Santorum Good Day Could Scramble Race Again

On Monday morning, the eve of caucuses and primaries in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, the Romney campaign sent out notice it would hold a conference call to discuss rival Rick Santorum's "long history of pork-barrel spending." The call would feature former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty explaining why Santorum "is simply not ready to be president."

Santorum's aides were delighted to hear the news. "They've turned their attack machine against us in the last 24 hours," top adviser John Brabender said that afternoon. "I can only read into that that they're looking at polling numbers telling them we're they're biggest threat. It's a badge of honor that Romney has decided to try to destroy us."

There isn't much polling for the three states holding contests on Tuesday, but one survey in Minnesota put Santorum slightly ahead of Romney, who is coming off wins in Florida and Nevada. It's no surprise the Romney campaign directed its guns at Santorum.

Good showings on Tuesday, Santorum aides believe, will allow Santorum to use the coming three weeks without a Republican primary or caucus -- Feb. 7 to 28 -- to beef up his campaign and finally emerge as the one-on-one rival to Romney.

Meanwhile, on the day of the Nevada caucuses, Newt Gingrich held a long meeting with top advisers in Las Vegas, trying to come up with a strategy to recapture the form he showed in South Carolina. The key challenge was to somehow get Gingrich to talk about policy and stop his one-on-one personal spat with Romney. Throughout the Florida campaign, especially, Romney was able to pull Gingrich's chain almost at will; whenever Romney attacked, Gingrich would react in an angry, self-defeating way. In Las Vegas, the Gingrich team realized that had to stop.

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