THE DAILY BLADE: Rick Santorum’s IA surge turned into a tsunami Tuesday night, as he won three out of three nominating contests by commanding margins that swept away Mitt Romney’s inevitability and Newt Gingrich’s grandiosity. Santorum’s wins will energize his supporters, excite conservatives unable to muster the enthusiasm to vote for Romney and entice donors to funnel much-needed funding to his campaign to keep him competitive in the 10 “Super Tuesday” contests on March 6^th.

Before Santorum up-ended conventional wisdom by winning all three states – Romney was the “prohibitive favorite” – and expectations – Romney was the “presumptive nominee” – The Washington Post downplayed the significance of the elections: The results in MN and CO were nonbinding events; MO wouldn’t be awarding delegates based on the results of the primary (that happens after the caucuses on March 17^th); and MN borders IA, which is the only other state Santorum won “so it’s little harder to argue that this is evidence of Santorum's broader nationwide appeal.”  

Well, what a difference a day makes. Now TheWaPo concedes that Santorum’s “massive win” has “cast at least some doubt on Romney’s presumptive nominee status” and “despite being the most inconsequential race of the day when it comes to the GOP delegate race, [MO] may actually have been the most important to the narrative going forward”: 

Given his win in the neighboring Iowa caucuses, his strength with Midwestern voters, the low turnout that was expected Tuesday, and the fact that Romney invested basically nothing in the state, it fell to Santorum to pull out a victory to prove he can beat Romney head-to-head. … 

At this point in the presidential race, it’s about expectations and momentum. And the perceptions of both have changed post-Missouri at least somewhat. 

By winning in Missouri, Santorum proved three things: 

1) That Romney can lose 

2) That he can beat Romney head-to-head under the right set of circumstances 

3) That this race isn’t yet over

Santorum has now won half of the eight primaries and caucuses that have taken place in January and February (IA, MN, MO and CO) – more wins than any of the candidates left in the race; Romney has won three of them (NH, FL and NV). Counting his loss to Gingrich in SC, Romney has lost 5 out of the 8 races. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that “[f]our years ago, Mr. Romney carried Colorado with 60% of the vote” but got only 35% this time around and that Santorum's 75,000 vote margin of victory in MO “was nearly 29,000 more than Mr. Romney's combined Iowa and Nevada total”: 

While the Tuesday results didn't directly award any of the delegates needed to claim the GOP nomination, they showed voters rejecting Mr. Romney even in states where he had performed well four years ago. 

Mr. Romney had carried Minnesota in 2008 but placed third there on Tuesday. With 88% of precincts in, Mr. Santorum had 45% of the vote, while Mr. Paul had 27%. Mr. Romney had 17% of the vote and Mr. Gingrich claimed 11%. 

And as The WaPo notes, “Romney enjoyed strong establishment backing in Minnesota, with the vocal support of former governor Tim Pawlenty, yet he trailed not just Santorum but also Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), finishing a distant third.” Also recall that SC Gov. Nikki Haley (R) threw her support behind Romney, to no avail. 

Erick Erickson of RedStateNews asserts that these results show that “the Republican electorate sent a very clear signal – they want conviction over electability”: 

They do not like Mitt Romney. They see Santorum as authentic. They see Mitt Romney as a fraud. Rick Santorum swept the races. Romney, the front runner, got crushed by conservatives. 

The pattern has held up from Iowa to South Carolina to Florida to Nevada to last night. In every county that saw increased turn out, Not Romney won. In counties with decreased turnout, Romney won most often, but not always.

For his part, Gingrich has won just one out of the eight nominating contests (SC), and came in at a distant second to Romney in FL and NV (46.4% vs. 31.9% and 50.1% vs. 21.1%, respectively). Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot in MO; edged Ron Paul by one point in CO; tied Santorum in NH; and came in dead last in IA and MN, with 88 percent of the precincts reporting.

Moreover, Gingrich trails Santorum in the current delegate count (Romney leads with 86; Santorum has 38; Gingrich has 29; and Paul has just 8) – the three states Santorum won Tuesday will award 128 delegates later this spring). So it will take more chutzpah than even Gingrich can muster to continue to call for Santorum to drop out of the race so he can contest the nomination with Romney RINO- a-RINO.   

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sees Santorum as “a stronger anti-Romney candidate than the combustible and compromised Gingrich, with wider geographic appeal (as he demonstrated last night) and fewer glaring liabilities”: 

In the looming Michigan and Arizona primaries, then, the important thing for Santorum is less to beat Romney to get what he got last night: Clear separation from the former Speaker, and enough momentum (a fickle beast, I know) to make him seem like the obvious choice for voters in states like Tennessee and Oklahoma and Georgia who otherwise would have gone for Gingrich.

Expected to do well in his home state of GA and in neighboring TN, Gingrich is concentrating on delegate-rich OH (66) on “Super Tuesday.” But OH borders Santorum’s home state of PA giving Santorum a bit of a home field advantage, and with his wins in MN and MO, he has proven that his message resonates with Midwesterners and may catch on in OH and OK. New York Times blogger and political handicapper Nate Silver’s makes the case that Santorum has “a coherent path to victory … that runs through the Midwest”: 

There is a Midwestern state left to vote at virtually every turn of the nomination calendar. After Michigan on Feb. 28 and Ohio on Super Tuesday comes Missouri (again) on March 17, when it holds its caucuses, then Illinois on March 20, Wisconsin on April 3 and Pennsylvania on April 24. (A big disadvantage for Mr. Santorum: He did not qualify for the ballot in Indiana, which votes on May 8.)

