"But will anyone actually notice?" asked the dunce in the corner.
That's the $64,000 question. (Not sure why anyone would ever get worked up about $64,000 since that's well below middle income, but there it is.)
There are a handful of demographics Romney's going to have to win. His most reliable is, of course, his own demographic -- the rich. And while of course the rich are NOT a monolithic group and rather a lot of them are backing Obama, the ones who want Romney to be President are probably going to continue to want Romney to be President no matter what stupid shit he says or does, and will show up reliably to the polls to vote for him besides. (Another demographic Romney belongs to and can count on: Mormons. But the only two swing states I can think of that may have a significant enough Mormon population to tip the scales are Colorado and Nevada (Then again, Florida was close enough in 2000 that pretty much any goddamn demographic you can come up with would have been enough to determine the outcome. As Tom Tomorrow put it at the time, "Forget Nader; the candidate from something called the Workers' World Party got enough votes to tip this election six times over."))
Now, the Republican Base is of course the demographic that Romney continues bending over backwards to appease -- and I think that's exactly what just happened with the shit-talking about Libya. As far as the people who are motivated primarily by their hatred of the Kenyan Muslim Socialist in the White House are concerned, Romney didn't step on his dick on this one, he did exactly what they wanted. I think it is reasonable to assume that is the only demo that is MORE likely to vote for Romney because he politicized the murder of an ambassador.
Now, as far as people ranging from center-right to center-left (and Libertarians, because who the fuck ever knows how they're going to vote?), you've nailed the big question: will they notice? Will they hear these stories, remember them, show up to vote, and have their votes swayed by them?
As loud a fucking din as those of us on this board think the elections have been for the past year, the majority of the public hasn't been paying attention. They didn't follow the primaries or the conventions; they've got a firmly-developed opinion of Obama (whatever it may be) and a much less developed opinion of Romney (mostly "rich businessman", whatever that entails).
Is there such a thing as a career-ending gaffe like the Dukakis-in-a-tank photo anymore? The Daily Show recently argued that there isn't, that the 24-hour news media picks up on the latest stupid thing for a little bit and then moves on to the next one, sometimes within a matter of hours.
But the other thing is, even if people forget by next week that Romney said something stupid and out-of-touch, that's okay, because he'll have some whole new stupid and out-of-touch thing to say by then.
Even acknowledging the rather weird point that there's a whole big swath of people who hasn't been paying attention and will be getting their first real indication of what kind of guy Romney is in the coming debates, well...I do not foresee Romney doing very well in the debates.
Course, besides that, if anyone making Obama ads has any goddamn sense we'll be seeing the "$200,000 is the middle income" clip pretty much constantly for the next 7 weeks.