the Romney campaign has always been a schizophrenic one, torn between the conflicting demands of shoring up its hard-core Conservative base and courting Republican Moderates, Independents, and disaffected Democrats.

The indecision is unnecessary. No matter how much the Hard Right distrusts Romney, they loathe Obama more. Those votes are secure and the Liberal Obama loyalists will never be persuaded to vote GOP. Romney should be going after the middle, the swing voters. Instead, he seems to be doing everything he can to alienate them. Romney crushed the wingnut Right during his campaign for the nomination, but he apparently learned nothing, except to fear them.

When you are surrounded by True Believers, you gradually come to be persuaded that the world is filled with True Believers, with only a tiny cadre of your fanatical opponents determined to stop the inevitable march of History and Truth. The same zealotry that Romney seeks to exploit will be his undoing.

As Smiley said about Karla 'He CAN be defeated, because he is a fanatic, and the fanatic is inflexible."