Has Romney focused on the wrong rival?

On Jan. 2, 2008, Mitt Romney veered into unexpected territory when he opened a press conference in Bettendorf, Iowa, by launching into a broad-based attack on John McCain.

The ploy seemed unusual at the time, since it was the day before the Iowa caucuses, and McCain was mounting only a token campaign in the state.

During the previous month, Romney had focused almost exclusively on trying to stem the surging tide of support for Mike Huckabee, who had caught up with and eventually surpassed Romney in the Iowa polls. And in the months before that, Romney had concentrated on tearing down Rudy Giuliani, who led in national polls but was not able to gain a foothold in any of the early-voting states.

But on that day in Iowa, the former Massachusetts governor's unprompted remarks -- aimed at McCain's vote against the Bush tax cuts -- demonstrated for the first time his campaign's assessment that McCain was his most formidable opponent in the long run.

Unfortunately for Romney, it was already too late. Less than a week afterward, McCain would win the New Hampshire primary -- a victory that set him on a trajectory to capture the Republican nomination.

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Romney's campaign has been credited widely for learning from past blunders and becoming a more astute and effective operation this time around, and it has indeed succeeded on a variety of fronts over the past few months.

But as Newt Gingrich has soared, largely unchecked, to the top of the polls with just 33 days until Republican voters begin the process of picking their 2012 nominee, Romney may be in danger of repeating a key 2008 mistake: failing to recognize his strongest GOP foe until it was too late to stop the opponent's momentum.

For the better part of the past three months, Romney's brain trust in Boston has kept its focus squarely on Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

But despite Perry's financial strength and substantial campaign infrastructure, a series of stumbles has left him confined to the second tier of candidates, according to just about every metric. Though he cannot be counted out completely, there is no discernible indication that Perry will regain the standing he enjoyed upon entering the race.

Meanwhile, as Gingrich has surged into the lead in both national and early-state polls, the Romney campaign has all but ignored him, confident that the former House speaker will collapse under the weight of his own political baggage and a penchant for shooting himself in the foot.

Comparisons between Gingrich's current campaign and McCain's 2008 operation are, of course, inexact. But the similarities between the spring and summertime implosions that each veteran Republican experienced before rising again from the ashes are increasingly difficult to ignore.

Though Gingrich faces a slew of potential pitfalls, he appears in some ways even better positioned to sustain a wholesale comeback than McCain was at this point four years ago.

Unlike the Arizona senator, who was forced to bet everything on New Hampshire, Gingrich enjoys leads in Iowa and South Carolina and appears to be gaining ground on Romney in New Hampshire -- the former Massachusetts governor's backyard.

Gingrich's most eye-popping numbers are in Florida -- the state that proved decisive in the 2008 GOP race and is fourth in line in the 2012 nominating cycle.

An Insider Advantage poll on Wednesday showed Gingrich with a whopping 41 percent to 17 percent advantage over Romney, while a Public Policy Polling survey released on the same day had the former Georgia congressman ahead by an even wider margin, 47 percent to 17 percent.

Though the 2012 campaign has seen more than a few unexpected twists, numbers like those make it more than a little risky for Romney to rely on his air of being "the inevitable nominee," which he has cultivated through frequent and public tit-for-tats with the Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee.

Romney has generally steered clear of mixing it up with his Republican foes, other than Perry.

Meanwhile, Gingrich's potential staying power seems to have caught the Romney campaign off guard.

After just about every presidential debate, Romney's aides have peppered reporters with condemnations of Perry's uneven performances, while declining to critique Gingrich's widely praised showings, which have been a catalyst for his steady rise in the polls.

Since early September, the Romney press shop has blasted out to reporters no less than 59 mass emails drawing attention to Perry's vulnerabilities under such subject lines as "Rick's Retreat On Social Security" and "Perry's 'Pinocchio' Problem."

The number of mass emails the Romney camp has blasted out on Gingrich: zero.

Such evidence only tells part of the story, however, and Romney's Boston headquarters has no doubt been a hive of discussion over how to respond to the Gingrich surge.

On Tuesday night, Romney did take his first direct shot at the former speaker when prompted during an interview with Fox News.

"He's a lifelong politician," Romney said of Gingrich. "I think you have to have the credibility of understanding how the economy works, and I do."

Though the line may be an effective one in this particularly anti-Washington environment, the "lifelong politician" jab was nearly a direct rehash of the "career politician" moniker that the campaign has long assigned to Perry, which may make it sound recycled.

Questions about Gingrich's discipline, his early fundraising weakness, and lack of an extensive nationwide campaign operation are all reasons to wonder whether his recent surge will endure.

But Republican presidential nominations have historically been won through early successes, and Gingrich currently leads in three of the first four voting states, according to the latest RCP polling averages.

That reality is one that Romney's strategists and advertising team may be unable to ignore any longer.

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