A Surprising Benefit of Romney's Attempt to Shift To The Middle

Will this presdidential election season bring at least a temporary end to gridlock in Washington? It is early yet, but it sure seems that way. 

Student loan interest rates are about to go up in a big way, and President Obama is currently making a push for a continued low rate on these loans:

Courting college voters, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Congress needs to keep the cost of college loans from skyrocketing for millions of students, taking an important election-year message to three states crucial to his bid to hold onto the White House.

Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that he personally understood the burden of college costs, noting that he and first lady Michelle Obama had "been in your shoes" and didn't pay off their student loans until eight years ago.

"I didn't just read about this. I didn't just get some talking points about this. I didn't get a policy briefing on this," Obama said, recalling he and his wife shared a "mountain of debt" not a long time ago. "When we married, we got poor together."

My first thought on reading this is that there is no way the GOP will support Obama's proposal. After all, they haven't agreed with him on anything, even to the point of rejecting Republican ideas (e.g., Pay-Go, the Bipartisan Deficit Commission, the Individual Health Care Mandate, Cap and Trade, trying terrorism suspects in federal court) merely because Obama embraced them.

Well, the incredible just happened. The de facto leader of the Republican Party just embraced one of Obama's ideas:

"I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students," Romney said Monday, a day before five states hold primaries, though he did not offer specifics on how the extension should be paid for or how long it should last. He said he supports the extension because of "extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market."

In other words, Romney's need to shed his self-described severe conservatism in order to appeal to moderate voters may actually cause something to get done in Washington.  It's one thing for the GOP to oppose everything Obama supports, but it is going to be hard for Republicans to go against their presidential nominee during the run-up to what will undoubtedly be a very close General Election.

As politics go, this is a pretty amazing turn of events, and I hope -- for the country's sake -- we see more of it.