10.59 pm. Silver's delegate projection: Santorum gets from five to ten in Michigan. Not enough to stall Romney's minuscule momentum. My major take-away is that Romney's failure to win white blue collar voters and evangelicals will be a big problem next Tuesday. He survived tonight. Just. On tonight's showing, he may not next week.

10.52 pm. Allahpundit concludes:

Looks like Mitt will win by roughly five points. Realistically, given the recent polling, that’s the best possible result he could have hoped for tonight, good enough to blunt the media’s attempts to spin this as a moral victory for RS even if Mitt did need to outspend Santorum by two to one or so just to hold his home state.

I think that's almost right - except the current gap is only 3 points, with close to 90 percent of the vote now in. Romney staggers on, therefore, without resolving any of his fundamental weaknesses. What Santorum represents - the hard edge of Christianism - remains a solid bloc that the Mormon Romney may be able to overcome by a long, hard slog in the primary, but will need to go very, very negative in the fall to bring out against Obama.

Not a pretty prospect.

10. 47 pm. A reader writes:

When you ask, somewhat rhetorically, if the resistance to Romney among evangelicals has anything to do with religion, it seems fair to put the spotlight on those of the Mormon faith as well. The numbers suggests that they're simply voting based on religion and little else. Although this is certainly their right, would we be as comfortable if a demographically dominant constituency, like Catholics as a whole, put forth such a lopsided voting margin against Romney in a Romney v. Obama matchup? And if we observed such an outcome in the national election, do those of the Mormon faith have a basis for complaint? Would such an outcome be cause for concern in our democracy and our society?

This is somewhat related to conservatives' occasional, hushed (except for Hannity) complaints about the heavy African American margin in favor of Obama. I'm not in search of a "solution" to this, but I am becoming somewhat uncomfortable about the extent of tribalism (for lack of a better word) that is forming around this upcoming election.

10.43 pm. I wish I could think of something to say about Romney's pedestrian acceptance speech. One new line that might work: "We need a recovery from this so-called recovery." The rest is pabulum that could have been said at any point since the 1980s. More tax cuts and no more debt. Yeah, right. And lies, lies, lies. Obama thinks he is "unchecked by the Constitution"? That was his predecessor, right?

10.34 pm. From the Santorum inside, a report. Money quote:

Santorum isn’t walking back his “snob” comment about the president. In fact, Brabender says, “Super Tuesday” voters can expect to hear a continuation of that theme. But he acknowledges that his candidate does not always pick a perfect phrase, and that Santorum will probably not overuse that line. “When everything you say is not poll tested, not from a TelePrompTer, there will be times when you probably don’t pick the best words,” he says. Still, “the message should not be lost in the process,” he says. “What we’re willing to do is have a candidate who comes across as genuine, who is willing to speak his mind. There’s an authenticity to that.”

10.30 pm. Santorum seems to think there was no parliament or representative democracy in Britain when the American colonies revolted. He seems not to realize that the Revolutionaries were demanding the same representation as native British aristocrats! But, hey, maybe that's my dual loyalty speaking. Or a quaint concern for, you know, reality.

10.26 pm. Why Santorum began by invoking his Catholic mother, wife and daughter:

There's very little gender gap in MI between Santorum and Romney overall except Catholic women for Romney.

10.20 pm. Fox calls it for Romney. He's winning Oakland county by a huge 51 - 29 margin.

10.16 pm. Santorum is now telling us that his grandmother went to college. I guess he knows he stepped in it - especially with women. Now he's talking up his wife and daughter, as role models.

And his walkback of his puke over JFK also reveals he is not completely clueless with respect to his fellow Catholics. But his hard turn toward theo-politics and class warfare was not crazy. It's how he won the Christianist base. He needs the crazy slightly more than he needs the crazy walkback right now.

10.15 pm. The brown is spreading across Michigan on the infographic maps, but this won't be the bog-blaster that would have set the race into total meltdown. Just continued, slow meltdown.

10.10 pm. There's a clear enthusiasm problem: