Today could end up being an embarrassing day for any Republican presidential candidate not named Rick Santorum.
Today, Colorado and Minnesota hold their caucuses, and Missouri holds their weird non-binding primary. Newt failed to qualify for the Missouri ballot, which means Santorum is widely expected to win Missouri today. The only company polling Minnesota right now is PPP, which today released a poll purporting to show Santorum leading by 9 in that state. Additionally, PPP released a poll showing Santorum running a strong second in Colorado. To recap, at the end of the day today:
- Rick Santorum, whose campaign was left for dead after an abysmal finish in Florida, might win 2 of the 3 contests today.
- Mitt Romney, who was supposed to sweep February, could end up only winning one of the three caucuses today, and that by a relatively slim margin.
- Newt Gingrich is facing a day with two third place finishes and a DNQ. His argument that Santorum should step aside grows weaker by the day (incidentally, anyone who says Santorum is a stalking horse for Romney has not been paying attention to the Santorum campaign).
- Ron Paul could finish the day far behind all three of the other candidates in delegates.
Ultimately, although today isn’t getting as much press coverage as recent election days, it could end up reshaping the race yet again. This could signal that the great mass of “Not Romney” voters isn’t ready to assimilate yet, and may have determined to abandon ship on the Gingrich campaign. Time will tell whether this time, Santorumentum will have a shelf life of longer than three days.