MORE AGGRESSION FROM THE WIMP

I've been sneaking glances at headlines, so I knew that Romney surrogate John Sununu was today's designated attack dog against Obama, but I didn't realize just how many wingnut pleasure centers Sununu hit in a short span of time. But is that really what the Romney campaign should be doing right now?

John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and a leading Romney surrogate, told reporters that Obama's recent defense of public infrastructure shows he "doesn't understand how America works."

"I wish this president would learn how to be an American," Sununu said later.

That's one.

Sununu also said that if Obama campaign aides were suggesting Romney may have committed a felony by misleading on SEC filings and public disclosures, Obama should be judged by his past relationship with Tony Rezko, a supporter who was later convicted of fraud.

Rezko? Wingers love it when you mention him. That's two.

And:

"He has no idea how the American system functions," Sununu told Fox. "And we shouldn't be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S., he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago."

Pot? Three. Foreignness? Four. Socialism, "community organizer," and Chicago? Five, six, seven.

Oh, and then there's this on Fox News:

SUNUNU: ... There's a great scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson's character keeps telling the troops as others are coming charging at them, "Hold, hold hold."

Braveheart! Wingers love Braveheart. They love imagining their pasty selves as blue-painted warriors. (Braveheart is for 21st-century neo-Confederates what Sir Walter Scott was for early generations of Confederates and Confederate nostalgists.)

But the last bit points up Romney's problem. Sununu was on Fox talking about Braveheart as a way of explaining to the winger cultists why Romney isn't throwing every talking point that makes the diehards' pulses race at Obama right now -- and, on Fox and elsewhere, Sununu was throwing out a few of those same talking points, just to keep the diehards at bay.

That's Romney's problem: his strategy isn't working, he's on the defensive, and while he's still in a close race, he's getting criticism from his insatiably bloodthirsty base -- and his response is to give them just what they want, even though he knows (or ought to know) that it can't possibly help him. No swing voter gives a rat's ass about Tony Rezko. Every voter who could be persuaded by talk of socialism and Indonesia and Chicago and Obama's exoticism has already been swayed. It's a failed strategy. But Romney is afraid not to order a red meat distribution.

The aggression looks tough, but as I said yesterday, it's a sign of real cowardice on Romney's part. He's just terrified of the base.

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Oh, and, um, that pot thing? Let's go back to 1987, when Sununu was carrying water for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (click to enlarge):