Mitt's got it bad, and that ain't good

Steve Kornacki issues a once-legitimate but now-receding caveat:

[F]or all of the attention Romney’s trip has attracted, most voters still aren’t paying attention – and for those who are, the story will be overtaken by something else next week, and something else the week after, and so on, until it’s a distant (at best) memory.

By "something else" Kornacki means something non-gaffish. A new jobs report, a fresh GDP, a euro meltdown, an Iranian crisis, "something" like that, something that will overwhelm Mitt Romney's impressively accumulated record of jawdropping blunders.

Early on, I feared that as the case. He's just warming up, I thought, it's been four years, he's rusty, he'll get better. But at some indefinite, indistinct, vague and shadowy point during the GOP primary season it became thunderingly clear that Mitt Romney is a man of boundless, inevitable oafishness: he stumbled from his wife's "couple of Cadillacs" to right-heighted trees to human corporations to $10,000 bets to not hiring illegals (when politically inconvenient) to being "[un]sure about these cookies."

My guess? We'll actually witness an exponential pickup in the pace of Romney's gaffes, for the simple reason that the more self-conscious he becomes in tapping them down, the more aggressively they'll pop up. I don't know why. It's just human nature for the most intense self-intentions to go preposterously awry. And Mitt Romney's got 'em bad.

Comments

[Peter G]

The diagnosis: Magical Mittstery Tourettes Syndrome. There is no cure.

[Joy]

I'm betting that the debates will be the spot where the "real Mitt" comes out in all his smarminess, privileged, sanctimonious, condescending, etc. ways. This is the time everyone will be watching and I don't see him able to deftly pivot away from his true self. He's not that nimble.

[japa21]

I am sure the Obama campaign won't let the country forget. There are a lot of things Romney has said, including some mentioned above as well as "corporations are people too, my firend" and "I like to fire people" that the campaign has not really touched. September and October is when you will see those.

I also am looking forward to the debates, but a lot depends on the moderator and the questions chosen. I am not thrilled that Gallup will be picking the audience for the town hall debate, supposedly picking undecided voters.

[Chris Andersen]

A narrative is building around Romney. Even if a significant number of voters don't really start paying attention until September, that narrative will still have seeped into their subconscious. They will be fertile soil for Obama.

[melsouza]

I agree completely with Chris Anderson. What we are witnessing are the Hors D' Oeuvres. We're just wetting our appetites--the flavors are seeping into our nervous system. The full course will begin at the Conventions. But my guess is that there will be a major embarrassment for Mittiot just around his convention, possibly relating to his tax returns. He will have a defensive convention, under fire. And then he will go on to be barbecued in the Fall. And I agree with PM--the more exposure he gets (and there is no way a Presidential campaign in this day and age can be Palinized)..the more gaffes he will commit. And if he is under intense pressure, as I suspect he will be, he will start to melt down pretty quickly.

[Janicket]

Tuck in your bibs, kids -- Harry Reid is telling HuffPo that he got a phone call from a Bain Capital investor who told him that Mitt Romney didn't pay any income taxes for ten years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/31/harry-reid-romney-taxes_n_1724027.html