Santorum Surge Returns: Wins Missouri, Minnesota; UPDATE: Wins Colorado UPDATE: NY Times ‘Unexpectedly!’ : The Other McCain

Stacy is doing the happy dance over at his joint this morning, and, frankly, he has ever right to do so.

Because he was right about Rick Santorum:

Okay, When I’m Wrong, I’m Wrong | Daily Pundit

I’ve been saying that Rick Santorum is a loser, and that he can’t beat Mittens Romneycare even in a head to head race. Looks like I’m dead wrong in public.

A three-state sweep for Santorum tonight sort of drives the point home – right between my eyes.

As I say, Rick Santorum is never going to be my best friend, or even somebody I’d want to invite into my home. But if the choice is Obama, Romney, or Santorum, then I would want to go with Santorum. He’s far, far less dangerous than either of the other two. I keep saying that if the GOP wants my vote, they have to give me somebody I want to vote for. Of those three, I would actually want to vote for Santorum (although I’d want to vote for Sarah Palin or Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich a lot more – and if wishes were horses, Moochelle would neigh…). If the choice is between Obama and Romney, I don’t see any real choice from my perspective (that of a libertarian conservative), and so I wouldn’t want to vote for either.

What you see here, though, isn’t a giant boom for what Santorum is pushing, especially the socon stuff, which is about as popular as a case of crabs amongst the general electorate.  This is just the GOP electorate’s desperate thrashing from one pillar to the next post to find anybody to represent the GOP this fall other than Mittens Romneycare.  The real tipoff here was the Missouri vote, where Santorum faced Romney basically head to head, and stomped him with a 55%-25% result.  If the Ronulan had not been in the race, the outcome would have been even more devastating for Romney.  And it wasn’t some pipsqueak little vote.  Romney’s only hope now is to somehow prevent the Not-Romney vote from coalescing as it did in Missouri, where, once again, we learned that Romney’s real support in the GOP is about one in four.  

And I have to confess that even I, who have been writing about the strength of the Not-Romney sentiments at the grassroots, was gobsmacked at how clearly they appeared last night, and at how powerful they turned out to be.  If Newt and Rick were to drop dead, I now think that Ron Paul would start polling sixty percent or better against Romney.

Nor will the imminent multi-million dollar Romney smear attack against Santorum have nearly the effectiveness it did against Newt.  I back Newt, but he had many, many vulnerabilities that Romney’s hack-merchants exploited, from his personal life to his public life.

Santorum has almost none of those vulnerabilities.  His personal life appears above reproach, and he has been much more dependably conservative than Newt, at least in his public statements, although his conservative accomplishments are minuscule in that comparison.  Yeah, he’s a socon statist, but that will play to his advantage among folks who care about the socon issues, and the charge that he’ll impose the Catholic Bible on all of us just won’t wash any more.  Nobody believes it, and Romney, a Mormon, would be a fool to stake his candidacy on a religious attack against a Catholic.  Fifty years ago, neither religion had precedence in a run for the Presidency, but JFK put that one to rest back then, and it is not an issue today.  Mormons are still considered odd and different by most folks (There, I said it – why?  Because it’s true), but Catholics, in general, are not.  Romney loses that one big time.

In short, Romney will probably have more trouble destroying Santorum, and if he can’t get that job done, then he will lose.  I may have an unbroken record at picking nominees to back who will actually emerge victorious – Palin, Perry, Gingrich –  and that should probably not give anybody confidence in my opinions – but the Not-Romney, Not-RINO-Ruling Class vote in the GOP primary process is very alive, very well, and very strong.  And that’s what last night demonstrated.

There are a lot of yellow-stained drawers in Washington Cocktail Party haunts this morning.