make tackling poverty — a key issue for his 2012 vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan — one of the three pillars of his campaign. The former Massachusetts governor also says he’ll have a different communications staff and hopes to show voters a version of himself they didn’t get to see last time. (There’s even a Netflix documentary he can point to.) 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: 2016 hopefuls hit Obama's Paris absence) 
 
 Yet interviews with more than a dozen staffers and supporters who have recently spoken with Romney reveal conversations in which he promises a “different” path forward without providing specifics about what that means as far as mechanics and his own sometimes gaffe-ridden performance. And, aside from most of his communications team, Romney would still be expected to bring back the majority of his old staff, sources said. 
 
 “He really has to show people that he’d do it differently, rather than just say he’d do it differently,” said a former top adviser to Romney, one of half a dozen alumni to speak Monday with POLITICO. “He needs to assure folks he’d take a much more direct approach to laying out the vision for his campaign versus having those decisions driven by a bunch of warring consultants.” 
 
 Romney announced Friday that he is considering running in 2016, in what would be his third attempt at the presidency. The first time, in 2008, he ran as a conservative. His decision came after Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, said he was actively exploring a White House run. On Monday, Ryan announced that he will not run for president, possibly an indicator that he believes Romney is serious. 
 
 “A lot of people don’t think Jeb has the fire in the belly,” said one uncommitted Republican donor, who expressed “shock” that Romney is considering another race. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Cruz on Romney: No need for 'mushy middle') 
 
 Romney didn’t leave much in the ashes of 2012 that was worth replicating. He was a skilled debater, but his campaign was criticized for its threadbare messaging, staff insularity, a lack of data savvy and a fatalistic approach to the press. Yet even that failed effort was meticulously prepared for by Romney, with years of tending to donors’ neuroses and staffers’ concerns. 
 
 And amid growing speculation that Romney would jump in the 2016 fray, doubts have persisted about his ability to improve his own performance. His own party’s chairman, Reince Priebus, responded to calls for Romney to run again at a recent donor luncheon in Manhattan by pointing out the candidate’s many self-inflicted wounds. 
 
 Romney and his top aides have often attributed the loss to events out of their control. Within two weeks of the loss, Romney bluntly told a large number of donors on a conference call that Obama unfairly put his thumb on the scale with policy “gifts” to key constituencies, “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” 
 
 “In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” he said at the time. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Ryan says he won't run for president) 
 
 Romney allies have also insisted to the former Massachusetts governor, and he has echoed in conversations he’s had, that the main reason he lost in 2012 was that he was running against an incumbent president, and that he would have an easier path in 2016. In 2012, Romney veered well to the right to win over primary voters, moves many believe cost him in the general — but he has scoffed in private conversations at Bush’s insistence that he won’t do the same in order to win the nomination. 
 
 Regardless, “I think he’d be the first person to tell you, absolutely,” he needs to run a better race, said Robert O’Brien, a California-based Republican donor who was recently courted by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz but who decided to wait to see where Romney stands. O’Brien, who said he’d received a call from Romney in recent days, added: “If he decides to run, I think you’ll see a different campaign and I think you’ll see a campaign in which the American people get to really know Mitt Romney as a person.” 
 
 Bush and Romney already are calling many of the same donors and operatives, in some cases within hours of each other, to make their pitch, round up support and lay claim to staff. Romney has also called at least two key officials in the early primary state of New Hampshire, former Sen. Judd Gregg and his successor, current Sen. Kelly Ayotte, sources said. Romney and Bush are among prominent figures invited to the Republican National Committee meeting in San Diego this week, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed to POLITICO. Bush is not planning to attend the meeting, an aide to the former Florida governor said. 
 
 Romney, who just a year ago categorically ruled out a third White House run, is to some extent playing catch-up. Some of his former supporters are lining up behind Bush for 2016, and some staffers are reluctant to join him again. Romney has been burning up the phones to top members of his old finance team, and he hopes to bring back a majority of his old staff, sources said. 
 
 “There’ll be a lot of old faces and some new faces,” said one source who’s spoken with him. 
 
