Bill Kristol is reduced to looking for signs and portents:

In case you believe in portents: On February 3, 2008, the New York Giants upset the heavily favored New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Two days later, John McCain won a sweeping victory on Super Tuesday, clinching the nomination and completing his upset comeback against the far better funded and organized Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

McCain’s victories on Super Tuesday were not part of an “upset comeback.” McCain was the de facto front-runner in most respects in early 2007 before his campaign appeared to collapse in the summer and fall of that year. By the end of 2007, McCain had recovered. McCain had already won New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida by the time Super Tuesday came along. McCain’s “comeback” was his recovery from his campaign’s near-bankruptcy and the political disaster that was his support for immigration amnesty, and that “comeback” had already occurred before New Hampshire voted. Giuliani did not seriously contest New Hampshire or South Carolina, and his plan to bet everything on Florida completely failed. McCain could not have come back from behind Giuliani because he never trailed Giuliani, except in some meaningless national polls. McCain wasn’t coming from behind Romney on Super Tuesday, since he had just defeated him in two straight contests before that.

It is true that Romney was better-funded and organized than McCain last time, but he was also the challenger and came up short. In order for there to be an upset this year, we would need to believe that the worse-funded and organized Santorum or Gingrich could do what Romney and all his resources could not against McCain. If that still seems incredible, that’s because it is.