Could Romney have won the primary vote if he had hewed more to the center?

[Indy Texas]

If he had run that way, he wouldn't have won the primaries. Though he would have had a better shot at winning the general election, assuming he was able to win the primaries.

Ultimately, what the Republican Party wanted was someone who could attack Obama on Obamacare. Mitt Romney was the worst possible candidate to do that, because he had no basis to oppose the ACA after adopting something practically identical in his home state. It would be like if Alf Landon had created a state-level New Deal-type program in Kansas and then criticized FDR for enacting the New Deal during the 1936 election.

When your base insists that it's fed up because of the Wall Street bailout and Obamacare, and then they turn around and nominate someone who supported the Wall Street bailout and more or less created Obamacare and wants illegals to "self-deport" by making their lives miserable, it's hard to convince people that the GOP isn't just a den of unapologetic racists.