Is E.J. Dionne smart enough to be a bigtime columnist? If so, does he think his readers are stupid?

The answer to the first question – well, he got there. That has to mean something. The answer to the second? Looks like a yes.

His column today:

The right wing has lost the election of 2012.

The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.

If conservatism were winning, does anyone doubt that Romney would be running as a conservative?

Having done exactly zero basic research in preparation to answer that question, I offer the following:

• Romney was never the hard core conservative pundits like Dionne want to pretend he is. Hey, I wish he was, but he wasn’t and he isn’t.

Except when you compare him to Obama, that is.

• If Romney was running on a hard conservative platform, wouldn’t that be a sign that he hadn’t secured the GOP’s base yet?

Yes.

• Wasn’t “throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard” also a knock on Romney during the primary? RomneyCare, for example?

Yes again.

• Run to the Right (or Left) in the primary, and to the center in the general. Isn’t that the rule of thumb?

Yes a third time.

One more time: if Romney isn’t running as a conservative, that’s a good thing from an electoral perspective. Dionne must know this. If he does, he’s misleading his readers. If he doesn’t… his byline must have come from the same cereal box as Paul Krugman’s Nobel.