Daniel Horowitz has written a good synopsis of yesterday’s election results.  It’s worth a read:

Romney wins OH, VA, MA, VT, and ID; Gingrich wins GA; Santorum wins OK, TN, and ND.  Alaska is still pending.  Here are some random thoughts.

1) It looks like Romney will eke out a very narrow win in Ohio.  The pattern is becoming familiar.  Romney can’t just outspend his opponents; he must swamp them in order to pull out a narrow victory.  There is simply no comparison between Romney’s campaign apparatus and Santorum’s primitive organization.  Yes, a win is a win, and Romney is racking up many important ones.  But if superior money and organization is the only way to compensate for his flaccid appeal to the public, then what does that say about his chances against Obama in the general election when he will lack those advantages?

2) Ron Paul was able to garner 41% against Romney in Virginia, where Santorum and Gingrich were off the ballot.  He even won CD-3, picking up 3 delegates. This is not a vote of confidence in Mitt Romney.

3) All the talk of Romney closing in on Santorum in Tennessee was unfounded.  Romney clearly does not resonate in the south, even with Santorum trending down and splitting the vote with Gingrich, and even as he put some resources into the state late in the game.  In fact, Romney’s Super PAC outspent Santorum 3-1.  In the end, he only won 3 counties by narrow margins. Romney clearly has a problem with southern and evangelical voters, a key component of the GOP base.  From here, the show moves on to Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and then Missouri.  Rick Santorum should be in a strong position to win those states.

4) According to exit polls, 50% of Massachusetts voters feel that Romneycare went too far.

Much more here. Does yesterday’s lackluster performance by the Mittster give anyone confidence in November? As Horowitz notes, Romney has an unprecedented campaign infrastructure in place, tens of millions of dollars to burn, the entire GOP Establishment at his disposal, and still must carpet bomb his opponents with a negative ad campaign in which he outspends them by factors of at least 5 or 6 in order to win by a small margin. Romney’s birth state of Michigan, where his father was a popular three-term Governor, is Exhibit A. This, presumably, is evidence of the Mittster’s “electability”, which remains the primary, if not only, rationale Romney’s supporters advance for his nomination.

In my state of Ohio, it’s been non-stop negative ads by Romney for weeks. Anyone paying attention to them has no choice but to consider Rick Santorum an amalgamation of Richard Trumka, Ted Kennedy, and Karl Marx. And yet Romney only beat Santorum by one percent.  To manage this narrow victory, Romney had to outspend Santorum 12 to 1 in the Buckeye state.  Think about that.

All of these institutional and financial advantages on which the Mittster relies will disappear in November. How, then, will he be able to beat Obama in important swing states like Ohio? And let’s keep in mind; the candidates he’s struggling to beat in the primaries were considered mere curiosities with no chance of winning a few short months ago. There’s still time to stop the Romney train wreck from occurring in November, but that time is rapidly running out.

Update: In the comments, “Laddie_Blah_Blah” reminds us that Santorum and Gingrich weren’t even on the ballot in Virginia, and yet Romney couldn’t crack 60%…against Ron Paul. More evidence of the Mittster’s fervent support and electability, I suppose.