“Over 75 percent of the advertising the Obama campaign has run has been negative, anti-Romney ads, with at least 14 separate negative ads,” the Romney campaign noted in a publicly issued July 8 memo. “. . . Yet, despite all of the negative advertising from the Obama campaign, polling numbers are exactly where they were before they started this onslaught.”

That may have been true then, but there is now general agreement on both sides that the early Obama push was effective in negatively defining Romney.

Less certain is whether the post-Labor Day fundraising sprint, when the Romney camp’s prudence in conserving its resources earlier was supposed to pay off, will reap similar rewards for the Republican.

It apparently hasn’t done so, though not because of any slide in Romney’s vaunted fundraising prowess…

But with so much money targeting relatively few voters in key swing states, there is growing concern among Republicans that the advantage Romney is expected to have when those voters historically tune into the race may not be so significant after all. In other words, will the undecided simply tune out the increasingly inescapable noise from the late campaign ad barrage?

More.