It’s been one helluva week for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among the chatterers (both the pajama-clad and the Capital Grille-frequenting variety). The Washington Post has had not one but two hit columns this week (as NRO did on Friday) going through his past and present positions. The Boston Globe Presidents’ Day Weekend reporting that this man who wants to be president joined the National Rifle Association only last August sounded so silly it resembled a joke Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” would pile on with.

Are these way too many hits for one candidate, and so early? Is Romney 2008 over? Far from. But it certainly sounded that way listening to Bill Bennett on his radio talk show, Morning in America, Wednesday morning. After playing audio from a 2002 gubernatorial debate Bennett all but wrote Romney off. What seemed to be too much for Bennett, though, may not have been that YouTube clip floating around the Internet Tuesday evening alone — wherein Romney says that he will “preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose,” going out of his way to make clear he is not “pro-life” — but the added news that an aide for Romney had sent out an e-mail attacking McCain on abortion; on this, Bennett said, Romney was being “ill-advised.”

“To be attacking McCain,” he said, “is wrong.” Bennett quoted me, actually, saying (in The Corner on Tuesday):

I would . . . wait until the case for your guy has been compellingly made first before going on the attack. And the candidate himself has to be the one to make it. They are legitimate questions to be asking. But I’m not sure Romney’s camp is in a convincingly credible position to be asking them at the moment.

Bennett ended the segment on Romney’s 2002 comments by saying that the combination — being seen defending “choice” so recently, and rushing to the attack — is a losing strategy. The former secretary of Education said, “People are not going to buy that. I’m not buying it.”

The blows Mitt Romney has taken this week (and this month — it all seemed to go majorly downhill in the wake of a disappointing dinner speech at the National Review Institute’s “Conservative Summit”) are not a total surprise to anyone familiar with Romney’s record; it has been no secret that Romney’s position on abortion (among other things) has changed. But seeing the clips — more of which will undoubtedly continue to pop up on the Internet throughout the coming months — obviously drives home how recent Romney’s change of political heart was (even if you’re inclined to buy it, as I am). It doesn’t help him that even his “pro-life adviser” seems not to be fully on board. And though Romney had a good, quick, self-deprecating response on Glenn and Helen Reynolds’s podcast show to the first YouTube that circulated — the one in which then-opponent (1994) Ted Kennedy calls him not pro-choice but “multiple choice” — again and again would-be supporters express dismay that they’ve not heard Romney compellingly and convincingly explain his change from choice talk to a brief pro-life record as Massachusetts governor.

Does this all — the YouTube and op-eds, after months of right-wing activists’ sending around “The Mitt Romney Deception” — cut Romney too deeply? Is the end (on the Mount of Olives or in Missouri) nigh?

Don’t rush to any conclusions, some professional politics-watchers say. “Romney can be saved — no religious pun intended,” University of Virginia professor and oft-quoted horserace expert Larry Sabato tells NRO. “A presidential campaign, especially this one, is a long and winding road. He has the money, the basic skills, and the fundamental charisma to overcome his challenges.”

“It’s still early. Romney can recover,” Republican pollster Robert Moran, vice president of Strategy One, agrees. “The real question may be ‘when will McCain and Giuliani implode?’ Neither of these two is a good fit for the base, and the conservative media will batter these two.”

Moran suggests that Romney take a clue from Rudy: “Giuliani is doing the right things. He knows better than to go for a complete celebrity makeover like Romney. Instead, Giuliani is focusing people on his leadership ability, and his strengths on security and fiscal conservatism.”

Indeed, Bill Bennett moved right on from Romney to Giuliani Wednesday morning on his show. “People [conservatives] are going to like Giuliani,” Bennett said — for, ironically, staying pro-choice. There’s an authenticity in it.

Ultimately, “I don’t think Giuliani can win — because of social issues — but he should be respected for his candor in the race,” Moran suggests.

Truth be told, Moran, a conservative, doesn’t think much of the field: “The Republican candidates are good Americans and we shouldn’t diminish their qualifications, but at some point there will be a critical mass of thoughtful conservatives asking ‘Who else do we have?’ I hope that this question doesn’t come too late.”

Sabato is nowhere near as dire about Romney’s future or the GOP field. While Sabato doesn’t think much of the Romney attack on McCain’s abortion record, he doesn’t think McCain should be sitting too comfortably either. “Abortion is certainly not the key to overcoming McCain — for Romney or anyone else,” Sabato says. “McCain’s vulnerabilities are his maverick status, his age, and positions on other issues (even an arcane one, campaign finance). A lot of Republicans just don’t trust McCain; they don’t think they know what he’ll actually do once in office. With all of Romney’s flip-flopping, maybe the same thing can be said for him, although Romney has that puppy-dog quality that emanates sincerity.”

Bottom line for Sabato: It’s way early. “Early on, it’s easy to do the right things. You just have to raise money, develop a rationale, and keep your mouth set firmly on ‘control’ (attention Joe Biden). Most campaigns are having trouble with the money part of the equation, and some have no obvious rationale either.” But there’s time yet, and Romney can recover. “No one on earth knows whether he actually will. McCain still has problems, and Rudy still has problems — they all do. As far as Rudy goes, just wait until the negative TV ads and the mailers start. There’s enough there to sink an aircraft carrier, even the U.S.S. Rudy. Of course, if his opponents run incompetent campaigns, they can misfire their ammunition.”

And then of course, there’s Newt Gingrich. “Everyone knows he’s the most intelligent candidate in the field,” Sabato states matter-of-factly. “He’s smart enough to understand that when everyone else is zigging and getting out there early and threatening to bore the public to death by next January, then you need to zag: enter late, have something new to say, appear fresh, and give all the turned-off partisans a ‘savior.’” Sabato adds: “I have no idea whether he’ll really do it. But he’s already resurrected his national image quite a bit with his strategy.”

In other words: It’s too early to count anyone out. No one on earth knows how this is going to end . . .