The Republican presidential nomination contest reached another milestone yesterday with two more major primaries, in Arizona and Michigan.

The delegate “haul” in both states was reduced by half, since they violated the RNC’s calendar rules by holding their primaries before March 1. But since these primaries were the first events to occur after Rick Santorum’s three-state sweep on Feb. 7, and because Santorum had risen rapidly in both national and Michigan polls since then, they became something of an existential threat to the Romney campaign. Indeed, prior to the results the air was full of panic-stricken, if largely anonymous, claims that party leaders would have to recruit a late-entry candidate if Romney failed to win in Michigan, his native state.

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The Republican presidential nominating contest continues to produce endless surprises.

A week ago, the key question was whether victories in two low-turnout caucuses and a “beauty contest” primary would vault Rick Santorum past Newt Gingrich as the latest aspirant to the conservative-alternative-to-Romney mantle. Now, cascading evidence from polls suggest Santorum has become a serious threat to Romney’s status as front-runner, and is a couple more primary wins away from becoming what might be called an existential threat to Mitt’s candidacy.

National polls are now consistently showing Santorum leading, or essentially tied with, Romney among Republican voters. More alarmingly for Romney, the three latest polls taken in Michigan—whose primary will be held on February 28—show Santorum leading there, too, despite a longstanding assumption that Mitt would romp to an easy win in his native state.

While there has been no recent public polling in Arizona, which also holds its primary on February 28, the Santorum Surge has clearly spread to the Super Tuesday (March 6) states. A Quinnipiac poll, for instance, now shows him leading in that day’s biggest state, Ohio, and another survey indicates he’s threatening Newt Gingrich in his own home state of Georgia. An especially dangerous development for Romney is that Santorum is now running ahead of Mitt in at least one major general election poll, calling his longstanding “electability” advantage into question.

All the polls indicate that a key ingredient of the Santorum Surge is relatively high favorable/unfavorable ratios, reflecting his ability to escape significant questioning while Romney and Gingrich (and their super PACs) have pounded each other with negative ads. That is very likely to change, even though conservative opinion-leaders are far more protective of Santorum than of either Romney or Gingrich, and most will not join the fun the way they so often have with the other candidates.

Just today, reports have come out suggesting that Team Romney might execute a multi-state air war against Santorum, attacking him from the Right for votes in the Senate favoring No Child Left Behind and Medicare Rx Drugs. Despite the fact that both were Bush administration initiatives, supported by many Republicans at the time, these programs have now become symbols of big-spending heresy. That line of attack, however, is not all that’s on the horizon. There’s also at least one report that Gingrich’s main super PAC donor, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, is on the brink of reopening his check book to finance attacks on Santorum, apparently in part because Adelson wouldn’t mind helping Mitt as well as Newt.

All this warlike activity on the GOP side is clearly good news to Democrats. It also comes at an opportune time, just as better economic news and a sharper Obama message has emerged to lift the incumbent’s re-election prospects notably. Obama has led Romney in eight consecutive major general election polls by at least five points. Even more significantly, according to an analysis yesterday by Ron Brownstein based on the latest Pew survey, Obama is now matching his 2008 performance very closely among nearly every key demographic category.

Obama’s stretch of good luck is also extending into individual controversies with the GOP. So far, at least, he seems to have regained an advantage in the battle with Republican politicians and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over a proposed employer insurance mandate for contraception coverage. A relatively small modification of the original mandate to require insurers rather than religiously-affiliated institutional employers won the administration praise from an array of Catholic hospital, social-services, and higher-education leaders, frustrating the efforts of the Bishops to speak for Catholic institutions in demanding a complete repeal of the mandate.

And while polling on the subject has varied significantly according to the timing and wording of surveys, it’s reasonably clear Catholic voters’ attitudes on the subject closely track public opinion generally. Meanwhile, as the controversy beings to focus less on broad claims of endangered “religious liberty” and more on attitudes towards the more specific issues of health insurance coverage, Republicans are running the risk of identifying themselves too closely with the Catholic hierarchy’s very unpopular views on contraception.

