Shocked the rest of us too, I imagine, with this three victories last night. It was an utterly humiliating evening for Mitt Romney, who surely thought he was going to coast to the nomination after his powerful Florida victory. It’s still hard to see how he loses this thing, but you would have said the same thing about Goliath. Santorum was always a far superior conservative alternative to Romney, at least on paper, but he didn’t connect in those early debates. He seems to have found his voice, and, with Newt having imploded in Florida, it may be that the anti-Romney GOP folks coalesce around Santorum. Who knows? This primary race is one for the history books.

We can say definitively, I believe, that Republicans really dislike Mitt Romney. A lot. If he gets the nomination, he will be a very weak candidate who will struggle to motivate his own base. Like Santorum or not — me, I’m with him on social issues, but can’t stand his foreign policy — conservatives will have no worries about President Santorum going wobbly in office on the things they care about. They’ll be fired up to turn out for him in November. Until last night, I would have pegged Romney as by far the most electable in the GOP field. Now I’m not at all sure. Obviously he has more appeal to the independent swing voters than Santorum does. But who gets excited about the prospect of voting for Romney? If Romney is the next president, he’s going to get no respect from Congressional Republicans, who will know how weak he is, even with his own base.

There’s a sneaky little part of me that’s saying this morning, “Make him spend it all, Rick!”