Adam Hanft's SpinSeason.

Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are betting much of their Strawpollian lives on commercials that feature the spouse trot. It’s a questionable strategy, one that’s transparently manipulative and likely to reinforce the candidate’s existing supporters rather than bring in the undecided.

Each of them are not-so-subtle attacks on Newt Gingrich’s wandering eye, and his roly-poly body that has historically been not too far behind.

Romney’s spot goes for the jugular in the most obvious fashion. Anne Romney hammers the message that peccadilloes are a presidential non-starter by saying “You can never predict what kind of tough decisions are going to come in front of a president’s desk. But if you can trust they will do the right thing…if you really want to know how a person will operate, look at how they’ve lived their life.”

Of course, that’s completely specious reasoning that is agnostic of politics, given that ghastly decisions have been made by uxorious Commanders-in-Chief, and brilliant ones by those who were led around by their own chief commander.

She closes by going as close to nuclear on Newt as a putative First Lady can get “…I think that’s why it’s so important to understand the character of a person. To mean that make a huge difference. Maybe to some voters it doesn’t. But to me it makes a huge difference.”

Meanwhile, Rick Perry’s spot features his wife Anita, sporting some serious big-hair that reinforces their Texas cred, the one element of his candidacy that is in no need of any validation.

She recounts their courting and marriage as “…an old-fashioned American story, I married my high school sweetheart.” Then she causes some Christopher Hitchens grave-turning – I’m actually pleased that his ire is being raised so shortly after his demise – by saying “…we grew up in small towns, raised with Christian values…and we know Washington D.C. could use some of that.”

At the end of the spot, Rick enters the frame unexpectedly – Gawker called it a cat-like pounce and says with the faintest of chuckles that he “really approves this message.”

It’s an attempt at humor and intimacy that falls flat as a tortilla made by an illegal immigrant.  It also reinforces Perry’s lack of gravitas, and highlights the struggle that political consultants find themselves in these days, as they navigate between the need to show warmth and humanity, and to project leadership.

Will these spots – and others that are bashing Gingrich work?  An evangelical group in Iowa has sent around a video that’s makes Perry’s and Romney’s spots look like subtle poofs.  It’s a high-energy accounting of his debauchery, calling him the “Kim Kardashian” of the GOP.

Romney should be more worried about Paul in Iowa, and should defer attacking Gingrich until later.  If Paul wins, Romney gets embarrassed and his inevitability gets seriously dinged.  Meanwhile, most polls show Gingrich in third place anyway, running behind Romney and Paul  – who are in a dead-heat according Nate Silver in the New York  Times, and few points ahead of Bachman.  The Times gives him a 9% chance of winning the straw poll.

Romney is making real strategic mistake.  (For Perry, it doesn’t really matter, his candidacy is done.)  What’s more, Gingrich’s true vulnerability here and elsewhere isn’t his multiple infidelities as much as a perception of high-beta emotionalism in general.  He’s off the peak of his polls, but if Romney, Perry continue to go after his spousal problems, it will backfire and highlight their individual weaknesses: Romney’s smooth and potentially fatal judgmentalism and holier-than-thou-ness, and Perry’s trigger-happy superficiality.

There are some people who believe a cheater is a cheater – falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus, as they say in Latin – and others who can compartmentalize.  Those mental framings are fixed, and money spent to shift them is money wasted.