The current prominence of a presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, who has not been shy about proclaiming his own hostility to contraception, probably does not help – well, at least not the Republicans.

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Four contests in the last week have done little to resolve the Republican presidential nominating contest.

As long expected, Mitt Romney followed up his Florida victory by comfortably winning the Nevada caucuses, registering (if narrowly) his first majority showing. Turnout was low, the process was marred by errors, and Romney’s margin was undoubtedly padded by the unusually large level of participation by Mitt’s fellow Mormons (about a fourth of the caucus turnout, giving Romney near-unanimous support). But it gave Romney the right to boast of victory in three very different states (New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada), and continued the bad news for Newt Gingrich, who couldn’t even hold onto an apparent Donald Trump endorsement for a few hours.

But then came the three February 7 events: a non-binding (and arguably meaningless) primary in Missouri, and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. And all three were won by Rick Santorum, who had all but been forgotten by national media during the Romney-Gingrich slugfest in Florida and Nevada. The sting to Romney was enhanced by comparisons to his performance in 2008, when he won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses decisively. Gingrich was not on the ballot in Missouri, and finished a poor third in Colorado and a poor fourth (behind Santorum, Romney, and second-place finisher Ron Paul) in Minnesota.

The Santorum Sweep was a product of other candidates ignoring Missouri, and then an effective grassroots campaign in the other two states. Low turnout also helped accentuate Santorum’s bedrock support among social conservatives (the same constituency that gained him his Iowa win). For all the hype about his big night, his candidacy remains a largely Midwestern phenomenon, and he’s yet to show strength in the southern states where he’s suspected of being a Big Government Conservative, and Gingrich has served as the anti-Romney conservative threat.

The contest now hits a lull until February 28, when Michigan and Arizona hold primaries. Michigan is Romney’s native state, and Arizona has a relatively large LDS population, so he is favored in both despite yesterday’s setbacks. Then comes Super Tuesday (March 6), with its assortment of relatively expensive primaries (Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts) and a bunch of widely scattered caucuses (where Ron Paul is expected to make a strong appearance). Everything about this landscape favors the vastly better-financed Romney, unless his opponents manage to split up the states and beat him piecemeal.

More to the immediate point, the lull will provide Santorum’s opponents with a fine opportunity to take him down several notches with negative ads focusing on his Washington “insider” background and the occasional heresies in his record that trouble conservatives. Meanwhile, Santorum’s status as an international symbol of right-wing bigotry (mostly based on the vast Google-based campaign to taunt him for anti-gay sentiments, but also extending to his very extreme positions on abortion and contraception) will hound him in the broader media environment. It’s not clear he will be able to emulate Gingrich’s success in converting “persecution” by the “liberal media” into primary votes, but the inevitable mockery he will receive is very likely to drive down his general-election trial heat numbers.

Democrats, of course, are richly enjoying Romney’s difficulty in nailing down the nomination, particularly now that it is beginning to affect his own general-election numbers. As it happens, Mitt’s problems are coinciding with a modest increase in the president’s job approval ratings and gradually improved economic indicators. Last week’s surprisingly positive jobs report drew a lot of attention across the political spectrum.

But Obama’s general election standing remains questionable. During the last week, there was a major brouhaha over the Catholic Bishops’ intense reaction to an administration decision to require contraceptive services coverage for employee health plans sponsored by religiously affiliated hospitals and charities (direct church employees were exempted via a “conscience” exception). Several prominent Catholic Democrats expressed fears the decision would be disastrous politically, but then polling showed Catholic voters largely unmoved or supportive of Obama, even as the administration signaled it wanted to compromise.

In what appears likely to be a very close general election, the variables remain unstable. It’s clear Obama needs to win back moderate voters estranged by factors ranging from the general condition of the economy to conservative-media-fed narratives of his alleged hyper-liberalism. How to do that, while setting out realistic goals for a second term and exploiting a Republican nominating contest being constantly driven to the Right, is the obvious challenge for Team Obama.

