Mitt Romney has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that Dan Drezner has aptly characterized as “Romney SMASH China!” Drezner takes Romney’s arguments on their own terms, but I’m more cynical, and accordingly I’m interested in why Romney wrote this piece. Sure, sure, maybe it’s possible that he just has strongly held ideas about U.S.- China policy and chose to voice them, but let’s be real: the man is trying to get the GOP nomination and then get elected president. He or someone in his campaign decided that now was a good time to reach out to the largest circulation conservative op-ed page in the country—one that gets read by a lot of people from whom he’d like to get contributions—with this message.

And what is the message? There’s the usual inchoate American nationalism (making the 21st “an American, not a Chinese century”) and criticism of Obama’s extravagant spending, sure, but there are also some fairly clear signs that Romney wants to signal he’ll get tough on China. He argues that Washington must “directly counter abusive Chinese practices in the areas of trade, intellectual property, and currency valuation.” On the latter, he goes so far as to promise that “on day one of my presidency I will designate [China] a currency manipulator…” despite gradual appreciation in the renminbi highlighted in today’s New York Times.

On the security side, he unsurprisingly suggests that the United States should bolster its role as the balancer-of-first-resort in the Asia-Pacific, claiming without evidence that our allies are worrying that we’re going to leave the region.

Now let’s go back to my question: What’s the play here? Does he think that this is some sort of mass appeal argument that will burnish his credentials in the eyes of the median Republican primary voter? Is he trying to tie economic malaise to the looming ChiCom menace? Maybe so, but does he think that the wealthy potential contributors who read the Journal op-ed page are going to be aroused by this message? That doesn’t seem right to me at all.

There are lots of people who’ve gotten wealthy running political campaigns who no doubt got this piece placed (and probably wrote it), but the questions remain: Why this message? Why this outlet? What was this piece supposed to accomplish? I can’t figure out a persuasive answer.