It's Santorum's Night!

As I write this, Rick Santorum has been projected the winner in both Minnesota and Missouri. In both of these states, the margin for Santorum is huge. Mitt Romney has done very poorly and so has Newt Gingrich. The Colorado results are dribbling in; they are not yet meaningful. In the early returns, however, it is very close between Romney and Santorum. Clearly, this has been Rick Santorum's night!

Since this is such a blowout win for Santorum, I decided to watch the CNN coverage to see how they are reporting it. It was really amazing to watch the fools on that network reporting the "news". They began with a lengthy discussion about how these results would affect the real battle between Gingrich and Romney. Then they launched into a discussion as to whether or not Santorum could appear presidential in his victory speech. Then Santorum spoke. The speech was not the polished oration that Obama would have read off a teleprompter. Instead, Santorum spoke as one who knows the problems faced by the common man. He soared eloquently when he spoke of the assault by Obama on religious freedom. He made clear that he would be a president of all people, not just some percentage of them. In short, Santorum gave a remarkable speech. And what was the take on this on CNN? David Gergen sniffed that Santorum was just not presidential. Then they moved on to discuss who was standing next to Santorum on the podium.

Let me say this clearly: Santorum won an enormous victory; he spoke eloquently in victory in a way that will endear him to millions of Republicans and CNN's focus was on who was standing next to him on the podium. Did they have to take lessons at CNN to become so obtuse?

For what it is worth, here is my take on the evening. It is just one night, but it goes a long way towards showing four important truths:

1) The conservative base of the GOP does not trust Romney to be a conservative president.

2) Gingrich has hurt himself, perhaps fatally by his cyclonic pomposity. True, he is intelligent, but so is Obama and we know where that got us. Gingrich seems now to be emotionally too unsteady to be president.

3) Both Gingrich and Romney have paid a major price for the terrible negativity of their campaigns. Santorum has stayed positive and it has helped him immensely.

4) Here is something that I never thought I would write. Rick Santorum could be the nominee of the GOP and he could be president of the United States of America.