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Last Saturday’s South Carolina primary sent the Republican presidential nominating contest into strange and possibly uncharted territory. Front-runner and “Establishment” favorite, Mitt Romney, turned in a dismal performance, while twice-left-for-dead Newt Gingrich not only swept the state but quickly seized the lead in both national GOP polls and in Florida, where voters go to the polls on January 31.

Newt’s Florida “bump” was especially impressive, since the Sunshine State was supposedly Romney’s “firewall” that would maintain his momentum even if disaster struck in South Carolina. Moreover, Gingrich took the lead there even though Romney had enjoyed virtually uncontested control of the airwaves, having spent (via his own campaign and his Super-PAC) over $5 million in ads, mostly attacking the former Speaker on his Freddie Mac “historian” gig. Thanks to another $5 million check from Sheldon Adelson’s family, Newt’s fighting back with his Super-PAC recently buying $6 million in Florida air time.

Gingrich’s ace-in-the-hole throughout the campaign, namely his ability to rally conservatives to his side by attacking the news media, didn’t work as well for him in the first of two pre-primary debates in Tampa on January 23. Instead, Newt was largely on the defensive against attacks from Romney. The debate, however, ended more or less as a draw, with Mitt once again struggling over questions about his tax returns. For this reason, the final debate in Jacksonville tomorrow could prove decisive.

In terms of the second-tier candidates, Ron Paul is not seriously contesting Florida, preferring to focus on upcoming caucus states. But one real imponderable here is the trajectory of the struggling campaign of Rick Santorum; his collapse or withdrawal could give a crucial boost to Gingrich, given the strong evidence that Newt is his supporters’ overwhelming second choice. That being said, it remains unclear how much Gingrich’s South Carolina win was attributable to the late withdrawal of and endorsement from Rick Perry, since the Texan’s support-levels there were low and vanishing. Regardless, there are generally strong signs in national polling that Gingrich has now become the Tea Party’s adopted candidate, with Romney depending to a dangerous degree on self-identified moderates.

One fascinating aspect of the contest at present is the vast gulf between elite and rank-and-file views about the two leading candidates’ “electability.” The prevailing elite view is that Gingrich would likely be a disastrous general-election candidate, as is already suggested in general election polls, particularly given the low odds that he could continue to avoid scrutiny of his marital and financial background in the long slog to November. Contrary to such skepticism, however, exit polls in South Carolina showed Newt soundly defeating Mitt among voters most concerned about “electability”. It seems Gingrich’s claim that he can end-run media “protection” for the incumbent in debates clearly sounds compelling to a lot of conservatives who don’t spend much time perusing polls and probably don’t trust them anyway.

Of course, if Romney manages to win in Florida, the road ahead will likely become much easier for him. With a slew of caucuses that will reward his financial and Establishment advantages, followed by a February 28 primary in his native state of Michigan, Mitt would likely enter Super Tuesday (March 6) poised for victory. Gingrich’s failure to get on the ballot in Virginia would merely be icing on the cake.

But a Romney loss in Florida could cause a real crisis of confidence in him in the very Establishment circles he is counting on. There are already some signs of panic, with renewed talk (not terribly realistic, given the rapid passage of filing deadlines for primaries) of last-minute candidacies by an assortment of pols who chose not to run earlier in the cycle. Indeed, last night’s credible SOTU response by Gov. Mitch Daniels is certain to encourage some Republican pundits to cast goo-goo eyes in his direction.

Meanwhile, Democrats have been greatly encouraged by the rude interruption of Romney’s cakewalk to the nomination; by the weaknesses in his background Gingrich has exposed; and of course, by the tantalizing prospect that Republicans might actually nominate the man who became a useful punching bag for Bill Clinton when they shared power in the 1990s. Obama’s combative SOTU address indicated the incumbent has fully shifted into re-election mode. And his slowly improving approval ratings, along with fragile but encouraging economic news, provide a decent foundation for a strong campaign against an opposition party that continues to surprise virtually everyone including itself, however unpleasantly.

