Is this the "Macaca moment" Obamaholics were hoping for?

I have some news for you Obamaholics: this election is going to be close. Why? Because the country is split pretty evenly between the two political gangs, and in spite of all the latest polls in key swing states, Mitt's people are going to ride or die with him no matter what. This election will be all about getting out the base.

I see republicans doing whatever it takes to win: Coordinating with wingnut bloggers to create a false narrative. Coordinating with wingnut state legislatures to make sure that it's harder for the other gang's voters to get to the polls. And literally changing the message of their candidate from day to day to fit the particular group he is speaking to. Democrats, if you are only relying on "hope and change", you are going to be in for a long day on November 6th.

Still, there is Mitt Romney, and if you are a dumbocratic supporter, you have to be thinking that as long as Mitt is at the top of the wingnut ticket you will always have a chance.

Mitt's political problem started a few years ago with an incident in Virginia.

"As the 2006 midterm campaign began, Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen seemed well on his way to a big re-election victory—the prelude to his all-but-certain campaign for president in 2008. Allen’s strong appeal to the religious right promised to provide him a huge advantage in Iowa, where more than half the Republican electorate is self-identified evangelicals.
Then, on Aug. 11, while campaigning in Breaks, Allen spied S.R. Sidarth, who was video recording Allen on behalf of his Democratic opponent, Jim Webb. Turning to Sidarth, Allen said:

“This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”
"....With Romney’s enormous financial advantage, the thinking went, Romney could win in Iowa, capture his neighboring state of New Hampshire a week later, and effectively cinch the nomination in its opening weeks.

To do that, however, Romney would have to accelerate his efforts to move to the political right. His essentially centrist moderate tenure as governor—pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-environmentalism—was always going to be a problem with the increasingly conservative base of the Republican Party. Had Allen won his race and entered the presidential contest, Romney might well have chosen the path that McCain took: skip Iowa and concentrate his efforts in New Hampshire, where evangelicals represent a far smaller element of the GOP. But with Iowa now a target of opportunity for Romney, his move rightward became more like a lunge.

That has haunted him for six years.

It’s not just that the tactic failed as Huckabee leveraged his strong support among evangelicals to win the Iowa caucuses, and McCain reminded New Hampshire folks why they’d fallen in love with him in 2000.

It’s that Romney had to so completely redefine himself that it stamped him as a candidate who cannot tell us who he is and what he stands for. Despairing conservative pundits keep urging him to “tell America who you really are,” and it brings to mind Robert Kennedy in 1965 entreating New York mayoral candidate Abe Beame to “tell the voters why you want to be mayor!”—to which Beame replied: “Great—what do I say then?”

For me, Romney always seems in perpetual fear of saying the wrong thing, finding himself trapped between the governor he was, and the candidate he has been and still is. If my memory is correct, there has never been a moment when Romney has said to his party’s base, “I have a different view than you do about" about, well, anything, as Bill Clinton did on welfare and free trade, as George W. Bush did on the federal government’s role in education." [Source]

Of course, no matter what republicans do, it will all be for nothing if Mitt just had his very own "Macaca moment".