This BuzzFeed story suggests that Mitt Romney is about to hit President Obama with everything he's got:

In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president's moral character: "He's a nice guy," the Republican has often said. "He just has no idea how the private economy works." But Tuesday's speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there's a reason for that.

"[Romney] has said Obama's a nice fellow, he's just in over his head," the adviser said. "But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he's really disappointed. He believes it's time to vet the president. He really hasn't been vetted; McCain didn't do it...I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate," the adviser said. "The bottom line is there'll be counterattacks."

The thing I'm getting from this story (and others like it) is that Romney's feelings were genuinely hurt by the Bain attacks. Which is remarkable for one reason: It means that Romney didn't see the Bain attacks coming. How do you run a presidential campaign at that level and not see those sorts of attacks coming? If this Huffington Post story is true, Romney "never would have gone forward with his run for president" if he knew that his tax returns would be this much of an issue. This is either a case of tremendous arrogance or tremendous stupidity.

The problem with these anti-Obama attacks, and with going for a Breitbartian "vetting" of the president, is that issues from before he was elected were basically settled on the day he was elected. You don't get a do-over in presidential politics. You don't get to dig up issues that were already considered and rejected by voters, to convince them to go over those same issues again. The best you can hope for is to rile up the conservative base into even more of a froth, and maybe to turn away people from the polls with how disgusting the race is getting. But I'm not even convinced of the Romney campaign's ability to plan that kind of triangulation; I think they're just swinging wild at this point.