Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has a good roundup of take-aways from last night's CNN debate. The short version is that Romney is being viewed as having won by being a giant dick. Here's one example of how Lewison saw this playing out:
Mitt Romney positioned himself to Rick Santorum's right. If you watched the debate, you learned that Mitt Romney thinks Rick Santorum is basically a liberal Democrat, and he promised to govern far to Santorum's right. Need I say more?
If Romney ends up winning the Republican nomination it will likely be because he convinced primary voters that he was more conservative than all the Anti-Romney's out there. That list has included such radical conservatives as Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. If it goes on to include Rick Santorum, it would be a stunning testament to Romney's ability to not only adopt any position, but to do so convincingly. The challenge for him will be, has he left room to move back towards the center in a general election? Based on last night's absolutely bonkers rhetoric, I'd guess the answer is no. The DNC and Obama campaign will have more than enough fodder to drop major bombs on Romney's radicalism on issues like bailing out Wall Street, opposing the continued existence of an American auto industry, deporting anyone whose skin color is lighter than Conan O'Brien's, and putting steel chastity belts on all unmarried women. Mitt Romney is not an approachable, nice multi-millionaire who understands your problems. He's a raging ass and it will be easy to show it to voters in a general election.