MITT Romney seems like he would be a great father in a suburban family sitcom. His kids would be living modern, multicultural lives and Mitt would play the handsome, charming but cluelessly-out-of-touch dad who doesn’t know how to cope with the world invading his sheltered life. I imagine Romney at the dinner table smiling awkwardly as his kids broach topics such as teen pregnancy, homosexuality and interracial dating. As the laugh track booms around him, he would ho and hum, carp about kids today and grumble about America needs more #Romneystrength. No one would really take him too seriously, but the mixing of his discomfort with his "Leave it to Beaver" stereotypical father figure charm would make him the perfect butt of jokes.

Mitt Romney seems like a nice guy, at least on the surface. But the problem though is that the niceness evaporates very quickly once you start to wonder if perhaps there is only surface to this candidate and nothing more? Mitt Romney does seem to have that salesman aura about him. While he’s trying to sell you something, he’ll tell you how much he loves fishing. The moment you tell him you don’t care for fishing, he tells you how much he hates fishing.

But given the ideological climate for Republicans right now, you can’t really blame Mitt Romney for endlessly recreating himself and being confused over which version of himself he is supposed to be wearing each day. Romney has been transforming himself for years in hopes of rising to the top of the party and being its presidential nominee. The problem, however, is that Romney’s background makes him perfect as a Republican candidate for president, but suspect as a Republican.

As many writers have noted in this election, governors who try to make a bid for national office will talk endlessly about their state and how wonderful things were there and how proud they are of what they accomplished there. They polish their record as governor and make it shine so brightly that you might imagine their state to be located somewhere in Heaven and not in the lower 48. Romney, as the former governor of the “most liberal state in the union,” has to constantly run from his record, to pretend it doesn’t exist and act as if most of what he did as governor was only because he was brainwashed by the Kennedys akin to the plot for the film "The Manchurian Candidate." The Republican Party has become so ideologically intolerant this election that they don’t see Romney’s centrist and compromising past as being a bonus, but just something that makes him even more ideologically suspicious. He is not a true believer, just a shady political opportunist.

The Republican primary this past election was an absolute circus all performed at the expense of Mitt Romney. The cavalcade of challengers were all trotted out not because any of them ever had a chance of winning against Obama. They all became conservative darlings and flavors of the week simply because they were not Mitt Romney, and therefore they must be good solid conservatives. People like Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Herman Cain were all plenty of fun to watch, especially when their campaigns were imploding. But they were all flirty flings, where Republicans wanted to have some real fun before they settled down to the long dreary marriage to Mitt.

The problem that Romney faces today is that all the pandering he has been doing in recent years to try to prove that he is a card-carrying Republican conservative does not help him much in the national election. The divisive rhetoric that Romney has had to use in order to appeal to the base of his party eventually came to haunt him recently when comments that he made to a private fundraiser with wealthy supporters were revealed to the public. In a video recording of the meeting, Romney makes several inflammatory statements, most notorious of which is his remark that 47 percent of the country will vote for Obama no matter what you say to them because they are lazy, pay no taxes and will never take responsibility for anything.

The revelation of Romney’s comments in and of itself was hardly Earth-shattering. Most people imagined Romney as a rich Republican would say things like that in the privacy of his ideological peers. But it is still shocking to have something proven in such an unfiltered way. The problem, however, is that Romney isn’t supposed to be associated with this type of rhetoric anymore since it doesn’t apply to enough people to get him elected. Romney would be far better served now by resurrecting himself as the compromising and rational governor of Massachusetts. We’ll see if he’ll try to reinvent himself again in order to reach out to independent and undecided voters, or if RomneyBot 2012 will just cruise to November stuck in Pander Mode 2.0.