 Romney has been in frequent touch with his longtime adviser Stuart Stevens, although it isn’t clear whether he would be brought back in the chief strategist role he held last time. But Russ Schriefer, Stevens’ partner and ad-maker, is aligned with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. People like former RNC official Ray Washburne have committed to playing key roles in a Christie campaign. And a number of donors say some Romney alumni would sooner back Christie than Bush, who’s had past friction with Romney. 
 
 Polls show Romney as the leader on the GOP side and faring better in a general election than Bush. But the reality is likely to be harsher than the numbers suggest. For one thing, the emerging GOP field is large and includes several potentially strong contenders from gubernatorial and senatorial ranks. 
 
 “It would be difficult, hand-to-hand trench warfare,” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based strategist who was Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s top adviser in 2012. “The class of competitors this time around are a class or two above the 2012 group of contenders. Misreading of polling data is a common affliction that unsuccessful, and too many successful politicians suffer. His first hurdle would be to explain how this campaign would be different then his last two failures.” 
 
 A senior Romney adviser in 2012 said the former Massachusetts governor would approach the primaries very differently “by virtue of experience,” determined not to utter the kind of self-destructive statements he did last time in order to outflank his challengers on the right. For instance, in 2012, he suggested pursuing policies that lead undocumented immigrants to “self-deport” — a remark that cost him badly among Hispanic voters in the general election. 
 
 Besides a focus on helping the poor, the other two pillars he’s told people he would build a new campaign around are supporting the middle class and a muscular foreign policy, an area where he believes he was strongly vindicated from his 2012 campaign against President Barack Obama. Romney, for instance, warned about the strategic threat posed by Russia, which many at the time thought was an overstatement. The multimillionaire also is cognizant of the damage done last time by his derisive remarks about “47 percent” of the population, whom he cast as moochers. 
 
 “If he does go forward, there will be heavier doses of foreign policy,” a senior adviser told POLITICO. “That was a strength of his last campaign. A lot of what he said has been borne out … All that feeds into a narrative.” 
 
 “The economic focus has to be different as well,” he added. “There will be more focus on mobility and softer economic issues. There will also probably be more on upward mobility and opportunity.” 
 
 Another senior official on the 2012 Romney effort said the campaign then struggled to scale up after it secured the GOP nomination. He believes a 2016 campaign would be organized from the start with a general election victory in mind. 
 
 “The value for the Obama campaign in ’12 was the muscle memory,” the adviser said. “They’d gone through the battles together and had trust. That doesn’t mean you have to have the exact same team. You need the structure, but you don’t need the exact same people. In ’12, the Obama people could tap into the talent they had in 2008. In many ways, we have that type of apparatus in place for Mitt.” 
 
 Advisers mulling over a 2016 Romney redux also hope the campaign will be smarter about spending. “Institutionally, they could raise the same amount as last time,” a senior Romney alum said. “But, by having a team that knows where the pitfalls are, we could be 30 percent more efficient.” 
 
 Another senior adviser who just spent time with Romney described him as genuinely relaxed and much looser than during the marathon of the 2012 campaign, but that he appears “very serious” about running again. The adviser said Romney is not as worried about money and support materializing as the coverage of the last few days suggests. 
 
 “His assumption is, if he decides to run, a lot of that stuff will come online,” the adviser said. “He has a desire to be president. I’m not sure if he has an overwhelming desire to run for president. I tend to think this will flush out over the next 10 days.” 
 
 Longtime Romney confidant Eric Fehrnstrom said it is premature to sketch out what a campaign organization would look like when the former governor has not made a final decision on whether to run. But he spoke to why Romney is giving the race another look. 
 
 “Our economy is still not as strong as it could be, long-term growth is in doubt, workers have gone a long time without pay raises and can’t save for a kid’s college or their own retirement, and around the world there’s deep concern that as America’s leadership has unraveled, hostile forces have filled the vacuum,” Fehrnstrom wrote in an email. “Mitt Romney spoke to these issues in the last campaign, he was right on many of them, and I expect if he runs again they will form the core of another campaign for president.” 
 
