Florida, post-game

Here are some quick thoughts on the night.

1. Romney dominates.

He won as many votes as Gingrich and Santorum, combined.

On CNN, Gloria Borger tried to spin some more drama into the race by saying that Mitt "still does not get the BASE of the BASE."

Okay.

In the spirit of that, I will now provide some more evidence to prove just how perilous Romney's position truly is.

The text is in red to signify how worrisome this should be for Mitt.

a. There are candidates running against him in the race.

How can the party be united if people are running against him? It's a big warning sign when you have a former Speaker of the House, an icon in social conservative circles, and a fierce independent running against Mitt.

Why aren't they backing him?

b. He lost by 12% among those who "strongly" support the tea party.

In the general election, those who "strongly" support the tea party will be more important than those who "somewhat" support it, are "neutral" toward it, "somewhat oppose" it, or "strongly oppose" it.

If Romney can't win those who "strongly" support the tea party, how can he ever win those Philly suburbs or keep the margins close in Northern Virginia?

c. Romney's 50% wall.

So far, Romney has hit a 50% wall in these primaries. Romney would lose if you combined Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul's support into one candidate. If Santorum and Paul dropped out, every single one of their supporters would back Gingrich. Therefore, Gingrich > Romney.

All right, caveat emptor, that was satire, and I hope you get my point.

2. Gingrich has to retool, but it probably doesn't matter.

I don't see how he wins the nomination after tonight. If you can see how, there are probably lots of cable networks hungry to hire you, because they need the faux-drama.

But... Newt can shape the debate in various, new ways. There's no doubt that, besides Romney, he's been the major driver in this race, and it'll be fascinating to see what new attacks on Mitt he cooks up, and how Romney will handle them.

Consider Newt's forthcoming attacks as a kind of Chopped episode.

Mitt will face four mystery-ingredient-attacks in each of the coming months, and will have to figure out how to answer them to the judges' satisfaction.

In other words, this will be a good time for Romney to get more practice. Sure, he'll pay less attention to Newt as Gingrich fades, but the media's hunger for a good fight will force him to respond to Gingrich from time-to-time.

3. Sarah Palin is looking more and more like that Russian guy from the "Opulance" DirectTV ad.

Consider the evidence.





4. Romney is ready.

He sounded really good on Tuesday night.

Over the past few months, I've veered between writing about how weak he is and how strong he is, but all of that has been in conjunction with the primary campaign, and it's still tough to tell whether he's been strong or weak.

But one thing I haven't doubted is his strength as a general election candidate.

The coalition he built in Florida was far more impressive and indicative of his general election strength than anything in the prior states.

In a general, states like New Hampshire and Florida are far more important than solid red southern states like South Carolina, and as the Democratic party knows well, Mitt performs best in the most important parts of the country and with the most important demos of the electorate.

And just like any good RPG character or the second day of Noah's flood, he seems to be getting stronger.