Just take his interview Thursday night with the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston, who tried to elicit a specific plan from Romney to address the housing crisis, which is worse in Nevada than anywhere else in the country. Romney simply replied that “the best thing we can do to help people whose homes are underwater and are looking at foreclosure is to get the economy going again” and then ticked off some statistics about how bad the economy is. Ralston eventually cut him off, resulting in this exchange:

RALSTON: But what does accomplish something for these people here, governor? I’m sorry to interrupt you, but these people are watching and they’re saying, “How if Mitt Romney becomes president will he help me with my problem? I’m underwater on my home, I can’t get the bank to negotiate anything with me.” And essentially your comment seems to indicate, “Oh, you’ll be fine. Let the foreclosure process go. You might get kicked out of your house. I can’t do anything about it.”

ROMNEY: Well, how’s it worked under President Obama? He’s been president three years. How’s it worked with him? What he’s done is he’s made things worse. You’ve got people in this country that continue to see housing values decline, foreclosures on the rise, median income is declining. My course is getting the economy going, getting people back to work again.

It’s a simple game plan: Take whatever issue is on the table, connect it to the economy, and blame Obama for not fixing it. Rinse and repeat. Another good demonstration came in a recent Twitter spat between Obama strategist David Axelrod and Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, who stated over and over that 1.7 million jobs had been lost under Obama while ignoring Axelrod’s attempts to put the numbers in context. Jonathan Chait captured the significance of the exchange:

Obama doesn’t have a simple and straightforward reply. His complicated answer is reflected in Axelrod’s argumentation: The crisis began under Bush, the direction of the economy has improved dramatically since, and Republicans want to return to the Bush’s administration’s policies. Fehrnstrom’s reply to all this is to keep pointing, over and over, to the fact that things are bad. It’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault. That’s the argument Romney will drive home until November, and that argument usually prevails when an incumbent president is presiding over a bad economy.

But if the president is presiding over an economy that voters believe is improving, the magic vanishes. Which explains the awkwardness the Romney campaign faced this morning, when the most encouraging jobs report of Obama’s presidency was released. With a net increase of 243,000 jobs in January, the unemployment rate is now down to 8.3 percent, marking the fifth straight month it fell and bringing it to its lowest level since Obama’s first full month in office.

Faced with such obviously good economic news, the Romney team took its time responding, first churning out a press release on an unrelated topic (“President Obama’s attack on religious liberty”) then finally putting out a statement that read in part: “We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better.” A series of negative economic statistics then followed.

Besides the acknowledgement that “jobs were created,” the statement was no different than anything Romney has been saying for the entire campaign. But juxtaposed against the big news of the morning, it read as petty, and almost absurdly comical. If — and, to be clear, it’s a very big if — the good economic news continues in the months ahead, Romney’s rhetoric will only fall flatter.

That’s why today’s news raises the possibility that Romney could end up as another Walter Mondale, whose 1984 campaign epitaph reads: “Too bad the election wasn’t 18 months earlier.” When Mondale set out to run after the 1982 midterms, unemployment was surging to over 10 percent, Reagan’s job approval rating was falling under 40 percent, and trial heats showed the former vice president substantially ahead of the incumbent. But by this same point in 1984, the jobless rate was falling (the January ’84 jobs report put it at eight percent, the fifth straight month of decline) and Reagan’s approvals were quickly rebounding. By November, unemployment was at 7.1 percent and Reagan won his 49-state landslide.

Granted, if Romney does lose, the margin won’t be that bad. And, again, the current recovery is a tenuous one — by the summer, we may look back at today’s news as a mirage. If that’s the case, then Romney’s substance-free Obama-blaming will probably work just fine. But if not, well, “Things could be better!” just doesn’t have the same ring as “He made them worse!”

As I wrote earlier, Gingrich may be a better match for Trump when it comes to expressing seething contempt for President Obama, but Trump’s public image depends on the appearance of clout, influence and general importance. This makes a Romney endorsement far more sensible; since Romney is far more likely than Gingrich to win the nomination (and in Nevada, where Trump is due to make his announcement), Trump will position himself to claim credit for pushing him over the top.

