The Sorrows of (Not-so) Young Mitt

Mitt's campaign looks to actually be in trouble. There have been other surges by other candidates but Santorum's rise is different. When other candidates rose in the polls against him, Romney could outspend them by factors of ten and beat them down. He's doing it again against Santorum in Michigan. But, for a a couple reasons, it may be less effective this time around.

Charlie Pierce outlines the first one in this post. Romney has already tacked so far to the right to try to win the base that he can't attack Santorum where he's really weak, i.e., his crackpot conservative stances. As Charlie puts it, "Romney has sold so much of his political soul to the wingnut base of his party on these issues that his positions on them are now indistinguishable from Santorum's...."

The second reason, put forward here, is that Mitt can't seem to crack into small donors and his well-heeled donor base may actually be running low on cash, or at least the will to spend it on Mitt. Of course, those people will probably come back for the eventual GOP nominee but that might not matter to Mitt if his well runs dry now.