So many Diaries, pages, words written in hot pursuit of the presumptive nominee. So many attacks on the Campaign that it is hard to discern whether the attacks are effective, or the Campaign inept.
Generally I suspect it to be a mixture of the two. Calling a Press Conference call then refusing to answer basic questions is inept ... but look at the material they are working with!
If Romney is the sole opponent in November, he will get votes. He will get a lot of votes and, in the days when the opposition was simply based on Policy and approach, the GOP could comfortably maintain the fiction that their Man had a road to victory.
He would win the Red States, lose the Blue and the margin in the Battleground was likely, as always, to be narrow. Really, the Obama win in 2008 was massive, and the following midterms was reality creeping back in, or at least "normalcy".
Given even a half-decent opponent the President could expect a second term, but also expect to have to fight for it.
But that was last week.
This week the debate has turned somewhat. Gone are the clamours for policy positions, solutions and proposals. All the stuff of Campaigns, and backed by hundreds of millions of Corporate dollars, comforting for the challenger.
In their place we have ridicule. Ridicule hurts. A well-placed cartoon, writing that rises above the common heap, made easier because much of the material writes itself, the joyous, if a little previous, dancing on the grave of Mitt is taking hold and crucially, the Media is taking it all Prime Time.
We need to go back a bit here.
Romney was never the favoured Candidate of the GOP base. Sure he was the champion of the Oligarchs. He is their Man, of them, cut from the same cloth and malleable. With Mitt in the Oval Office they secure the next four years, a rolling back of regulations that hurt profits (but not the business), and a Supreme Court that will vote "their way" for a generation.
But the rest of the GOP base ... they do not like Mitt Romney. They don't know him, they don't trust him. They despise his "cult" and in an arena where "Identity Politics" is the main driver that persuades people to vote against their best interests, Mitt Romney has an even bigger problem .... They do not think that he understands them, or shares their values.
All of this can be overcome until the ridicule takes hold. They can point to the Black guy, the Kenyan, Muslim, terrorist. They can lie about the President to an audience keen to suckle at the nipple of such lies. They can do all of that, and make it work for them, right up to the point where the candidate becomes so damaged, so tarnished that they simply take the view "We never trusted him anyway".
I wonder are we reaching that point?
Romney went into this Campaign with one message. That his experience as a businessman was what the country needs to restore fiscal sanity. That was it.
The message was played out for many months. Bain Capital saved businesses, and the former Head of Bain Capital could save the nation (from the Obama debacle). As a single issue Campaign it resonates, and who cares about the other stuff because no one is allowed to ask, and no one is prepared to report. A few Bloggers? Pah, we will drown them out with $$$$.
But they are asking, they are beginning to report and the slings and arrows of outrageous bad fortune are winging their way ... Mitt bound.
The Romney Campaign has gone from the enviable position of being able to trumpet Bain Capital, to the less comfortable situation of having to defend it. The cracks have been there for a long time, because as a model for the Presidency, Bain Capital was never a good one. It was always a poor example of Leadership, but they almost pulled off the deception. They have ended up in this situation for those reasons, and for another reason that is way more important.
People want to know where the money went. More than that, they want to know what Romney did with his money. This is not about envy. The Right doesn't care that Mitt is a wealthy man. Increasingly, however, folk across the political divide want to see the evidence. It's the "across the political divide" bit that is new. Lefties, us, can bleat all we like because it's "sour grapes", "we hate rich people", we are Socialists who abhor success, and all the other tired old canards.
What is changing is that the Media is beginning to remember that they are journalists, and the Right is beginning to wonder what the Candidate is hiding.
How Willard must regret the decision his father made, to release twelve years of Tax Returns. Now the calls for Mitt to be a dutiful son and do the same are reaching a crescendo.
So much is this hurting him that one is left to conclude that releasing the damned forms, and being done with it, would hurt MORE! The issue is threatening to consume his Campaign, yet still he resists. Either this is because he is so bloody-minded that he is deaf to the political calculations, or the Tax Returns are so damning that he would potentially be finished.
The voters can stomach 14% Taxation. They would prefer he pay a little more, and Tax Returns showing that he "paid a little more" would lessen the fallout. My suspicion is that they will show that he paid somewhat less in all or many of those years. They may even show that he paid no income taxes for some years.
I don't think his candidacy can survive that. The Right will always give the rich a pass ..... but they will not give a pass to an extremely wealthy man who PAID NO TAXES AT ALL.
After all, do they not continually rail against the large numbers of working poor who pay no taxes? (their phrasing) Is it not central to their mantra that the higher earners contribute to support the poor? This is a circle that cannot be squared.
Absent Romney withdrawing from the race, he has the delegates and I do not know what mechanisms exist to change that.
So if Romney reaches the Convention with a Campaign still intact, however battered it might be, then the GOP has a problem in August.
I'm buying popcorn futures.
2:15 PM PT: Following the excellent comments, I wanted to clarify one thing:
I think it will be difficult to replace Mitt as candidate. I don't know how these things work, but he has the delegates and he has the backing.
What is clear is that the Party is not happy, and he goes into the Election with the damage to his credibility growing. Maybe we should be relaxed about this, because a damaged GOP Candidate is extremely good news for all the Down Ticket Races on the ballot in November.