As weird as it was rooting for Gingrich, it’s even weirder now that I find myself rooting for Santorum. Pretty much everything I’ve heard or read about last night gave the debate to Romney, either by a little or a lot. Didn’t feel that way to me—Romney gets creepier by the day, and that’s a surprise, because you wouldn’t think anybody named Willard could be creepy. That linkage he made between Santorum’s Arlen Specter endorsement and passage of HCR was ridiculous, and I thought Santorum batted it down very well. (Specter was on CNN tonight saying he never made any kind of an agreement over Supreme Court nominations with Santorum; if Santorum was just making stuff up, that could be inconvenient.) Romney taking Santorum’s 2008 endorsement of him and throwing it back in Santorum’s face—like the endorsement meant anything beyond “you’re not as odious to me as McCain”—was equally slimy. Santorum was roundly booed by Romney’s paid-for audience over the earmark detour (which I found fascinating), but I give him credit for holding to the idea that government’s actually supposed to, you know, do stuff. And that last answer of Romney’s, where he ignored the softball question (“What is the biggest misperception about you?”) and instead launched into vision-thing gibberish, was pathetic—it was a question that actually could’ve helped rehabilitate him some.

I’ve long given up trying to figure out the thought processes of these people who are causing the polls to fluctuate 5% every other day. (“Well, it’s true that last week I was for Gingrich, but as of today I’m supporting that new toaster oven as our nominee.”) So I don’t know—maybe Romney did in fact do whatever it was that he was supposed to do. The only good thing I got out of it all was that I’m finally starting to move past feelings of indifference over Romney towards a genuine (perhaps even “robust”) antipathy.

One embarrassing CNN moment: John King asking the candidates to describe themselves in one word — then giving them three minutes of commercial break time to prepare!

It’s hard for me to see how any of this stuff really matters too much in the end. No one was badly injured, no one ran away with a gold medal. I suppose Santorum took a half-step back (he was effectively reigned in on the insider-politics stuff) and Romney took a half-step forward (by failing to produce any notable gaffes), but it doesn’t feel, to me anyway, that this race is in an altogether different place today than it was yesterday. But for visual and soundbite election year ambience — good stuff.

Um, a real update at some point, promise. (Too busy lately to try and make sense of the Santorum surge, Romney’s L’Trimm remix, everything else.)

I’m probably more baffled today than I’ve been at any point along the way—Cain and Gingrich jumping out front pale by comparison. Like most everyone, I still think Romney will be the nominee. Trying to conjure up a mental image of President Santorum is impossible, and Santorum and Obama on a debate stage isn’t appreciably easier. (Conceding that Santorum has more experience today than Obama had in 2008.) But wow, is he ever getting battered along the way. I keep hearing comparisons to 2008, and how Obama would regularly take a step back for every two steps forward against Hillary. Two major differences that I can see. Part of that had to do with the fierce loyalty that was out there for Hillary. She drove me up the wall, of course, but she did have a base of support that was unshakeable, and that dug in more and more as the campaign dragged on. I don’t think anything like that is at work for Santorum or Gingrich. There was also the reality of—well, I know it’s yesterday’s news, but there was no secret at the time as to why Obama was losing some of the states that he lost. The point is, Obama’s setbacks were of a different nature than what happened last night. Last night was just strange, and I’m quite sure Romney will have to flail around even more than usual for the next little while until he gets himself back on track. Who’d have guessed it: Rick Santorum is now inside Mitt Romney’s head.

It’ll be moderately interesting, of course, to watch the reaction on the right to all this. There was a fascinating moment two days ago on Hannity, when he was interviewing Santorum, and Santorum laced into Romney over health care — quite eloquently, I might add. Hannity’s response? An extremely half-hearted defense of the state-vs-federal argument, followed by an abrupt change of topic (not just away from health care but from the primary itself). Hilarious. I wasn’t listening to Hannity six months ago, but I’d bet money that he was railing against Mitt, day after day, for the exact same reason. Clearly, though, he got the memo.

Me and my vested interest.

This thinly veiled attack on the preposterousness of Newt, from an obviously right-leaning publication, is well said enough (“Romney has got into Gingrich’s head, under his skin and very possibly into other parts of his anatomy”), but it’s one of the comments below that floors me, maybe more than I’ve been floored by anything thus far in the entire race:

If would [sic] could combine Newt’s brain with Romney’s looks they would be unstoppable. Both guys have a little something for everyone. Once this contest is over and we have a winner there are a lot of great ideas from everyone on stage to give our nation the shot in the arm it needs. It will have to be a total team effort with everyone pitching in a little bit of greatness.

(I can’t embed YouTubes right now, but you knew this was coming, right? www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuHIRrt5lCI)