Well, I wouldn't say it was an Ice Cube level good day for Mitt Romney, but it was a pretty good day. He won where he needed to, and piled up more delegates. His opponents have started to shift from claiming they can win the most delegates, to saying they might deny Romney a clean first-ballot majority. He's clearly going to end up as the nominee.

I was recently reminded of something from the 2008 campaign. Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, there was a debate at St. Anselm. John McCain got a little worked up and chided Romney for running ads describing his immigration position as "amnesty." Romney flatly denied it: "I don't describe your plan as amnesty in my ad.

Yesterday there was a little dust-up in Mitt Romney world. The candidate had given a TV interview in Ohio, during which he got asked about the so-called Blunt amendment controversy in Congress, relating to "conscience clause" exemptions for employers wishing to provide health insurance that does not pay for services (like contraception) to which they have religious or moral objections.

From the Boston Globe, Nov. 4 2002:

A last-minute round of accusations roiled the gubernatorial campaign yesterday when an independent conservative group blitzed Boston radio with an ad that urged supporters of Green Party candidate Jill Stein to vote for Republican Mitt Romney.

The ad features a man and a woman who praise Stein, but decide to vote for Romney as a practical matter.

The Romney campaign is spittin' mad, because there are hijinx afoot in his semi-home state of Michigan. (Can't fully count it as a home state, since his wife doesn't even have a Cadillac there.) It seems that there's been some effort to get Democrats -- particularly union households -- to vote in today's Republican primary, for Rick Santorum.

According to the pollsters and pundits, Mitt Romney should win tomorrow's Arizona primary handily, while the Michigan primary looks like a tossup.

What happens will set the stage for the caucuses in Washington Sunday, and Super Tuesday next week. Romney is expected to win Massachusetts and Vermont, and gets a gimme in Virginia, where only he and Ron Paul are on the ballot.

There's a lot of hand-wringing these days -- as there should be -- over the millions being spent in the Presidential nominating contest by so-called Super PACs, some of which are funded almost entirely by one or two very wealthy individuals.

But I would argue that, to a large extent, this phenomenon is a response to something else that's happening -- it's an attempt to fill in the gap left by the lack of money in the Presidential nominating contest.

There was a little development in the GOP nomination process yesterday, which may end up meaning nothing but I think has the potential to spell trouble for Mitt Romney.

Texas, which is experiencing some redistricting-related difficulties, looks like it won't actually be ready to hold its primary in early April -- already a postponement from early March.

What a difference four years makes. Facing a must-win Michigan primary in 2008, Mitt Romney went all pro-worker populist; after John McCain said that some auto-industry jobs were not coming back, Romney vowed to never allow any of those jobs to be lost ever, for eternity, and hammered McCain in ads for abandoning those workers.

Monday I suggested an analogy in which Mitt Romney is like a starting pitcher; I guess we learned yesterday (when Romney lost contests in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado) that he really doesn't have his best stuff in this outing. I still feel pretty certain that he'll win the nomination -- he's facing a pretty weak-hitting lineup -- but he definitely needs to keep fighting for a while.

I will be on Emily Rooney's WGBH radio show today at noon, doing a political week-in-review segment with the estimable Jeff Jacoby. The main topic will be Mitt Romney and the GOP nomination battle, so here's my quick take before you tune in to hear me talk about it on air.

Romney, of course, followed up his big Florida victory by winning an impressive (albeit expected) romp in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.

According to reports, Donald Trump will endorse Mitt Romney today.

Yeah. So, if Mitt had snagged that Michele Bachmann endorsement earlier this week, he really could have alienated the sensible center in one swoop.

Reports have it that the Trump endorsement was worked out at the "highest levels" of the Romney campaign, and came about because of their fear of a Trump third-party candidacy.

Last night's Presidential debate opens the door for someone (maybe someone from CNN, in Thursday's debate?) to pose a question I've long suggested for Mitt Romney: Why did you return to Marriott Corporation's board of directors in January 2009, knowing that the company is the very epitome of the "illegal immigration" problem? And what, if anything, did you propose there to change things?

It has come to my attention that a lot of people, particularly in the realm of political reporting and commentary, are under the impression that there is an open question about the veracity of Mitt Romney's 2007 claims of his father marching with Martin Luther King, Jr.. There is not. Romney's claim, whether deliberate or from faulty memory, is factually untrue.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I use the manic New Hampshire primary week to examine a shift in how Presidential campaigns are covered.

I write that fewer newspapers are putting reporters "on the bus" with candidates, while a proliferation of national political-niche outlets are eagerly taking their place.