 James Carville, a longtime backer of Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016, said Team Romney is engaging in wishful thinking. He not only has fared poorly with minority voters, a growing bloc, in the past, but the economy has improved significantly since 2012. Carville pointed out that Romneyites like to say what he got right but leave out that he predicted economic calamity if Obama was reelected. 
 
 “We know the demographics are going the wrong way for him, and if the trend is any good, it looks like the economy is going to be going the wrong way [for Romney too],” Carville said. He added that more generally, “2016 is going to be a challenging year for Republicans.” 
 
 But another alumnus of Romney’s presidential campaigns said a new effort would “tell the story of Mitt better.” Several Romney veterans recalled how well the accounts from parishioners in Romney’s Mormon community resonated with voters who had been bombarded with ads about his tenure at Bain Capital. 
 
 The documentary “Mitt,” released by Netflix last year, further improved Romney’s image. Campaign operatives had resisted giving the filmmakers access, but Romney’s five sons opened up family meetings and other private conversations. The result was a production that humanized him and his Mormon faith. 
 
 “The movie really pulled the curtain back,” one Romney alum said. “It’s a good story to tell. We didn’t do that last time, and it allowed Obama to paint a caricature. We’d show him as a person more. In the first campaign, we were so afraid to even mention the ‘M’ word. Now it doesn’t even matter.” 
 
 Tom Rath, a New Hampshire-based Republican and a longtime Romney backer who also received a call from him, said he believes the different circumstances of 2016 versus 2012 are in Romney’s favor. He also expects Romney to make up his mind “sooner rather than later.” 
 
 “The context of this campaign will be very different than the one we ran last time,” Rath said. “There’s not going to be a lot of surprises to him.” 
 
 Follow @politico ||||| I will never forget the night I sat in a convention hall in Tampa and watched Mitt Romney accept the Republican nomination for president, because that was the night I saw Clint Eastwood say the immortal words: “Do you just—you know—I know—people were wondering—you don’t—handle that OK.” 
 
 Oh my. Romney’s speech sounded fine, and Marco Rubio seemed quite eloquent, but honestly, all I can think about is Dirty Harry scolding an invisible president in a chair for making an anatomically impossible suggestion. We had heard there would be a surprise guest tonight, but apparently, the surprise was a surprise to the surprise guest. You know how reporters always complain that conventions are too scripted? Eastwood was the first thing on network TV tonight, and oh, it wasn’t scripted. It wasn’t rehearsed. It wasn’t sane. 
 
 (MORE: What You Missed While Not Watching the Last Night of the Republican Convention) 
 
 Wow. This was not the bad-ass Clint from Unforgiven. This wasn’t even the get-the-hell-off-my-lawn Clint from Gran Torino. This was a rambling old dude with no teleprompter, wandering off message, rambling to an empty chair, ignoring the blinking red light telling him to get the hell off the stage. “And I thought, yeah, I am not going to shut up,” he muttered at one point. “It’s my turn.” 
 
 It sure was. Thursday had been the best day of the Republican convention, featuring the first speakers who actually talked with emotion about specific things that Romney had done. An elderly couple told a wrenching story about Romney comforting their dying son, and helping him write his last will and testament. But when prime time rolled around, Eastwood took the convention to goofyville. Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Party! 
 
 This was Clint’s half-hearted case for Romney: “This administration hasn’t done enough to cure that. I think possibly now it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.” Possibly? He then chided the invisible Obama for proposing to close Guantanamo, before remembering that Obama didn’t close Guantanamo. Then he brought up the plan to try a terrorist in New York City. “I have to give credit where it’s due,” Eastwood told the empty chair. “You did overrule that.” He noted that Obama had opposed the war in Iraq, “and that’s OK,” then complained that the president had announced a withdrawal date for Afghanistan (an actual Republican talking point) instead of bringing the troops home immediately (not an actual Republican talking point). 
 
