Romney’s back in front

What happened

Mitt Romney regained front-runner status in the Republican presidential race this week, overcoming Rick Santorum’s populist challenge to win crucial primary contests in his home state of Michigan and in Arizona. Having fallen behind Santorum in the polls in recent weeks, Romney eked out a three-point victory in the state where he grew up when his father served as governor; he won Arizona by a far more definitive 19-point margin. The impact of his first-place finish in Michigan on the larger race was chiefly symbolic, as the state’s delegates are to be divided proportionally with Santorum. But the twin victories provided a momentum change for the former Massachusetts governor ahead of next week’s “Super Tuesday” contests, when 10 states go to the polls to select 437 delegates. “We didn’t win by a lot, but we won by enough, and that’s what counts,” Romney said.

After surging in recent weeks, Santorum hurt himself before this week’s primaries with several highly controversial comments. He called President Obama a “snob” for encouraging all Americans to attend college, and said that John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech emphasizing the separation of church and state made him “want to throw up.”

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What the editorials said

Mitt Romney is finally beginning to look like a winner, said The Wall Street Journal. Having looked lost for much of February, he staged a comeback in Michigan this week by hammering home his economic credentials, unveiling a welcome agenda of 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts that appealed to Midwestern voters far more than Santorum’s focus on social issues. The gaffe-prone Romney is not a very good campaigner, but his resilience “speaks well of his determination.”

Santorum, meanwhile, is “disqualifying” himself as a serious presidential contender, said The Washington Post. His attacks on JFK and his apocalyptic talk of a “war on people of faith” may appeal to paranoid religious conservatives, but it sounds ridiculous to everyone else. We admire Santorum’s deeply held beliefs, said NationalReview.com, but he needs to reel himself in. You can’t run for president by speaking of Satan and calling liberal Protestant denominations “distortions of the creed.” America does not want a theologist in chief.

What the columnists said

Mitt Romney didn’t win Michigan, said Jonathan S. Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com. Santorum lost it with “unforced errors.” After his criticism of contraception, he lost women by six points in Michigan. Even Catholics, whom you’d expect to support him in droves, went for Romney by a six-point margin in both Arizona and Michigan. If these defeats teach Santorum anything, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post, it should be that his disdain for “snobs” who want their children to get college educations is not shared by ordinary Americans. For all the Republican talk of Democratic class warfare against the 1 percent, it’s Santorum who has the “deeply chiseled chip on his shoulder.”

Romney has the opposite problem—he has no appeal to working-class voters, said Jonathan Cohn in TheNewRepublic.com. He actually lost in Michigan among voters making less than $100,000 a year, which is no surprise, given the fact that he keeps revealing himself as an out-of-touch plutocrat. Over the past week alone, he cheerfully boasted that his wife owned two Cadillacs, and allowed that while he didn’t follow NASCAR, he has “some great friends that are team owners.” He has no chance of beating President Obama if he can’t “win over at least some middle-class votes.”

Now, “the landscape changes again,” said John Dickerson in Slate​.com. Super Tuesday could enable Newt Gingrich, who is polling well in Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, to get back in the race, further diluting the delegate pool. The “biggest prize” is Ohio, where Romney and Santorum will battle it out. If Romney has a weak showing that night, the “GOP elites” may start panicking and talking up a brokered convention, said Ed Kilgore in TheNewRepublic.com. But if he keeps Santorum at bay, the power brokers will add up the delegate totals, the bank balances, and the increasing odds against a dark horse candidate, and “figure that Mitt is ‘inevitable’ again.”