Romney Ebbing ...

... not Santorum surging.

PPP and others have polls in the field that show Santorum either tied or moving to the lead nationally. To quote PPP's twitter account:

We're going to have our new national GOP poll, showing a pretty healthy Santorum lead, out tomorrow morning

Meanwhile, PPP also reports:

Santorum topping Romney on the first night of our Michigan poll. This may be the biggest surge yet.

And a new Rosetta Stone/Landmark Communications Poll (yeah, I never heard of it either) has Georgia at:

Gingrich 35
Santorum 26
Romney 16

Obviously, Santorum's surge has very little to do with Santorum. I could be a Republican candidate for President right now and, so long as I was enough of an empty vessel for voters to pour their hatred of Obama and dislike of Romney into, I'd be beating Romney too.

The problem for Romney, as I've been saying for a few days now is getting worse because his viable options are narrowing. He can pour tons of money into smashing Santorum with negative ads. But this will hurt Romney as well as Santorum. He can take increasingly conservative positions on issues but that not only harms his general election chances, it also reinforces his image as a man who will say anything to win and who has no core.

We're now at a very weird point in the Republican nomination fight. I don't see how anyone else can win the nomination. But it is becoming increasingly easy to see how Romney might not win. Paging Mitch Daniels.