With big Tuesday night, Santorum has more victories than Romney

The interesting statistic to take out of last night is how poorly Romney performed in comparison to 2008.

Four years ago, Romney beat John McCain in Minnesota by a nearly two-to-one margin. In Colorado, Romney beat McCain in 2008 by a three-to-one margin.

Although we've written extensively about the fact that the Tea Party element of the Republican Party will never cotton to Romney, the bigger story is that the Republican Party overall in 2012 is a very conservative party. So it's extremely problematic for Romney that a lot of conservatives aren't buying his conversions to the right since 1994 and 2002, when he was running for U.S. Senate and governor, respectively, in Massachusetts.

As the New York Times' Nate Silver reports, the fact is that Romney sort of phoned it in leading up to these races, following his victory in Nevada. He didn't make any personal appearances in the three states, perhaps thinking that since there weren't any delegates at stake, it wasn't worth the energy.

But now the narrative in the political press will go back to his vulnerabilities, instead of him being the certain front-runner already preparing a general election strategy against Barack Obama.

Romney is still the odds-on favorite to take the nomination, and by far the best equipped in terms of money and infrastructure to go up to California, the last scheduled primary in early June. Next up: A caucus in Maine, a virtual home state for Romney, though Ron Paul's charges are working hard there. After that, no elections take place until February 28 in Arizona and Michigan; Romney is considered the front-runner in both states.

But he was in Colorado as well. The race ain't over yet.