 (PHOTOS: Highlights from the Convention) 
 
 There was one semi-disturbing moment, when Clint screamed “We own this country!” He got a standing ovation for that one, and it’s possible that the virtually all-white crowd was picking up a bit of Gran Torino you-know-what-I-mean-by-we. But I would chalk it up to incoherence rather than malice, because that was definitely the theme of his soliloquy. “I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president anyway,” Eastwood groused. “I think attorneys are so busy. You know, they’re always taught to argue everything, always weigh everything, weigh both sides. They’re always devil’s advocating this and bifurcating this and bifurcating that. You know all that stuff.” If you say so, Pink Cadillac guy. By the way, Romney has a law degree from Harvard. 
 
 All right, you get the point. But I can’t stop! “I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over,” Clint told Invisible Obama. “You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about college loans and stuff like that.” 
 
 (VIDEO: RNC Buzzwords: A Political Word Game) 
 
 All I can say is, it was horrible, and it was awesome, and it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention. And it was on prime time. If I were a Bain consultant like Romney—“a quote-unquote stellar businessman,” as Eastwood put it—I think I’d consider this a major management failure. 
 
 PHOTOS: The RNC in Pictures: The Delegates ||||| TAMPA, Fla. — In a speech heavy on anecdotal history but short on policy details, Mitt Romney avoided major falsehoods in making his case to the American public while accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. 
 
 Even a key Democratic strategist, Bill Burton, a former press secretary for President Obama, tweeted shortly after the speech ended: “Romney actually avoided almost all of the lies from Ryan’s speech.” That was a reference to Rep. Paul Ryan’s address the night before, which we found to contain a number of false and misleading claims. 
 
 In Romney’s case, we found a few bits of exaggeration and puffery. He exaggerated the loss in family income that has occurred under Obama, for example, including 13 months of losses that actually occurred before the president took office. And he made a back-handed accusation that Obama has raised taxes on middle-class taxpayers, when in fact the president has lobbied for and signed several temporary reductions. 
 
 Likewise, we found some misleading claims from convention speakers who preceded Romney on the final day of the GOP convention. For example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeated the bogus claim that Obama has “gutted” the welfare overhaul law, when all he has done is allow states to seek flexibility to experiment with applying the law’s work requirement. 
 
 And we even caught a mistake by actor/director Clint Eastwood, who put in a surprise appearance but wasn’t fully briefed on the proper way to spin statistics about unemployment. 
 
 Note to Readers Our deputy managing editor, Robert Farley, is on the scene in Tampa at the convention center. This story was written with the help of the entire staff, based in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Next week, we will dispatch our managing editor, Lori Robertson, to Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic convention. We intend to vet the major speeches at both conventions for factual accuracy, applying the same standards to both. 
 
 Middle Class ‘Crushed’ 
 
 One section in particular drew our attention. Romney declared that “this Obama economy has crushed the middle class,” and rattled off some horrible-sounding statistics. But we found some of them to be exaggerated or in need of added context. 
 
 Romney: In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. Nearly one out of six Americans is living in poverty. Look around you. These are not strangers. These are our brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans. 
 
 Family income: Family income has not fallen by $4,000 under Obama, as Romney implied. That figure comes from a study by Sentier Research, and while most of the drop occurred after the president took office in January 2009, some of it (the study didn’t say exactly how much) occurred in the 13 months before that. 
 
 The study measured the drop in family income starting in December 2007, when the recession officially started, and ending in June 2012. The study noted that income has fallen more since the economic recovery officially began (in June 2009) than during the recession itself. 
 
 Poverty: It’s true that “more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before,” as Romney said. But it’s also true that there are more Americans, period. 
 
 The poverty rate — that is, the percentage of all Americans in poverty — is nowhere near a record, even for the relatively brief historical period since 1959, when the government first started measuring poverty. 
 
 The raw number of individuals in poverty in 2010 was 46.2 million, according to the most recent Census figures. And the poverty rate went up that year to 15.1 percent — the highest since 1993. But as Census noted, that “was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.” Furthermore, Census noted that the number in poverty had increased for four consecutive years, so the rise started well before Obama took office. 
 
 Gasoline: Romney said “gasoline prices have doubled” since Obama took office. That’s correct, but only because gasoline prices were unusually depressed when Obama was inaugurated due to the recession and financial crisis. 
 
