EMPATHY GAP REMAINS WITH ROMNEY DESPITE LONG CAMPAIGN SHARPENING AND SHAPING HIM............

USA Today's Republican Convention pages top headline this morning was, "Long road shaped, sharpened Romney".  In it, reporter Jackie Kucinich writes how after many years of pursuing the Presidency, this is the day he will be formally nominated as the Republican candidate, that what he is trying to do is apply the lessons learned from years of political struggle to form a winning campaign.  Republican political consultant Tom Rath is quoted as saying, "This campaign is just so much his creation and his design".  Yet, despite this being his second run for the Republican Presidential nomination in just four years, and the shaping and sharpening he has supposedly gained, their remains for him the most significant empathy gap with the American people of any candidate about to be nominated as his Party's standardbearer in modern history, and I would argue going back to Wendell Wilke, the GOP's 1940 nominee, a widely unknown businessman, when he became the Republican candidate chosen to oppose President Franklin Roosevelt, who was seeking an unprecedented third term.  The enigma about Romney's empathy gap and nearly one third unsure / undecided among voters deficit, is that he is the son of a Governor, presidential candidate, and Cabinet Secretary; was Governor of Massachusetts himself, rescued the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, as well as being a Bain Capital businessman; no real stranger to the public.  Perhaps his empathy gap, which he this week has his golden opportunity to show Americans need not exist is explained in part by the "evolving", as one of his 5 sons describes it, given politically over the past eighteen years he has sought public office with three different persona's.  As a liberal Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate; as a moderate Republican for Governor; and now as conservative Republican for President; in essence, "Will the  Real Mitt Romney please Stand Up", as the pivotal moment on the, "To Tell The Truth" game show asks.  The next fifty three hours, and the coming seventy days, until the Presidential Election will certainly show whether Americans believe they know enough and feel comfortable enough to entrust him with their highest gift of confidence, residency in The White House for the next four to eight years............tdp