Republicans complain constantly that the media “lets him get away with it.” The media is floating down the electric river. No, they—the message-impoverished Republicans—let him get away with it. The Washington GOP is now a political Gulliver, tied down by tweets and twerps.

A month ago, before the congressional Republicans’ General Custer Caucus used “Defund ObamaCare” to vote themselves into their current, bullet-riddled fort, the Obama characterization of the entire GOP as “tea party Republicans” would have been a pathetic stretch. He was the one being laughed at by the whole world for his vanishing red lines in Syria and a foreign policy that even his own defense secretary described as “swinging from vine to vine.”

Not anymore. Barack Obama is Romneyizing the Republicans. He’s doing to Ted Cruz and the House Republicans what he did to Mitt Romney and the 1%. It may be voter brainwashing, but in the expanded media age in which we all marinate, it works.