The Republicans' most coherent complaint about the now-infamous "Mitt Romney fundraiser video" is that there are two minutes missing from it. This is apparently a thing, now, as they say on the internet. On Legal Insurrection, one of the first blogs to seize upon the lacuna, a writer posited:

"Maybe in the fullness of the answer, the answer was less 'inelegant' than it appears."

This theory is instructive in two ways. First, to describe Romney's statements as "inelegant" implies a slip on par with using the wrong fork. I'd liken it more to farting at a christening, except that what Romney said was applauded by those in attendance. Or perhaps his performance was a little like telling a racist joke and then finding out a black person has overheard you.

OK, it was a lot like that.

Then, there's the idea that a gap shorter than George Bush's attention span could ever contain material so exculpatory that nothing else in the tape's other 65-plus minutes would matter. Whatever you've heard about this tape, unless you take a look at the whole thing, or read the full transcript, you cannot comprehend how monumentally damning it is. He gives advice to terrorists; he talks about being born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he does a Henry Kissinger impersonation. I am totally serious: Kissinger impersonation.

I was so baffled by the conjecture that two minutes more would fix everything, I spent a solid two hours on Twitter brainstorming not-very-plausible hypotheses for what could be so wonderful as to make everything else he said all right (hashtag: #missing2min). My personal favorite:

"Shows audience how to fold a fitted sheet."

The more stout-hearted among conservatives have taken a different tack – though I find it to be just as removed from reality: the tapes are a good thing! At the National Review:

"What Romney should do is call a press conference, play the tape, and then announce that he stands by what he said."

Rush Limbaugh, the weathervane of the Republican party, spent most of his show Tuesday arguing that the tape did, in fact, reveal the true Romney and that Republicans should embrace that version of him:

"When I saw the Romney video, the first thing I thought, 'All right, we have a golden opportunity.'"

But also: the video is a dirty trick planted as part of the Mainstream Media's Liberal Agenda. Hard to follow? I'll let Rush explain:

"If you knew what Republican moderate presidential candidates said to their donors, you'd be a little ticked off because you'd wonder why they don't speak that way in public. They are as conservative as you and I are. I've spoken to them privately. The candidates that I see on the campaign trail versus the ones that tell me what they really think are two different people. There is a fear of being conservative because of what has happened to Romney with this. They've been sitting on this video for a while. This goes back to … what, May? … or what have you."

For what it's worth, that's an unedited transcript. I'm sure somewhere there's two minutes of Rush explaining why the liberal media intentionally supplied this golden opportunity, but I wouldn't hold your breath. (Maybe that's what Romney was doing!)

Puzzling over the first part of Rush's argument is just as confounding. Romney's misrepresenting himself; he's intentionally misrepresenting himself right now. That's the kind of logic puzzle that could freeze up Mitt's operating system if put to him directly.

The political adage – coined by noted Republican saint and serial tax hiker Ronald Reagan – "If you're explaining, you're losing" seems particularly apt here. I admit to have trouble thinking of a time when Romney has not been explaining something about himself and his positions, or asserting a thing instead of giving proof of it (see: economic plan, evidence of). Perhaps we can also add a new phrase to the lexicon: "If you're insisting, you're imploding."

The most curious thing about the past few weeks, and Romney's recursive string from explanation to explanation (has the man ever had a mopping-up press conference that didn't make things worse?), is that it has generated some sympathy for the beleaguered billionaire. He seems at an existential dead-end; a Roomba caught in a corner.

He is a man who has never had to face a problem he couldn't use his money to help solve. (Even Ann Romney's brave and graceful battles with breast cancer and MS, while evidence of an admirable inner strength, have benefitted from care that many who face the same diseases simply do not have access to.) He is so used to buying his way out of a jam that he can't adjust to the tragicomic narrative of fate and justice that he's trapped in. He's a Jonathan Franzen character without the interior monologue.

For me, Romney's haplessness has humanized him in a way no speech ever could. Of course, whatever his troubles, he can always go home and wrap himself in a warm pile of money. So there's that.