By Sasha Issenberg, Globe Correspondent | March 2, 2010

 

LEXINGTON - As Mitt Romney sets out this week to promote his new book, “No Apology,’’ he is also auditioning for a rapidly disappearing role in American politics: a politician who is speaking out against the “temptations of populism.’’

 

“The populism I’m referring to is, if you will, demonizing certain members of society: going after businesspeople, going after Wall Street, going after people who are highly educated, people who are CEOs,’’ Romney said in an interview. “That kind of ‘All of our problems are due to that group’ is something that is unproductive.’’

 

The former Massachusetts governor and highly successful businessman says his critique of populist politics applies to both President Obama, who is battling bankers over Wall Street rules, and Republican leaders who have courted the “tea party’’ movement by turning their anger on corporate leaders along with government.

 

Instead of ideological fervor, Romney is working to win over Republican voters and party elites with intellectual sobriety more tightly linked to his career as a management consultant and venture capitalist. If he runs again for president in 2012, he is preparing to do so as a serious policy wonk with a taste for economics and geostrategy but little interest in unnecessarily inflaming the culture wars.

 

Romney’s book is notable for its silences. The 2008 candidate who worked hard to convince religious conservatives of their shared passion for social issues devotes just two cursory paragraphs to abortion, makes only incidental reference to gun rights, and refers to gay marriage in the most cryptic terms possible. His “case for American greatness,’’ as his book’s subtitle puts it, has little to do with morality.

 

“It’s always a great interest on the part of those questioning a candidate to know where they stand on social issues, but I don’t know it’s a topic that’s going to be resolved with rhetoric and analysis,’’ Romney said this weekend at the office of his Free and Strong America political-action committee. “It’s rather a topic where one has one view or one has the other view and you’re not going to persuade someone.’’

 

This week’s release of “No Apology’’ unveils another political transformation for Romney. This time, Romney isn’t so much adjusting his positions on abortion, guns, or gays as downplaying those views in favor of less divisive themes.

 

“Populism sometimes takes the form of being anti-immigrant, and appearing anti-immigrant, and that likewise is destructive to a nation which has built its economy through the innovation and hard work and creativity of people who have come here from foreign shores,’’ Romney said.

 

Romney remains a fierce partisan, ready with a cutting line toward Democrats, whom he blames for the worst of the country’s troubles and a foreign agenda he says will risk American security. The book’s defiant title refers to Obama’s “steady stream of criticisms, put-downs, and jabs directed at the nation he was elected to represent and defend,’’ as Romney puts it. “Obama’s words are like kindling,’’ he writes, to “anti-American fires burning all across the globe.’’

 

But in a number of places, such as proposing new federal investments in research to spur innovation, Romney demonstrates a greater confidence than many prominent Republicans in government’s ability to solve big problems.