 The average price for regular gasoline was $3.78 last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a bit more than double the $1.84 average on the week Obama was sworn in. But the average exceeded $4 a gallon for seven weeks during the summer of 2008, and it has never reached $4 under Obama. 
 
 Premiums: Romney said that “health insurance premiums are higher” under Obama. But premiums have been going up for years. Experts say the federal health care law was responsible for only a small part of the recent hike in employer-based plans. 
 
 The average cost of an employer-sponsored family insurance plan went up 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey. Several independent experts told us that rising medical costs were still the main culprit. The health care law, they said, was responsible for 1 point to 3 points of that 9-point increase. 
 
 And the reason for that is improved coverage. Insurance companies are required under the law to include free preventive care, coverage for adult children up to age 26, coverage for children regardless of preexisting conditions, and an increase in annual limits. 
 
 Rising premiums are nothing new. Between 2001 and 2011, family premiums for employer-sponsored plans went up 113 percent. Year to year the size of the change in premiums has varied, but it has always been in one direction: up. 
 
 Food: Romney said “food prices are higher” under Obama, and that’s also true, though not by a lot. The index measuring the average consumer price of all food and beverages (including restaurant meals) stood just 6.2 percent higher last month than it was when Obama took office, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 Another Middle-Class Falsehood 
 
 Romney said “unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.” But Obama has not raised taxes on middle-income taxpayers, and, in fact, he has targeted tax cuts and credits to benefit them. 
 
 Among the president’s major tax cuts and credits: 
 
 Making Work Pay Tax Credit . For two years, 2009 and again in 2010, the stimulus law provided up to $400 to individuals earning up to $75,000, and up to $800 to couples earning up to $150,000. 
 
 . For two years, 2009 and again in 2010, the stimulus law provided up to $400 to individuals earning up to $75,000, and up to $800 to couples earning up to $150,000. Payroll tax cut . When the Making Work Pay credit expired, Obama successfully pushed Congress to cut the employee portion of the Social Security payroll tax in 2011 from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The tax is applied to the first $110,100 of wages, and it resulted in an annual maximum savings of $2,200. The tax cut was extended through 2012. 
 
 . When the Making Work Pay credit expired, Obama successfully pushed Congress to cut the employee portion of the Social Security payroll tax in 2011 from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The tax is applied to the first $110,100 of wages, and it resulted in an annual maximum savings of $2,200. The tax cut was extended through 2012. American Opportunity Tax Credit. Also part of the stimulus, this is a college tuition tax credit. It modified and expanded the existing Hope Credit. It was intended for two years, but was extended through 2012. The full credit of $2,500 is available for individuals earning $80,000 or less and families earning $160,000 or less. The Hope Credit maximum was $1,800 in 2008. 
 
 The Republican nominee did not explain what he meant by his remarks. But some Republicans have claimed that the president’s health care law amounts to a tax on the middle class, because it imposes a penalty on those who do not buy health insurance. But, as we have written before, those arguments are overstated. 
 
 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 3 million taxpayers earning less than $120,000 will pay an average penalty of $667 by 2016. 
 
 Tax Exaggeration 
 
 Kerry Healey, who served as Romney’s lieutenant governor, boasted that Romney “cut taxes 19 times” as governor. But tax rates remained unchanged under Romney, and Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, called his tax record “mixed,” because he raised hundreds of millions of dollars by increasing fees and closing loopholes in the corporate tax structure. 
 
 The Romney campaign’s list of 19 tax cuts includes some business tax cuts and a host of relatively minor cuts and credits — including a couple of two-day sales-tax holidays, which Club for Growth dismissed as “gimmicky.” The list also includes such things as a “fire safety tax deduction,” a “motion picture tax credit” and a “historic rehabilitation tax credit.” 
 
 In its white paper on Romney, Club for Growth singled out two tax cuts for praise: legislation he signed to prevent state residents from having to pay $275 million in retroactive capital gains taxes, and another bill that provided property tax relief for seniors. 
 
 But Club for Growth called his record “mixed” because of the new revenue he raised. As we have written before, Romney in his first year raised fees by more than $400 million, and generated another $150 million by closing loopholes. 
 
