What a night. Yet the book obviously can’t be closed on the Santorum “Three-State Solution,” until I list my takeaways from last night.
Because it’s my last name, and I can use it as cheesily as I’d like, here are my “Shure Things”:
1. Mitt Romney is not the presumptive anything yet: In a season without momentum, the one candidate who should have it, doesn’t. It is still conventionally safe to call him the favorite on dollars alone, but shockingly low turnout in Nevada on Saturday, and in Missouri and Colorado last night, means that there is no energy behind any of them, and when those who turned out last night basically voted against you, the trouble mounts. When you’re the front-runner it hurts even more.
2. Timing is everything: The good week that Planned Parenthood had, coupled with the bad week that Prop. 8 had, clearly helped Santorum last night. It was a bit of a perfect storm for a very conservative candidate in a GOP primary.
3. Negative ads help: Romney didn’t go heavily negative in these states, probably because Newt wasn’t a factor. Had he employed his carpet-bombing Florida strategy on Santorum, he may have fended him off, at least in Colorado, and perhaps in Missouri.
4. Newt Gingrich is helped more by a bad Romney night than he is hurt by a good Santorum night: Anything that weakens Romney still helps Newt. Santorum has a piecemeal campaign for the moment, so of the two of them, Newt may be better poised to capitalize on a weakened Mitt. The only problem is that he needs to wait a month. That is a big problem.
5. Tim Pawlenty won’t even be vice president: He got no traction in Iowa early, and despite the fact that many have looked back and assumed he’d have done well in this poor field of candidates, he just showed that his endorsement, even in his home state, didn’t matter.
6. Rick Santorum will struggle to do well again in February: He is a solid debater and the next debate is two weeks from today, and he has three weeks to raise money and spend money now. What is tricky is that Arizona is a winner-take-all state, and not full of his type of conservatives. He may choose to concentrate on Michigan over Arizona for the potential shock to Romney in a state where Romney is — sorta, kinda — a favorite son. If he does do well there, then it could be a real blow to Romney. But his work remains uphill for those two elections.
7. Little in politics matters less than a Donald Trump endorsement: I don’t know that it hurt Romney, but it certainly hasn’t helped. Despite Trump’s having imaginatively claimed credit for Romney’s Nevada victory, Romney is still 1-3 since the endorsement came in. Polling has shown that the endorsement hurts more than it helps. He is unimportant to American politics.
8. It is never politically prudent to pick on the poor: Romney’s “fortunes” began to plummet at the moment he showed insensitivity to the poor in America. This talking point will not go away for Romney, not even for a second.
9. Wolf Blitzer knows how to call a race: No, he doesn’t, but I mocked his excitement/astonishment/drama over the Colorado results after two percent were reporting, and Romney was losing. But hey, he was right.
10. President Obama smiled at some point last night: The longer this goes, the better it is for the president. Each time we see low turnout, disgruntled Republicans, and a lack of galvanization, Obama’s prospects improve. The results also confirmed that Romney cannot yet simply run against Obama.
11. The GOP likes entitled candidates even less than entitlements: Romney has been presuming himself to be the nominee. The electorate has not. He needs to engage his opponents now, not just the one he assumes will be his opponent in November. His feeling of entitlement, even generally, is a turnoff to independent voters, and is now proving distasteful to Republicans as well. This is dangerous.
12. Fewer people are pronouncing it “Missour-a”: I only heard it once last night.
13. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States.
14. Not every list is required to have only 10 entries: See?