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With the South Carolina primary on tap this Saturday, Mitt Romney is breathtakingly close to a victory that would likely all but clinch the presidential nomination. He’s been ahead in every public poll taken in South Carolina since his win in New Hampshire. His conservative opposition remains divided. And the one candidate who did drop out after New Hampshire, Jon Huntsman, promptly endorsed Romney after months of badmouthing him.

But a strong debate performance by Newt Gingrich on Monday, and the $3.4 million his Super-PAC invested in attack ads on Romney that have generated a lot of even more powerful “earned media,” have placed the outcome in South Carolina in some doubt. A final debate on Thursday, along with the decision—or indecision—of conservative opinion-leaders to consolidate support behind a single candidate, could make a difference.

Romney and his own Super-PAC have clearly concluded Gingrich is the main, and perhaps the only, real threat, and have resumed the intense fire on the former Speaker (heavily utilizing former House colleagues) that cut him down to size in the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses.

Meanwhile, the candidate who came out of Iowa with a strong claim to have finally become the “true conservative alternative” to Romney, Rick Santorum, is struggling a bit, though still, along with Ron Paul, showing up in the mid-teens in South Carolina polls. Santorum appeared to have obtained a real breakthrough last Saturday, when a sizable group of conservative religious leaders convened in Texas by Christian Right warhorse Tony Perkins announced it had reached a “consensus” to back the Pennsylvanian. But almost immediately, backers of Newt Gingrich who attended Perkins’ conclave contested this interpretation of events, and suggested the group was evenly divided between Gingrich and Santorum, with the vote to endorse Santorum only occurring after a big percentage of attendees had already left. In Monday’s debate, Santorum didn’t exactly shine, and found himself on the defensive for voting against a national “right-to-work” bill in the Senate (not a popular position among union-hating South Carolina Republicans).

Lost in the shuffle has been Texas governor Rick Perry, who hasn’t registered double-digit support in Palmetto State in any poll since October. Though he’s campaigning heavily around the state, the main publicity coming out of his campaign this week was the request made by one of his earliest and most prominent South Carolina supporters, state senator Larry Grooms, that he withdraw from the race and enable someone else to beat Romney. South Carolina looks to be Perry’s last stand, and it isn’t going well.

If Gingrich does somehow catch up with Romney, or perhaps even if Romney narrowly wins but Perry and Santorum do poorly enough that they are forced to drop out (no one expects Ron Paul to withdraw until the Convention itself), the next question will be whether Gingrich’s latest rise from the political grave will inspire a national renaissance of his campaign, or at least make him competitive in Florida, which votes on January 31. Until today, polls in Florida and nationally were showing Romney building huge leads over the field. But a Rasmussen survey released today, the first taken since Monday’s debate, shows Gingrich suddenly within three points of Romney nationally.

One note of encouragement for Gingrich might have gained a lot more attention earlier in the year: Sarah Palin told Fox viewers that were she voting in South Carolina, she’d vote for Newt. This was, however, the most indirect endorsement yet from Palin, famous for sometimes phoning in endorsements: she said she wishes Newt well so that the campaign can continue, and the winner can receive a more thorough vetting. Well, there’s no question she is an expert on the need for candidate vetting.

Assuming Romney survives South Carolina and other early tests to become the nominee, it’s worth wondering how much general-election damage he’s suffered from attacks on him by Gingrich and others. Aside from the Bain Capital issues raised so visibly by Gingrich’s Super-PAC (complicated most recently by allegations that one Bain beneficiary was a company that disposed of “biomedical wastes” from abortion clinics), his reluctance to release his tax records is turning heads, and each day he has to spend precious general election capital reassuring conservatives that he’ll be sufficiently loyal to their priorities in office. And in general, the nomination campaign continues to shine light on the gap between GOP “base” preoccupations and more mainstream sentiments, as illustrated by Monday’s debate. Democrats couldn’t have been happier with the spectacle of wealthy Republican candidates spending the Martin Luther King holiday lecturing poor and unemployed people on how to develop a work ethic while the audience howled for blood like Romans.

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