Romney incompetence in messaging.

By now, you've seen it, of course.  This garbage about when Romney was, or was not, employed at Bain... as if that mattered one wit.

Romney has lost complete control of his message.  He fails to understand that the economy is all he needs, so he does precisely and exactly what Obama wants him to do, fearful of being Swiftboated like that moron John Kerry.

It's long since past time for Romney to get into a fist fight with this clown.  Instead if calling him out and smacking him, ("Mr. President... with all due respect, you are a liar.  You're a desperate, despicable human being who is driving us off a fiscal cliff and who has turned us into the laughing stock in both foreign and domestic policy under an abysmal tenure that makes many Americans long for the days of Jimmy Carter.  This is YOUR economy, and you have failed over and over again to end your recession, put America back to work, and restore our place in the world as the Superpower.  You.  Not President Bush.  You.") he plays that nice, white bread Mormon boy shtick that is getting him off message and keeping him there.

Messaging is the thing, you see... at every level.

In 2010, I went after Jon Russell for all the reasons set forth in the Jon Russell Watch blog.  I saw him as a menace to our society and a blight on government.  He made it easy, since he lived up to that expectation by lying about his education, his wife's title, his campaign funds, by making up and getting caught using fake facebook identities... those truths forced him completely off message and every time he talked about it, every time he answered questions about it, both formally and informally, he was doing precisely what I wanted him to do.

It was easy to manipulate Russell.  It was easy to change the conversation from his weak positioning to attempting to defend his bizarre actions and lies and deliberate mischaracterizatons of himself as campaign tools.

The irony of all of that was this: the truth wasn't that bad.  If he had just stuck to it, he would have been much more competitive.  I'd have beaten him anyway, but he would have been able to do what Romney cannot: stay on message.

Romney's failure to double-down and come back over the top sends a message of weakness.  Obama has already shown himself an incompetent liar; there's a target-rich environment for Romney based entirely on arguably the tenure of the most pitiful president in our history.

But what's Romney talking about?

Well, it ain't the economy.  It's not a foreign policy that would make Groucho Marx wince.  It's not about Obamacare. (Course, with Romneycare as the titular model, maybe he shouldn't.) It's not about Obama gutting Welfare Reform and enslaving an entire class of people to social programs.

Nope.  It's not about any of that.

It's about paperwork, the SEC and a "felony."

This is perfect guerrilla politics.

Obama sent out a lower level campaign staffer that no one ever heard of to be the possible sacrificial lamb with a certain level of deniability by sending her out to take one for the team and float this garbage.

Romney becomes fixated on that scam like a kitten on a laser pointer... and that's precisely how Obama is playing him.

And it's part of the reason why I cannot and will not support a man like Romney as president.

Romney seems easily distracted and easy to manipulate.  Because both of those things are happening right now, and that he can't seem to figure that out is hardly a reason to want him to be in the Oval Office.