Will Romney really be better than Perry? - Exra Klein

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/will-romney-really-be-better-than-perry/2011/08/25/gIQAx5byqK_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein

Mitt Romney has very little trust inside his party. If he wins the Republican nomination, it will be because he persuaded the conservative base that Rick Perry would lose to President Obama. A relationship of convenience, however, won’t give Romney a lot of running room once in office. If he wants to hold his party’s members of Congress, and avoid a primary challenge in 2016, he’s going to have to show an uncommon level of fealty to the Republican agenda. His impulses as a competent technocrat might be quite blunted by his instincts as a politician interested in his own survival. A candidate who was more of a party darling — a Chris Christie, say — would be in a much better position to sell compromises to his copartisans.