 Welfare Law ‘Gutted’ 
 
 Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dutifully repeated a meritless Romney claim, asserting that Obama “gutted” the 1990s’ welfare overhaul, and accusing him of “waiving” the law’s work requirement. 
 
 Gingrich: Tragically, President Obama gutted this achievement [welfare reform]. …Obama’s waiving of the work requirements in welfare reform is just one example of his direct repudiation of President Reagan’s values. 
 
 Gingrich didn’t elaborate or supply evidence of how Obama’s actions “gutted” the law. Gingrich would have been particularly qualified to do so — if there was substance to the accusation — since it was he who pushed the welfare bill through Congress when he was speaker and Bill Clinton was president. The fact is, Obama has simply allowed state governors to seek waivers from the law’s requirements if they can propose a more effective way to move people from welfare to work, and show that they can produce that result. Nothing has been waived yet. 
 
 And as we’ve noted, states have persistently fallen far short of achieving the law’s goal of putting at least half of recipients in jobs or job training. When Obama took office, only 29 percent of cash assistance recipients nationally were complying with the work requirement, and that had not changed as of the most recent figures. 
 
 Women-Filled Administration? 
 
 Jane Edmonds, former secretary of Massachusetts’ Department of Workforce Development, cherry-picked statistics to make Romney’s record on appointing women to government positions look better than it is. She wrongly said that the percentage of women in senior-level government jobs went up under Romney, but the figure actually declined slightly. 
 
 Edmonds: One area where he made a positive difference is in improving the representation of women in senior positions in Massachusetts State Government. Before Gov. Romney took office in 2003, women were significantly underrepresented among top roles in government, with 52 percent of the population but just 30 percent of the jobs. Over the next two and a half years, 42 percent of the new appointments made by Governor Romney were women. 
 
 Edmonds’ figures are correct, and they are touted on the website of MassGAP (Massachusetts Government Appointments Project), a bipartisan coalition of women’s groups created in 2002 to increase the number of women appointed to top government positions. As Edmonds said, women made up 52 percent of the state’s population, but in September 2002, they held only 30 percent of top government positions. And 42 percent of Romney’s appointments — 14 of 33 appointments — were women during his first two and a half years as governor. But then the percentage of women being appointed to these jobs slipped, according to a 2007 study by MassGAP and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 
 
 Over Romney’s entire tenure as governor, the percentage of female appointments was 31 percent. And overall, the percentage of women in senior-level government positions declined slightly, to 27.6 percent, according to the study. 
 
 The study said the MassGAP effort showed “promising” impact with the high percentage of Romney’s early appointments, but the later appointments didn’t show “a continued commitment to the selection of women for high-level posts.” The gains for women between 2002 and 2006 “were elusive,” the study said. “[W]omen at the end of the Romney administration did not hold a higher percentage of senior-level positions than when he took office.” 
 
 Make My Mistake 
 
 And we don’t want to ignore Clint Eastwood — who, unlike Obama, was not invisible at the convention. 
 
 Eastwood mistakenly said that 23 million Americans are “unemployed.” Actually, the figure is a little more than half that — 12.8 million in July, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 Eastwood didn’t phrase things as artfully as most other convention speakers. The often-used 23 million figure also includes 8.2 million who are employed in part-time jobs but say they are seeking full-time work, the so-called “under-employed.” And it also includes another 2.5 million who say they would like a job and would take one, but haven’t looked for one in the last four weeks. 
 
 We hate to nit-pick one of our favorite actor/directors, who is not all that used to the ways politicians inflate numbers without actually saying something false. (He could have said 23 million who “need work” or “are suffering from lack of jobs” and not been technically wrong.) 
 
 But then, Eastwood was mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., and so he knows something of politics. And other film stars have gone on to run for even higher office. To which we say: Go ahead, make our day. 
 
