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Mitt Romney finally did what conservatives were begging him to do -- he aggressively attacked the surging Gingrich in Monday's debate. But it wasn't enough to get rid of a sense of dread in the GOP: now Newt Gingrich may be the nominee. Which is why The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol declares the winner of the debate to be Mitch Daniels -- the Indiana governor who is short, bald, and said he wouldn't run for president. "If Mitch Daniels’s effective tax rate is 30 percent rather than 15 percent, and if he was never paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, he can be the next president," Kristol writes. At The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens is grimmer: "The GOP Deserves to Lose." He argues that Americans are ready to get rid of President Obama, he writes, and "All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won't be another fiasco." Alas, the Republican candidates cannot assure them of that.

Florida promises to be attack-ad "armageddon," Politico's Alexander Burns and Robin Bravender report. Gingrich's Florida campaign co-chair, Rich Crotty, told Politico, “I think there is a sense — particularly if the winner of South Carolina wins this — that a lot of the establishment elected officials and Republican leadership that got behind Romney early see this slipping away from them." On ABC's World News, George Stephanopoulos reported, "I spoke to several top Republican strategists today, and most of these people do not want Newt Gingrich to be the nominee. But for the first time, they're starting to believe it actually can happen. It begins for Newt if he gets a win in Florida in just over a week." The New York Times' Nate Silver now gives Gingrich an 81 percent chance of winning the Sunshine State, and says that the establishment's support of Romney might be waning.