Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney waves at his election night party in Novi, Mich., Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Source: NewsMax.com

By: Martin Gould

Posted: March 1st, 2012

Just three days after Rick Santorum appeared set to snatch Mitt Romney’s home state of Michigan from under his nose, the former senator’s chances of winning the Republican nomination have taken a dramatic nose dive.

Romney’s popularity has soared since his narrow 3 percentage point victory —  to the point that GOP leaders again see his eventual victory as nearly inevitable.

A Rasmussen Reports poll taken within hours of Tuesday’s results in Michigan and Arizona gave the former Massachusetts governor a 16-point lead over Santorum among likely Republican primary voters nationwide, his biggest lead so far in the protracted contest.

And both former White House senior adviser Karl Rove and influential Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin came out to say that Romney now has an almost unshakable lock on the nomination, unless Santorum can come up with a serious of unexpected results next week in Super Tuesday polling.

In a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Rove said Santorum’s campaign will “realistically be at an end” unless he wins in Ohio, and even then it would be left “on life support if he doesn’t come in ahead of Romney in the three southern states that both men are competing in.

And Ryan told Bloomberg Television that a good Super Tuesday for Romney would mean “he is well on his way to the nomination.”

The Rasmussen poll showed that three out of every four Republicans now believe that Romney will be the GOP name on the presidential ballot in November, up 11 points in just two weeks.

The survey’s full results gave Romney 40 percent support, the highest of any Republican candidate since polling started early last year. Santorum trailed in second with 24 percent, ahead of former House speaker Newt Gingrich on 16 percent and Rep. Ron Paul on 12 percent.

In a one-on-one match-up, Romney beat Santorum by 50 percent to 38 percent, a dramatic flip from figures of two weeks ago when the former Pennsylvania senator led by 55 percent to 34.

The poll among 1,000 likely primary voters was taken on Wednesday after Romney’s squeaker victory in Michigan and his landslide in Arizona.