Well, even yesterday I was starting to assume that the Santorum moment was over -- the Talking Points Memo poll tracker showed Mitt Romney rapidly gaining on Santorum in Michigan (Romney's in red, Santorim's in black)....
An NBC/Marist poll not only showed the two of them tied in Michigan, but revealed that Romney is crushing Santorum among early voters. Oh, and Romney is headed toward a blowout in Arizona, where he also has a massive lead in early voting, a sign of a far more impressive and machine-like organization.
Yes, some national polls, and polls in states that aren't voting till next month, show Santorum with a big and even increasing lead -- but that's the pattern I recall from the period when the Romney campaign was crushing Newt Gingrich: As Gingrich's numbers fell in states that were just about to vote, he would still seem to be gaining in later-voting states. But that's because the Romney Death Star hadn't gotten to those states yet, with gazillions of dollars' worth of Romney and Romney super PAC attack ads. The polls in the later-voting states were lagging indicators.
So, yeah, when Talking Points Memo lists five ways Rick Santorum blew it in last night's debate, it's worth paying attention, but the die was already cast.
Last night's results matter because they remind us that Romney isn't a hapless stumblebum, or at least Team Romney isn't -- they now know how to prepare the candidate to attack. But meanwhile he's been doing what he has to do to reverse early setbacks. It ain't pretty, and it ain't cheap, but it is brutally efficient.
