Mittens gets increasingly manic as Super Tuesday looms

Mitt Romney started out the week positively enough—On Monday, he heard from numerous poll sources that he had the lead in Florida. Indeed the President of Public Policy Polling Dean Debnam noted on the 28th that “The tide in Florida” had been “breaking Mitt Romney’s way over the last week.” However, despite his projected win in the Tuesday Florida primary, Mitt lost the battle for the 57 delegates, winning 31% of the vote to McCain’s 36%. Despite this, many feel Mitt made strides in the Wednesday debate, especially when he spoke out against a timetable for leaving Iraq, which made some of McCain’s attacks on Romney fall flat. The Boston Globe notes that Romney had a three part plan-- “The Romney camp had three principals goals going into the debate; to frame this contest as a two-man race; to put some dents into McCain’s reputation as a straight talker; and to portray the senator as out of sync with conservative values.” It seems that Romney either accomplished or came near to achieving many of these goals, which will give him some momentum going into Super Tuesday. The debate provides a hopeful note for the Romney camp. Each loss that Mitt suffers hits him especially hard, given that much of the ubiquitous advertising he has done is done with his own money. Yesterday, Romney reported that he will “spend several million dollars more to broadcast television ads” to stay in the race. His entreaties to voters have been increasingly more urgent as the day nears. On January 31st, Mitt told crowds that he is the “only true conservative” left in the Republican primary race. He has certainly been busy in quest for the nomination—today he was in Illinois and Missouri, and over the next few days, he plans to travel to many states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennesee.