So now the GOP has gotten a taste of their own medicine, with lurid, hyperbolic attack adds dominating the electoral process. And they do not like it, not one bit. Two deeply flawed candidates have emerged as frontrunners in a process that has exacerbated and amplified those flaws a thousand fold. The tide may have finally turned, Mitt Romney may have finally learned how to punch back, and the tide of establishment money may have finally swamped Newt Gingrich for good as a serious threat - though he's unlikely to quit. But even if Gingrich were to quit today, months and months of videotaped debates, press conferences, attack ads and various other vicious odds and ends are not just going to go away. They'll be back when the general election campaign really heats up next fall.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122164215194680.html

 In 2012, Mitt Romney’s chief problem isn’t his riches, though they’re not always helpful in an era of sharpened concern about the unequal distribution of wealth. His chief problem isn’t the wariness that many conservative purists feel toward him, though that suspicion was both the fuel for Rick Santorum’s victories last week and the fraught context of Romney’s visit to the Conservative Political Action Conference here on Friday, during which he performed the oratorical equivalent of cartwheels to the right.

What impedes his candidacy more than anything else is an excitement deficit. An excitement void, really. It’s hard to find a single Republican, including those most solidly behind him, who demonstrates true passion for him or can do even a persuasive pantomime of it. They call him effective, not inspirational. They praise his competence, not his charisma. He doesn’t exert any sort of gravitational pull on his party. There’s no full swoon.

read more http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/bruni-romneys-missing-magic.html?_r=1&hp       

 But if the endorsement held the potential to further choke off the oxygen to Mr. Santorum’s insurgent candidacy, the Romney campaign inadvertently gave Mr. Santorum a new supply when a senior adviser went on CNN and seemed to suggest that Mr. Romney’s conservative positions in the primary season could change like an Etch a Sketch drawing.

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime adviser to Mr. Romney, said in response to a question about pivoting to a matchup with Mr. Obama and appealing to moderate swing voters. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”      

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/us/politics/jeb-bush-endorses-romney-aide-makes-etch-a-sketch-gaffe.html?_r=1&hp