Mitt Romney’s speech at the Clinton Global Initiative is not going to help him win the election. If he continues wasting time trying to move the needle on foreign policy, he is likely to lose.

The neoconservatives are giving Gov. Romney bad advice. They have repeatedly trashed him on background in the media for not paying enough attention to foreign policy, claiming that focusing on it more would help him win. The facts are not on their side.

If Romney wanted to win the election based on a foreign policy bump, he would have two tasks before him: to make foreign policy a salient issue, and to make voters prefer him on that issue. On the first task, in every poll asking for voters’ top priority, foreign policy/​war/​terrorism comes in under five percent. However much GOP foreign policy people don’t like it, this election will turn on the economy.

Second, voters prefer Obama to Romney by 15 percent on foreign policy generally, and by 11 percent specifically on foreign policy in the Middle East. Even after the Obama administration’s poor handling of the violence in Egypt and Libya, voters preferred Obama’s response over the Romney camp’s demagoguery by a margin of 45 to 26.

Focusing on foreign policy will not win Romney the election. And if he loses, as in 2008, the Republicans will have the neoconservatives to blame. Whether they would choose to accept the lesson of 2008 and 2012 is another question altogether.