Rick Santorum has spun the day as a potential turning point in the GOP primary. Santorum scores triple win

Rick Santorum dealt an embarrassing setback to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign Tuesday night, sweeping non-binding contests across three states and raising new questions about conservatives’ willingness to accept Romney as their nominee.

Santorum beat Romney handily in the Missouri primary and Minnesota caucuses, and well after midnight on the East Coast he was also declared the winner of Colorado’s caucuses. He defeated Romney by 30 percentage points in Missouri, 55 percent to 25 percent; in Minnesota, Santorum took 45 percent to Ron Paul’s 27 percent and Romney’s 17 percent.


The margin in Colorado was the closest of the three contests — Santorum led by 5 points with 100 percent of precincts in. But that defeat may have stung the most for Romney, who led polling in the Western state, where his Mormon faith was expected to be an asset.

All three primaries and caucuses are largely symbolic and no delegates were awarded Tuesday night. Colorado and Minnesota Republicans will apportion their delegates in subsequent party meetings, while Missouri will hold an entirely new, nonbinding caucus process next month.

But even if the three states do not change the delegate math in the GOP presidential primary, they add up to Santorum’s best night since the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of January. In his victory speech to a crowd in Missouri, Santorum cast them as victories for the conservative cause.

“Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota,” Santorum said, telling his audience that he didn’t want to be “the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.”

Said Santorum: “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

Coming one week after Romney routed the field in Florida — and days after he took a majority of the vote in the Nevada caucuses — Tuesday’s elections inject a heavy new dose of doubt into Romney’s perceived inevitability.

Santorum’s victories may be as much a vote of no-confidence in Romney from the right wing of his party as an enthusiastic validation of Santorum. The former senator has impressed Republicans with his workman-like performance on the campaign trail but has up to this point failed to ignite national-level energy for his campaign.

Santorum declared earlier Tuesday that these contests might very well change that, calling the evening a turning point in the GOP campaign.

“I feel great that Minnesota is going to change the direction of this race tonight,” Santorum said at a campaign stop in Blaine, Minn.

Whether these three votes will be enough to shift the arc of the GOP race toward Santorum in a more durable way remains to be seen, and Santorum faces daunting organizational and fundraising obstacles as he moves forward. Regardless, Romney will have some explaining to do Wednesday morning, even after downplaying the significance of this troublesome trio of elections.

Romney’s defeats may not amount to anything more than a momentary setback in his halting march to the GOP nomination. But he spent a substantial amount of time campaigning in Colorado after a brief stop in Minnesota a week ago and committed financial resources to multiple states. Delegates or not, Romney wooed the affections of voters in several states that voted Tuesday and was rebuffed.

In his own election-night address, Romney acknowledged that it had been a “good night for Rick Santorum” but expressed confidence in the ultimate outcome of the race.

“I expect to become our nominee, with your help,” Romney said. “When this primary season is over, we’re gonna stand united.”

In a barb obviously aimed at Santorum, Romney reminded listeners that he is the only candidate in the race who has not spent time in the federal government and argued that Washington cannot be “reformed by those who have been compromised by the culture of Washington.”

That’s a more forceful, if still veiled, response to the latest round of contests than Romney’s campaign foreshadowed ahead of the votes. Indeed, only a few hours before Romney conceded defeat in Minnesota and Missouri, his campaign argued to the news media that those contests should count for very little.

Romney political director Rich Beeson made the case in a morning memo to reporters that regardless of the outcome, the former Massachusetts governor is on a nearly irreversible path to victory thanks to his advantage in several upcoming states that award delegates in binding contests.

“It is difficult to see what Governor Romney’s opponents can do to change the dynamics of the race in February. No delegates will be awarded on February 7 — Colorado and Minnesota hold caucuses with nonbinding preference polls, and the Missouri primary is purely a beauty contest,” Beeson wrote. “Except for the Maine and Wyoming nonbinding caucuses running through February, the next contests are on February 28 in states where Governor Romney is strong. Arizona’s 29 delegates will be bound in a winner-take-all contest. Michigan, the state where Governor Romney grew up, binds 30 delegates.”

Yet for a candidate who is eager to show that he’s winning over the affection of the GOP base, a multi-state rejection of Romney indicates there’s still a persistent level of discomfort with him as the not-quite-presumptive Republican nominee.

A stronger Romney performance in some or all of Tuesday’s elections would have been a clear sign that conservative demand for an anti-Romney standard-bearer has diminished since last month, when Santorum narrowly defeated Romney in Iowa and Gingrich won a convincing victory in South Carolina.

Instead, Romney will chug ahead in the GOP primary as the contender with the most impressive treasury and political operation in the race, still struggling to bring around many of the Republican Party faithful to his cause – a candidate whose successes have more to do with his superior preparation and execution than with his raw electoral appeal.

Romney wasn’t the only candidate openly trying to look past the elections this week, toward higher-profile primary states later this month and beyond. Gingrich did not pay to appear on the Missouri ballot since there were no delegates at stake. After launching a bus tour in Cincinnati on Tuesday, Gingrich spent election night in Ohio, a much more competitive primary state that does not vote until the beginning of March.

A wild card in Tuesday’s elections was Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman who has long focused his attention on low-turnout caucus states in hopes that his corps of activist supporters would buoy him to a solid finish. His best result of the night, however, was a second-place finish in Minnesota.

Juana Summers contributed to this report.