For Romney, a new image for a new bid

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Mitt Romney formally kicks off his presidential candidacy Thursday as the nominal Republican front-runner, hoping that persistent questions about his beliefs and his record are swamped by overwhelming anxiety about the economy.

Romney has so far tinkered stylistically with the approach that came up short in the 2008 campaign. He's kept the tailored suits and fancy ties in the closet, while politicking in open-necked shirts and Levi's slim jeans. He's even sent out, via Twitter, photographic evidence that his perfectly coiffed hair sometimes gets mussed.

The former Massachusetts governor has also pared back his entourage and avoided the unforced errors that muddled the message of his first bid.

What does he stand for?

But ultimately his campaign rests on Republicans shaking off their concerns about his past positions and his Mormon religion and seizing on him as an economic messenger. "His biggest challenge has always been, 'Who is Mitt Romney?' There's always been that lingering doubt among conservatives: What does he really stand for? But if there's a year in which that might not be such a liability for him, it's this one. This is going to be an economic election," said Republican consultant Warren Tompkins, who worked for Romney in 2008.

Romney as economic messenger is no sure thing. He is attacking President Obama for leaving millions of people out of work, but Democrats counter that Romney presided over layoffs and bankruptcies at companies he acquired as a corporate turnaround specialist, charges that undermined his first run for office in Massachusetts in 1994.

Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican Party chairman, said the jobs issue is "a two-edged sword" for Romney. While it can be used against him in the general election, it is "almost a nonissue in the primaries," where one of the ideas that unites Republicans is slashing the federal government -- which means layoffs.

But Romney's role in forging a Massachusetts health care plan could be a problem. The law requires virtually everyone in the state to have medical insurance, a government mandate that served as a model for the law Obama and the Democrats enacted last year. Repealing or outlawing "Obamacare" is a priority for Republicans and for Romney, who criticizes it on states' rights grounds.

'They loathe and detest it'

"His biggest problem isn't Mormonism," said Land, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest evangelical denomination. "It's 'Romneycare,' because evangelicals are implacably opposed to 'Obamacare.' They loathe and detest it."

National polling puts Romney at the head of the Republican field, historically the best place to be in a party that values hierarchy and normally promotes the next man in line. But he hasn't inherited the mantle the way a sitting vice president or Senate leader would. The Gallup organization, in a recent analysis, called him "arguably the weakest front-runner in any recent Republican nomination campaign."

After being criticized as mechanical and scripted in 2008, he has sought to connect with voters emotionally.

Romney took a commercial flight to Iowa for a recent campaign swing. There, he boasted that Thursday's announcement ceremony, a chili cookout on a New Hampshire farm, wouldn't be followed by a five-state flyaround in a chartered jet, like the last one was.