Apologies for the lack of Super Tuesday posting. Five minutes of Newt’s victory speech sucked all the wind out of me. So here’s my wrapup: Mitt Romney used to be the inevitable nominee. After last night, he’s still the inevitable nominee. As David Corn notes, Gingrich is obviously the walking dead at this point, but is too egotistical and just plain mean to realize it. Ditto for Santorum, though I suppose you could argue that he still has a tiny chance of winning.
At this point, I can just barely conceive of a scenario where everyone doubles down and refuses to exit the race, preventing Romney from winning a clear majority on the first ballot. But by “barely,” I mean “like the odds of an asteroid landing on one of Mitt’s cars.” It’s unlikely in the first place, and the pressure on both Santorum and Gingrich to stop the bloodletting would be intense if they tried to hold out. I don’t think they could do it.
Like it or not — and no one does — it’s Mitt. Might as well get used to it.
UPDATE: Nerd alert of the day comes from Dave Weigel: “[Romney’s] strategy from state to state looks a bit like Galactus’s strategy for planet-devouring: Move in, absorb everything. Restore Our Future is his Silver Surfer, softening up the terrain and warning of doom.” Okey dokey. Dave also points out something that struck me as well last night: when the talking heads talked about Ohio, it was almost as if Romney was a Democratic candidate. All night, he racked up big wins in the big urban counties while Santorum colored the state purple with wins in all the rural counties. That sure sounds like a mirror image of November to me.
