Follow the money and the answers you seek may be plane as day.
Bingo. The GOP establishment is protecting the goose that lays golden eggs. They get it with either Obama or Romney.
Actually, there is no middle at all. What we have are two poles of political existence in this country. One is called the Democrat party and the other is called the Republican party.
Each is made up of factions. Political ideas tend to be the same in each of the two coalitions but support for any particular public policy varies in discrete numbers.
Having explained this several times over the last few weeks let me turn to what is out there in between the parties. That's called A FRINGE. You can all sorts of things from Pat Buchanan to the Libertarian party ~ in some proximity to the Republican party.
For the Democrats you have everything from the Chicago city hall to the crazy abortionist in Philadelphia. But these are fringe groups not really part of the party, nor do they represent a complete faction with regular standing i the party.
Beyond the near pole fringe you get into the outer reaches and those folks just don't engage in politics. Not that they're bad people or anything, but they don't want to be bothered.
When a politician tells you he wants to pull in the independents and the moderates, he's looking at the Moonies ~ among others.
Romney believes there's something to be had in the middle ground ~ bwahahahaha!
His supporters are equally deluded.
In looking over the last couple of hundred Presidential elections, I can't find a single time one of these middle ground guys won.