So let’s start off with the obvious: while the political world and its amen corner of useful dopes on cable news goes gaga over Rick Santorum’s trifecta last night, consider this: it means nothing. The number of votes cast was amazingly low and no delegates are directly awarded from last night’s vote – and in the case of Missouri, no delegates are awarded at all; it’s a pure “beauty contest” resulting from a lack of preparation and understanding on the part of the Missouri GOP and the RNC. Hell, Gingrich wasn’t even on the ballot in the Show-Me State.
So from a practical standpoint, this means nothing. From a perceptual standpoint, it looks as if Romney has taken a torpedo again, although this one is unlikely to be below the waterline. But it demonstrates that the appeal of Newt Gingrich outside the South will be limited at best, and that Santorum may yet be more attractive to evangelical voters outside Dixie than is Multiple-Choice Mitt. Santorum is a True Believer(™) and those always do well in primaries and caucuses, because that’s when the people who really truly care all show up.
Inasmuch as this serves to stretch out the primary, it will probably only help the President – the last thing Romney needs is a continuing demonstration of how he hasn’t sold much of the GOP, and the last thing the GOP needs is more airtime for a candidate who is down on birth control, never mind abortion. Rick Santorum is the sort of candidate who will drive those low-intensity suburban upper middle class voters screaming back to Obama.
I suppose I should touch on the Prop 8 ruling – there seems to be some debate about the legal reasoning and wording, mostly centered around the fact that the Ninth Circuit panel seems to have ruled based solely on the merits of whether the rights of a class can be restricted post facto and especially by referendum. It’s an approach designed to limit the Supreme Court appeal – if the only constitutional issue is the ability to do what Prop 8 did, rather than the merits of Prop 8 or gay marriage, it’s entirely possibly the Court might not even grant cert. But never underestimate the willingness of this SCOTUS to make up the law out of whole cloth and do something stupid that we’ll all regret in two years.