Challenge, opportunity for Romney tonight

Can his party win over middle-of-the-road voters?

Ann Romney sat in a VIP box at the Republican National Convention on Thursday with her granddaughter Chole Romney and her son Matt Romney.

TAMPA — At some point after 10 o’clock Thursday night, after the warm-up acts have finished and the horns of the house band have quieted, Mitt Romney will stand alone on the biggest stage of his life.

He will look out over a convention hall alive with partisan enthusiasm and possibility — the Texans under their matching cowboy hats, the West Virginians in their miner’s caps, the Massachusetts delegation enjoying its rare moment in the Republican sun.
 

It will be, for Romney, both the culmination of everything he has worked for and a way station on the path to his ultimate quarry: becoming president of the United States. He’s arrived here through diligent preparation, good fortune, and burning ambition, eager to lead his party toward November on his economic message.
 

“Everyone who has been involved in Governor Romney’s life over the years feels the weight of this moment,” said Kerry Healey, Romney’s lieutenant governor and one of Thursday’s featured speakers.
 

A frenzied convention hall in Tampa, though, is hardly a nation. So while Thursday’s anointing indeed represents a political triumph for Mitt Romney it is also fraught with risk. To name just one: Can the modern Republican Party, with its increasingly conservative bent, successfully court middle-of-the-road voters?

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