But is a Trump endorsement a good thing for Romney? That’s a more complicated matter, and it gets to the basic tension between Romney’s primary and general election imperatives.

From a general election standpoint, it’s potentially problematic. For one thing, Trump has always been a lightning rod, but in the past year he’s emerged as a particularly divisive figure, thanks to his birther crusade and degrading attacks on Obama. To the extent these antics have resonance, it’s on the right; among swing voters, they’re much more likely to be a turnoff. At the height of his political activity last year, Trump’s unfavorable score with all voters soared to new heights, and it remains at 48 percent today — eight points above his favorable number.

Plus, Trump’s own top 1 percent image could help reinforce Romney’s main vulnerability as a general election candidate. With his Bain Capital history and personal tax status dominating the news for the past month, Romney’s standing has plunged with blue-collar swing voters, a constituency that will be critical to the GOP’s hopes of ousting Obama. Nor has Romney helped himself with his often-clumsy efforts to inoculate himself against the charge that he’s an out-of-touch plutocrat. Does he really want to be associated with a celebrity business tycoon whose catchphrase is “You’re fired”? Already, Democrats are having some fun with this. “They both like firing people,” DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman  Schultz said on MSNBC. “They both make millions doing it.”

So you might think this would be a good moment for Romney to stage a Sister Souljah moment — to dramatically refuse Trump’s endorsement, bask in the resulting praise from the media, and reassure swing voters that he doesn’t embody all of the excesses of Tea Party-era Republicanism. But according to ABC News, Romney’s campaign has had “multiple discussions” with Trump in an effort to secure an endorsement.

From a primary season standpoint, this does make sense. Romney is likely to win the GOP nomination, but Gingrich (and Rick Santorum, for that matter) is still out there and the possibility of more embarrassing hiccups is very real. For instance, Gingrich could plausibly win a bunch of Southern states in early March, a result that would revive all of the talk about Romney’s weakness as a candidate and potentially extend the GOP race through the spring and into the summer. So Romney isn’t out of the woods yet, and it would be risky to make an enemy out of Trump right now. After all, Trump’s anti-Obama shtick resonates with many of the same hardcore Republicans who gravitate toward Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain and the other prominent Tea Party voices who have been helpful to Gingrich recently.

In other words, Romney may well recognize Trump’s potential to hurt him with general election voters. But he wants to make sure he gets to the general election, and that means playing along

Update: And now it’s official. In a somewhat bizarre scene just before 1 p.m. PST, Romney stood next to Trump and formally received his endorsement. “Mitt is tough,” Trump said. “He’s sharp. Governor Romney, go out and get them — you can do it!” Romney seemed slightly uncomfortable, praising Trump for his supposed knowledge of economic issues and his anti-China rhetoric (and even calling him “Mr. Trump”), then veering into his customary talking points. “There are some things you can’t imagine happening in your life,” he remarked at one point. “This is one of them.” What he meant by this wasn’t exactly clear, but his tone suggested he didn’t mean it in the “Wow, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me!” way. Romney didn’t take questions from the press.

Gingrich makes the most sense when you consider that Trump’s public image as a man of unrivaled wealth, power and influence depends on other Important People treating him as one, thereby cementing the impression in the minds of common folk. So you can imagine how humiliating it must have been for Trump back in December when his plan to play the starring role (as moderator) in what would have been the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses blew up in his face, with most of the candidates refusing to take part. Some of them openly mocked Trump, but the real blow came when Romney ginned up a transparently phony excuse and said he couldn’t make it; without the national front-runner and most of the supporting cast, there was really no point in going forward, and the debate was canceled.

According to the image Trump has cultivated, every presidential candidate should have come running at the snap of his finger; that they all didn’t was, in a way, an emperor-has-no-clothes moment. But Gingrich was the exception. He immediately and enthusiastically accepted the invitation and ridiculed Romney for dragging his feet. In other words, he did his part to affirm the Trump image. (Rick Santorum also said yes to the invitation, but he had yet to surge into contention and was barely receiving any attention at the time.)

