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As Kornacki points out, if this strategy was working, it's not likely that anyone would have a problem with it. But it's not. And that's a growing concern on the right. Writing for the New York Post, John Podhoretz complains that the Romney camp is "too intent on winning over the small batch of uncommitted and independent voters by saying absolutely nothing that might possibly offend them," and, as a result, he's not doing anything to "stimulate the enthusiasm of those already in his corner."

Unsurprisingly, Podhoretz's prescription is "more substantive nutrition in the form of substantive policy addresses, position papers, etc." Newt Gingrich's advice -- and it's good advice, so it's too bad Newt wasn't getting the going rate for celebrity Fannie/Freddie historians for offering it -- is much the same: "I think the question is can he clarify and make clear what he's trying to accomplish? ... Romney's got to make the case in a compelling way for a Romney recovery."

There was also this sad, ranty lamentation from Pat Caddell, who is pretty aggrieved that the Romney campaign isn't more awesome:

"There is a missing case, and I watched Romney yesterday, I watched Romney yesterday, I swear to God, there is no urgency to this man. He is running, as I said this morning, bored," Caddell observed.

"And the fact of the matter is, we're heading for a major crisis. You see it coming. 'Here are the three or four things that I'm going to do; we must make a change.' He has no message other than 'I'd like to win and by the way I have a secret formula.' He may still win with his, but not if Obama's at 50% approval," he added.

"Their strategists from the beginning have decided -- I just, you know, can't say enough bad things about them. They are incompetent, that believe that you can sit and the election will automatically come to you. And that they don't respond. They never sold Romney with the message that we talked about for months, and I'm sorry to the audience out there. It's not the American people are stupid, your candidate is stupid," Caddell said. "They never gave his message of who he is."

But if it seems like madness that Romney won't clarify his policies on the economy, there may yet be method in it -- the clarification may end up alienating a broad swath of the support Romney needs. Matt Yglesias pretty much nails this predicament:

Romney's plan isn't like that. It's not unclear, it's ambiguous. Enacting the rate cuts he wants and then fully making up the revenue would entail a large middle class tax hike. Enacting the rate cuts he wants and avoiding a large middle class tax hike would blow up the deficit. Those are pretty different policies and it's impossible to tell from the campaign thus far which one Romney is saying we should expect from him. Are we getting the Bush-style closet Keynesian, or will the new austerity fad continue on the right?

Yglesias takes us back to the "Chait or Weisenthal Scenario" situation we've explicated in the past here in the Speculatron. Jonathan Chait posits that Romney's election will spur the GOP to enact austerity along the lines of Paul Ryan's entitlement-decimating budget plan. Joe Weisenthal wagers that Romney's election will simply reset the GOP's typical tendencies when they are the party in power -- they run big Keynesian stimulus, run big debt, and deploy Ryan as the guy who'll smooth all that over with the unruly House caucus. It's an interesting divide: On one hand, Romney can score a huge ideological victory for the conservative movement; on the other, Romney can score a huge political victory for the GOP.