Michigan: GOP Picks Scrambled Instead of Over-Easy

So Mitt Romney listened to the economically distressed voters of Michigan, and in the process he found his voice -- or at least a new voice. He didn't cry, but he shed his painfully phony social conservative veneer and ran as something closer to his real self, an earnest, smart, results-focused businessman who thinks what America needs is a CEO as C-in-C. Romney's (apparently decisive) decisive victory over John McCain in the Michigan primary tonight ensures that the GOP race will continue for at least another four days without anything remotely resembling a front-runner. The result prolongs a trend that has taken hold in both parties this cycle -- the evaporation, despite the staccato scheduling of early primaries, of any lasting momentum from one contest to the next. The CW coming out of New Hampshire, both from within the McCain campaign and beyond, was that Romney was essentially dead after two losses in two states in which he had invested heavily. But there was a suprising lack of despair at Romney's election night party in New Hampshire, coupled with lots of assurances that Michigan would turn things around. At the time this seemed like collective self-delusion. It may have been. But it also turned out to be true.