The “dreadful inevitability” of Mitt Romney’s candidacy has led James Wolcott to conclude that the wing-nut right, despite its blustering, packs a feeble punch:

…The right blogosphere ain’t squat. It’s a hornet’s nest up in the attic whose noise can be safely ignored. No top-tier candidate was more unbeloved by rightwing bloggers than Mitt Romney…

…The Tea Party is all peckered out. It isn’t just that Romney is the least favorite Tea Party favor (apart from the now-gone Huntsman) but that his recent surge gives lie to the Tea Party’s populist fervor. The attacks on Romney’s record as a venture capitalist (“vulture capitalist,” in Rick Perry’s nice phrase) at Bain in the Super-Pac documentary “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town”–visually, a punk collage crossed with a fragmentation grenade–seems to have strengthened his hold on the top spot, and not solely because angry bladders like Rush Limbaugh have rallied to the defense of poor, little, frail turbo-capitalism. It’s because the controversy tapped into the dirty little non-secret of Tea Party activists…

The secret, of course, is that Tea Party activists and so-called moderate Republicans are not so different and will end up on the same page. The only X factor is Ron Paul.