Romney's aim is to switch the emphasis from Washington policies to personal pocketbooks. | REUTERS Romney rescue plan: More Mitt

BOSTON — More Mitt.

After taking a beating for comments he privately wishes he never made and from conservative critics he wishes he could muzzle, Mitt Romney and his campaign are settling on a rescue plan to show more of him — in ads, speeches and campaign appearances. A big focus, according to campaign officials, will be on Romney talking a lot more about how his ideas will help regular Americans who remain deeply suspicious of him.


The aim: Switch the emphasis from Washington policies to personal pocketbooks. Look for a heavy emphasis on jobs and specific ways to cut government spending.

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“He has to own his message for people, especially women, to buy the messenger,” one top adviser said.

A campaign official said: “In a lot of the current survey data, there’s a desire among the electorate to know more about Mitt in terms of how he would lead. Over the next six weeks, the campaign is going to provide a lot more of that.”

Aides also expect more joint appearances by Romney and running mate Paul Ryan – most likely in the swing states of Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

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The plan, described by top aides and advisers in interviews this week, is an acknowledgment that Romney is in enough of a hole that he cannot depend on the presidential debates to turn his candidacy around. In fact, Romney, who recently did five mock debates in a 48-hour period to practice, has confided to advisers that it may be hard to win a debate because every attack against President Barack Obama will seem stale while the attacks on him will seem fresher and newsier to a hostile media.

Instead, Romney plans to dial back on fundraisers and vastly increase his personal appearances — on the stump and in ads — to convince what’s left of the undecided voters that Obama has been a disappointment and that he has a specific plan that is less risky than the status quo.

Rather than talk about the broader economy, Romney will increasingly talk about his plans in terms of the effect on families, the aides said. This started before the Republican convention, when he boiled his 59-point plan for the national economy down to a five-point “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class.”

The emerging strategy comes after several days of soul-searching. Romney officials are very clear-eyed about the damage done by two straight weeks of bad media coverage and the embarrassing comments caught on tape (see below for their assessment of what hurt the most in the past 10 days). They don’t dispute they are locked in serious turbulence, but they also take solace that things are not worse after what they consider the darkest stretch of the campaign.

“We are going to look back at this as the week he got his act together, or the beginning of the end,” said a top Republican who works closely with the campaign.

The campaign is moving fast to calm nerves, especially among donors. To get a flavor of the challenge before them, a top donor said that after Romney spoke at a fundraising breakfast at the Hilton New York on Friday, a will-Mitt-win poll was taken at one table of 10 men, each of whom had paid at least $2,500 to attend, and some of whom had raised as much as $50,000 for the campaign. Not a single man said yes.

Romney advisers are confident they can keep the money flowing in. Instead, what worries them is losing control of the candidate’s narrative. The three debates, beginning Oct. 3, remain the biggest opportunity for a decisive change in the dynamics of the race. But with Romney even or behind in every swing state, aides know he must use ads and campaign appearances to improve his image as a personable and credible doctor for the economy, even if he will never match Obama in bedside manner.

Some outside campaign advisers have long expressed frustration that Romney’s ads didn’t feature him speaking to the camera. This week, the campaign debuted a more intimate ad, called the “The Romney Plan,” in which the only voice is the candidate’s. He is shown without a tie, speaking in a casual tone — twice using “gotta.”

“My plan is to help the middle class,” Romney said. “You gotta cut the deficit. You’ve got to stop spending more money than we take in. And … champion small business.”

As aides look back on their week from hell, here is their latest thinking about the state of the race:

WHAT DOES MATTER:

• The constant flow of Romney criticism from conservatives. Many Republicans blame the media for the rash of bad stories. But it’s Republicans who have made the stories easy — actually, essential — to do. When The Wall Street Journal editorial page, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Rep. Tom Cole and Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol are all publicly criticizing, the press has an obligation to write it. (And the list above is but a small sample of the on-the-record GOP Romney critics over the past two weeks. Click here for a full listing).

This is a huge problem for Romney, his advisers say. In a flurry of phone calls starting Sunday night, the Romney camp has tried to reassure its critics and donors but keeps hearing the same thing: “We will, if you get your act together.” The truth is conservatives never loved — and many don’t even like — Romney. But they bought into him as a vessel for their ambitions to defeat Obama, especially after Ryan was put on the ticket. Many on the right now are animated by a belief that Romney is turning Ryan into Romney, instead of Ryan turning Romney into a Ryan-style warrior for ideas.

If Romney does not move quickly to detail his war-of-ideas plan and adjust his rhetoric accordingly, conservative unhappiness could turn into a full revolt.

• The tape. The worst thing a person can do in presidential politics is say something stupid — on video — that fits the caricature of themselves. That is why David Brooks slapped the Thurston Howell III label on him again and Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal again felt so free to write this: “It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues. It’s always been too small for the moment.”

The Wall Street Journal provided some sage advice in its lead editorial on what Romney should have said. But he didn’t say that. He said 47 percent are not only moochers but basically ungovernable for him, if he wins. This clip will appear in millions of dollars in ads before it’s done, will almost certainly be brought up in debates and will be stored on the shelf in history books, as are his dad’s “brainwashing” comment and John Kerry’s “I was for it before I was against it” quote.

• The polls, especially the surprising surge in the number of people who feel the country is headed in the right direction showing up in national surveys. In almost every poll, both public and confidential ones, there has been a 6- to 9-point jump in that number, which the campaigns attribute to the Democratic convention. This is a big reason Obama put serious money behind the 60-second commercial that captured the uplifting mood of the convention — his campaign doesn’t want voters to forget. This number could fade as quickly as it rose but now it’s rattling Romneyworld. As a rule of thumb, more than 90 percent of voters who say the country is headed in the right direction are likely to vote for Obama.

The other poll numbers rattling the GOP campaign are the swing-state polls showing Romney routinely down in Ohio, Virginia and Florida. The Ohio number has improved, albeit only slightly, in some of the private polling for conservative groups. On the bright side, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire look better than expected.

WHAT DOESN’T MATTER:

• The controversy over his statement after the killings in Libya. The Romney high command, in retrospect, wishes the episode had been handled better, keeping all the focus on Obama and his Middle East policies. But look at every poll conducted in this election: Voters are not paying much attention to foreign policy. Period. And the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll out Wednesday shows support for Obama on foreign affairs generally and the Middle East specifically dipped since the uproar. A top Obama adviser said they are reluctant to make too much of Libya, Romney’s omission of troops from his convention speech or any international issue because focus groups and polls show voters’ minds are in a different place.

• The POLITICO story we wrote about staff turmoil on Sunday night, which generated nearly 3 million page views, making it one of the most-read stories in our publication’s history. The story spoke in important ways to the internal issues Romney faces — but his challenges for the next six weeks are all external. He has no interest in a staff shake-up — and knows the key to pulling out of this turbulence and onto a path to victory is clarity of message. Sure, advisers such as Ed Gillespie emerge with a greater say in that message, but the former Bush counselor always had juice and a big say internally. And as any Romney insider will tell you, Romney’s biggest problem the past two weeks has been Romney, not his staff.