Republicans like to think that their political worldview is based on time-honored concepts like natural law, freedom and individual rights, and not on craven political considerations.

Unfortunately for the GOP, their presidential race suggests the latter, not the former. How bizarre is it that Newt Gingrich decries Mitt Romney, whose Bain Capital actually created jobs, as a “vulture” capitalist? Whatever happened to rewarding risk and initiative, and praising, not condemning, those who drive the American economy? (And how bizarre is it that Romney can’t put away Gingrich, who got $600,000 from Fannie Mae, the Government Sponsored Enterprise whose fingerprints are all over the late 2000s recession?)

Unfortunately for Romney, he’s not helping his own cause by veering between stereotypical right-wing hardened hearts (he claimed “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” which sounds bad, although I’d be more concerned about the middle class, as he then said he was) and unintelligent liberal ideas (indexing the minimum wage to inflation).

The GOP better figure this out since Romney appears to be on the way to the GOP nomination, lest the GOP blows what follows:

The map is a Washington Examiner extrapolation of the most recent Gallup Poll presidential approval/disapproval numbers. Obama has more negatives than positives in the red states, and if the vote in the presidential election followed those trends, well, Obama better be making plans for his life after Jan. 20.

But the GOP is certainly capable of screwing it up. Despite the fact that the economy is practically guaranteed to not be noticeably better by Election Day (and may become much worse), and despite the fact that Obamacare is tremendously unpopular (for good reason), and despite the fact that Obama’s greatest successes are what he was not able to do (i.e. raise taxes beyond the dozen or so tax increases we’re enjoying now), none of the remaining GOP presidential candidates are able to cross the spot where party popularity translates into electability.

It would help if presidential candidates didn’t demonize one of their core constituencies, the people who will have to pull the economy out of its apparent doldrums. Jim Pethokoukis passes on Ed Yardeni, an economist who attended something called the Distressed Investing Summit and Turnaround Awards Gala:

No one said, “Greed is good.” I did hear one investment banker say that Chapter 11 is good. Bankruptcy is better than liquidation. He observed that in America the legal system is sensibly designed to restructure distressed companies rather than to shut them down. I heard lots of heart-warming stories about how these fearless capitalists took lots of risks to turn companies around by replacing incompetent or corrupt managers with their own management pros.

Yes, in some instances, these fine folks had to fire other fine folks to boost the productivity and competitiveness of their acquired companies. That’s the heartless part of these heart-warming stories. However, in most cases, there were happy endings, which averted both the total liquidation of the enterprises and the termination of all their workers. The remaining employees certainly benefitted when their restructured companies were revived.

When these turnaround artists succeed, they can get very rich by taking their companies public or by selling them to other companies. Again, some workers may lose their jobs in the process, but it beats the alternative. That’s just one important example of how the 1% really do help the 99%. At the end of last year, Wilbur Ross, who is a private-equity billionaire, observed that entrepreneurship and capitalism didn’t cause the financial crisis: He added, “Tearing down the rich does not help those less well-off. If you favor employment, you need employers whose businesses are flourishing.”

… Today, one of the main sources of the economy’s resilience is the availability of so much private equity to purchase and revive distressed companies. Too bad Mitt Romney, who made his fortune as a private equity investor, hasn’t figured out yet how to explain this to the public.

Pethokoukis adds: “Mitt Romney might want to memorize this.” And not just Romney.