Looks to me like Mitt continues to surge, and may be th man to beat among conservative activists.

The full results may be viewed here.

Matt Margolis of GOPBloggers offers this analysis.

Supporters of the top 3 potential candidates (Romney, Guiliani and Gingrich) are largely committment to their respective candidate of choice, which puts Romney in a very strong position to launch a very successful online grassroots campaign. With his impressive exploratory committee website, and his campaign's clear understanding of how to use the internet to respond to attacks quickly, Romney has proven himself very able to win the GOP nomination.

Indeed, the Romney lead is significant in that he has surged to the front of the pack in a very short period of time, according to John Hawkins of Right Wing News.

The Front Runners

Mitt Romney: +46.6%
Newt Gingrich: +45.8%
Rudy Giuliani: + 33.9%

Analysis: Mitt Romney has really rocketed up the charts in the last few months. For example, if you look back to July of last year, he was sitting at only 17.9%. Back then, the number one candidate was George Allen at 48.9%. After Allen went down in flames, it looks as if most of his support went to Romney with a little spillover going to Gingrich while Rudy has stayed in about the same spot (he was +30.6% back then).

And while Hawkins does note the strength of the Gingrich support, I can't help but think he is a candidate with so much negative baggage as to make a successful candidacy difficult to imagine.

Columnist Jeff Jacoby offers this bit of analysis of Mitt Romney's rightward shift since the 1994 Senatorial race against Ted Kennedy.

Romney's very public migration rightward over the last few years is a different kind of act, one intended not to hide his real views but to liberate them. In 1994, Romney struck me as an extraordinarily bright, talented, and decent man -- and a political neophyte who fell for the canard that the only way a conservative could win in Massachusetts was by passing for liberal.

Thirteen years later, Romney is where he should have been all along. Yes, it took some tap-dancing and artful dodging to get from there to here, and some voters will wonder which Mitt Romney, the 1994 edition or the one on offer today, is the real deal. Can he put those doubts to rest? If he's going to win his party's nomination, he'll have to.

Gov. Romney has been very clear about his journey from 1994 to 2007, and that journey shares much in common with Ronald Reagan himself -- not to mention a great many members of the GOP who have moved from the mushy moderation of Rockefeller Republicanism to the conservatism that is the cornerstone of the GOP today.

Posted by: Greg at 06:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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