 — Robert Farley, with Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Ben Finley and Brooks Jackson 
 
 Correction, Sept. 4: Our original story gave figures for the price of regular gasoline that were a few cents too high, both for the start of the Obama administration and for the week prior to the GOP convention. We also said incorrectly that the average price of regular gasoline had exceeded $4 per gallon for eight weeks, rather than seven, during 2008. The data to which we linked in that story were for an average for “all grades” of gasoline, not regular. ||||| Mitt Romney is embracing his Massachusetts health care law in response to President Barack Obama’s attacks that Republicans have declared a ‘war on women.’ 
 
 “I’m the guy who was able to get all the health care for all the women and men for my state,” Romney said in an interview aired on 'Fox News Sunday.' “They were talking about it at the federal level. We actually did something and we did it without cutting Medicare and without raising taxes.” 
 
 Romney added that he was “very proud” of his signature on the 2006 law when he was governor of Massachusetts, while charging that Obama would cut more than $700 million from Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 The presumptive Republican presidential nominee invoked his work on health care in Massachusetts in response to a question about women's health issues -- a sore spot for Republicans after Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks. President Barack Obama's campaign has been on offense on the Missouri lawmaker's statement for more than a week, but Romney noted that he's also urged Akin to drop out of the race against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). 
 
 “Oh, I think it was a terrible statement on his part,” he said. “I think it was uninformed. I think it was outrageous and offensive." 
 
 “I think I have distanced myself from the kind of thing he said as far as I possibly can," Romney added. "He was wrong. And it’s obviously being used by Democrats to try to cast a shadow on our entire party and it’s not. Leaders of our party have pretty much unanimously said, 'Mr. Akin get out of the race. You’ve said something which is highly offensive.' ” 
 
 Asked if the Obama campaign would be effective in attaching Akin's name to the Romney-Paul Ryan ticket, Romney replied, “It really is sad, isn’t it? With all the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to such a low level. They understand and they are wise enough to understand that people like myself who have asked him to get out of the race because we vehemently disagree with what he said and believe it hurts out party and I think is damaging to women.” 
 
 Read more about: Medicare, Abortion, Todd Akin, Mitt Romeny
– The GOP's luminaries descended on the Sunday talk shows ahead of their abbreviated convention in Tampa, with none other than Mitt Romney leading off with an interview on Fox, reports Politico. Addressing Team Obama's effort to link him to Todd Akin, Romney said: "It's really sad, isn't it? With all the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to such a low level." Elsewhere from Romney's interview: On RomneyCare: He's "very proud. I’m the guy who was able to get all the health care for all the women and men for my state. They were talking about it at the federal level. We actually did something and we did it without cutting Medicare and without raising taxes.” On his offshore accounts: “I could have said don’t make any investments in any foreign companies, in any foreign bonds, in any foreign currencies, only US entities. But I did live my life. And I expect by virtue of disclosing all these things, people can take a look at that and see whether that’s something they're comfortable with." On taking public funding for an 2016 campaign: "Oh, absolutely. To be competitive (now), we’re obviously following suit. But I’d far rather have a setting where we had both agreed to the federal spending limits." And elsewhere from non-presumptive nominees: Jeb Bush on Obama's Dubya-bashing: "I think it's time for him to move on. I mean, look, the guy was dealt a difficult hand, no question about it. But he's had three years, his policies have failed. Rather than blame others, maybe offer some fresh solutions to the problems that we face. But that's not going to happen between now and Election Day." Marco Rubio on Todd Akin's chances: “I believe his statements make it much more difficult, borderline impossible perhaps, for him to win that race. I think that’s been clearly communicated to him both publicly and privately by a whole host of voices so we’ll see what decision he makes going forward.” Reince Priebus on Isaac shutting down the RNC: “I think that the show is going to go on. We’re going to get the business done at the RNC. We’re going to nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. We’re going to have a great time in Tampa." Priebus on Romney's birth certificate crack: "I think it's a nothing. Have we really gotten to the point where we can't have any levity at all in politics? No one can say anything that's remotely humorous. The president makes jokes about this all the time." Kay Bailey Hutchison on the GOP's abortion platform: "We shouldn't put a party around an issue that is so personal and also, religious-based. I think we need to say, 'Here are our principals, and we welcome you as a Republican. We can disagree on any number of issues, but if you want to be a Republican, we welcome you.'"