Santorum’s social conservatism also plays well in the South, so Gingrich’s campaign may succumb to Santorum’s insurgency on “Super Tuesday.”

As Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine points out, “[u]nlike both Romney and Gingrich, Santorum has become a better candidate as the race has gone on”: 

Though Romney reaped the benefits of Gingrich’s implosion in the debates before the Florida primary, it was actually Santorum who won those encounters on the issues. Santorum’s appeal to working class voters may appall some conservatives, but it puts him in a good position to exploit Romney’s weaknesses. … 

Santorum is still a long way from being considered a likely nominee, but his victories have changed this race from a cakewalk for a Romney to a genuine fight in which the frontrunner is favored but not certain to win. If Romney is to ultimately prevail, he will have to improve his game in the coming weeks and months. If he doesn’t, he may wind up looking back to this past week as the moment he blew the nomination.

Indeed, in his victory speech, Santorum held himself out as the One True Teapublican candidate: 

Tonight was a victory for the voices of our party, conservatives and Tea Party people, who are out there every single day in the vineyards building the conservative movement in this country, building the base of the Republican Party, and building a voice for freedom in this land. … 

I don't stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama. … 

[O]n … health care, the environment, cap-and-trade, and on the Wall Street bailouts, Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama and, in fact, would not be the best person to get up and fight for your voices for freedom in America.

Santorum also attacked Romney’s purported electability head-on: 

Tonight … we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn't outspent 5 or 10 to 1 by negative ads impugning their integrity and distorting their record. This is a more accurate representation, frankly, of what the fall race will look like. 

Governor Romney's greatest attribute is, well, I've got the most money and the best organization. Well, he's not going to have the most money and the best organization in the fall, is he? 

No, we're going to have to have someone who has other attributes to commend himself to the people of America, someone -- someone who can get up and make sharp contrasts with President Obama, someone who can point to the failed record of this administration and say that Barack Obama needs to be replaced in the Oval Office.

Finally, Santorum out-Gingriched Gingrich and hit all the right notes in his siren song to lure conservatives to his campaign: “we need a president who listens to the American people”; “this is about a country that believes in God-given rights, and a Constitution that is limited to protect those rights”; and “freedom is at stake in this election.” 

Nice guys finish last? Maybe not this election cycle.

The WaPo predicts that “the lack of enthusiasm for [Romney’s] candidacy among conservatives foreshadows a potentially ugly road ahead to Tampa and general election problems if he is nominee: 

One lesson out of the first eight contests is that, when Romney does not have a built-in advantage, he must rely on negative campaigns to win. 

Two of his victories came on friendly turf: New Hampshire, where proximity to Massachusetts helped Romney; and Nevada, where the sizeable Mormon population was a great asset. On more neutral terrain, he owes his success in considerable part to the power of negative campaigning. He almost won Iowa, and came close only after he and the super PAC behind his candidacy spent millions trashing Gingrich with negative ads. His victory in Florida came after another heavy investment in negative ads aimed at the former speaker. 

His advisers argue that in Florida, he was the more effective and compelling candidate. But it wasn’t Romney’s positive message that turned the tide in Florida. It was more his strategy of tearing down Gingrich. A Republican strategist, who declined to be identified so that he could offer candid analysis of the race, said of the Romney campaign Wednesday morning that “they have been effective at gaining altitude by disqualifying their opponents.” 

Or, as Erick Erickson of RedStateNews puts it: “Romney has nothing to lose and will go negative. He will suddenly become as noxious as his supporters are on twitter and in the Washington Post.” 

The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot notes that “Mitt Romney's campaign certainly knows how to pick a target and train its guns in the same direction”: 

Having pummeled Newt Gingrich for months, on Monday the Romney camp turned and fired all at once on Rick Santorum, the forgotten man of the GOP race. 

A barrage of emails attacked the former Pennsylvania senator as a "leading earmarker" who's not a genuine conservative. Romney surrogate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was rolled out in a media conference call to denounce Mr. Santorum for his "long history of pork-barrel spending," including a "polar bear exhibit in Pittsburgh." The Romney campaign's opposition research shop leaves no stone unthrown, however trivial.

But Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin argues that the stones that Romney hurls at Santorum will boomerang on him because “[g]oing negative on Gingrich merely reinforced the public’s doubts of the speaker’s character and record” whereas Santorum “has come across as the nicest guy left in the race”: 

[B]y staying out of the Gingrich-Romney mudslinging contest, Santorum has managed to bolster his image. The sympathy that was generated by coverage of his little daughter Bella’s illness also allowed him to carve out a unique niche in the race that put him above the fray in terms of roughhouse presidential politics. … 

The spectacle of the frontrunner trying to demolish the character of another conservative rival may not go down well with the GOP grass roots, especially since Santorum has avoided the sort of class warfare and personal attacks that Gingrich launched at Romney. 

An assault on Santorum may actually play into his hands since it will make Romney appear like a bully trying to pick on the one candidate who has tried to run a clean campaign.