Gingrich has also distinguished himself as the Republican candidate most willing to channel the sort of sneering contempt toward Barack Obama that Trump so freely expresses. Not only did Trump spend months fanning the flames of birtherism, he also regularly disparages the president’s intellect, suggesting (for instance) that Obama was a “terrible student” who only got into Harvard because of affirmative action:

“How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records,” he said, without providing backup for his claim.

Trump added, “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard.”

This is the same game that Gingrich plays when he tells Republican audiences about his plan to challenge Obama to seven three-hour debates this fall. “I’d let him use a TelePrompTer,” Gingrich will say. “I’ll just rely on knowledge.” And while Gingrich doesn’t embrace birtherism, he’s had no trouble arguing that Obama exhibits “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” The idea that Obama is essentially an unintelligent foreign-born or foreign-influenced radical is central to both the Trump and Gingrich messages.

But Romney seems a better bet for Trump when you consider that Gingrich is probably going to lose. More specifically, Gingrich is poised to lose badly in Nevada on Saturday — and Nevada is where Trump is making his announcement. And his prospects after the Silver State aren’t much better. So even if Trump is peeved with Romney over his debate excuse-making and even if he prefers Gingrich’s brand of Obama-bashing, there’s a strong ego-based case for endorsing Romney: It will be easy for Trump to take credit when he wins.

The blue counties were won by Mitt Romney, while Gingrich carried the red ones. Gingrich’s strength, as you can see, was heavily concentrated in the northeast corner of the state and in the panhandle region. Given that he ran 14 points behind Romney statewide, it’s striking that Gingrich actually finished first in so many counties, and his margins in some of them were considerable; all told, he beat Romney by double-digits in 20 counties.

This underscores the profound cultural and demographic divide that defines Florida, and the significance for future contests in other states is obvious. As Ed Kilgore put it, “basically, the more a county resembled GA or AL, the more likely it was that Newt would win, and that, of course, will be part of his rationale for continuing on, at least to states where Crackro-Americans dominate.”

This is why, as much as Romney would like to behave as the presumptive GOP nominee now, Gingrich will still be treated as a relevant figure by the political world at least through early March. That’s when Georgia, Alabama and several other Old Confederacy states that are demographically similar to Gingrich’s Florida sweet spots – and to South Carolina, for that matter — will vote.

A few other Florida findings bolster the notion that Romney still has something to prove in the South. Among evangelical voters, according to the exit polls, Gingrich eked out a 38 to 36 percent margin. In a way, this was a triumph for Romney, who got his clock cleaned among Christian conservatives in South Carolina, but the evangelical share of the Florida GOP electorate was just over 40 percent. It was nearly 70 percent in South Carolina, and figures to be around the same in the rest of the South.

Plus, voters who identified themselves as “very conservative” – a bloc that accounted for 33 percent of Florida’s voting universe – broke for Romney Gingrich (!) by a 41-30 percent spread. Again, the “very conservative” share should be higher elsewhere in Dixie.

This should allow Gingrich to absorb a string of defeats in February; all but one of the states that will vote this month, as ABC’s the Note points out, went for Romney when he ran four years ago. And the exception, Arizona, comes with an asterisk, since it was John McCain’s home state – and even then, Romney still managed to hold the favorite son to a 14-point margin. (The state’s high LDS population probably played a role.) By contrast, Romney was held to 18 percent in Alabama, 24 percent in Tennessee and 30 percent in Georgia in ’08. He had a chance two weeks ago in South Carolina, where he nabbed just 15 percent four years ago, to show that he’d won over the Deep South, but that didn’t work out so well.

So now Gingrich can spend the next six weeks warning Southerners about the Massachusetts Mormon with a moderate – make that liberal – past. There’s some irony in this. Gingrich started out in politics supporting Nelson Rockefeller over Barry Goldwater in 1964, while the modern Southern GOP largely grew out of Goldwater’s victory in that race. But in this race, it’s Romney who is most commonly associated with Rockefeller, and Gingrich who presents himself as a modern-day Goldwater.