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All Mitt’s money can’t buy GOP core

WASHINGTON — Eight states down, and the Republican base still isn’t sold on Mitt Romney.

Romney’s inevitability was always something of an illusion. Gobs of campaign cash and withering TV air assaults on his opponents merely masked a problem that Team Romney still hasn’t quite cracked: The GOP base is queasy about its party’s front-runner.

Tuesday night’s Santorum trifecta was such a stunner that the networks didn’t even bother to do exit polling. But other numbers reveal the extent of Romney’s humiliation.

Romney didn’t win a single county in Missouri or Minnesota. Turnout was pathetically low in areas where Romney prevailed. Romney got creamed in Colorado Springs, an evangelical hotbed, and ended up losing a state he won with 60 percent of the vote in 2008.

“The problem that he has to this day is that he doesn’t necessarily show the same values that the core Republican voter does,” said John Brabender, a consultant advising Santorum, who said he didn’t even “daydream” that Santorum would run the table in all three states.

But what about those Florida exit polls a week ago that showed Romney cleaning up across the board? Turns out they may have said more about Florida’s voters than they did about Romney’s support nationally.

The Romney camp still tries to paper over its vulnerabilities by blasting out lists of endorsements. Yesterday it was Michigan Reps. Dave Camp and Tim Walberg — plus five fine public servants from Kalamazoo. It’s unlikely they could be much more useful than two-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who couldn’t deliver his home state to Romney.

More than any candidate, Santorum has message discipline. And unlike Newt Gingrich — who appears to have skipped the step of buying a legal pad to sketch out a campaign strategy after his big South Carolina win — Santorum has an ability to delegate.

“Unlike the Speaker, Santorum was somebody who could actually pull together and execute a successful game plan both on point but also as a member of a team,” said one former congressional aide who served while Santorum ran the Senate GOP Conference.

Romney’s still the front-runner, but he needs to find a unifying conservative message beyond turning his rivals into pulp.