To cleanse the palate, you haven’t arrived as a national candidate until you’ve had your deepest principles redubbed as hallucinatory gibberish. The “barftastic” line alone is worth two minutes of your time.

Below that I’m giving you his new ad from Nevada. I saw it last night and, like National Journal, was mystified that an obvious “Romney and Gingrich are no better than Obama” attack line goes badly, badly wrong at the end. Why did he decide to hit Newt and not Mitt? Yeah, granted, Gingrich is his competition for the Not Romney vote, but the potential power of Santorum’s appeal to undecideds is that he’s the most conservative candidate still standing. Makes no sense to exempt Romney from that critique, especially since some of Mitt’s votes are coming from Santorum. The only explanation I can come up with is that Santorum’s started to bow to Romney’s supposed inevitability and is pulling his punches now in hopes of an appointment in the new administration. Guess we’ll find out for sure at the next debate, if there is one.