Rachel Maddow floated a theory that Ron Paul is urging his supporters to stay late at caucuses so that they can vote themselves in as delegates. Once they've become delegates, they can cast their vote for Ron Paul, against the will of the people who voted in their caucuses. A major Ron Paul adviser confirmed that this is the Ron Paul strategy:

..we're tracking this at the precinct level, we think we have the majority of [delegates]. We think we've won in Iowa , we won in Minnesota , we won in Colorado, and Missouri is yet to be seen. And we think we probably won in Nevada , because we're counting the precinct votes. The only thing that I might add; there is nothing wrong or deceptive about this. Anybody can stay. Woody Allen says 80% of success is showing up. Our people show up. And they have a right to do that, and they are committed, and so they are running as delegates at the precinct level to the county convention where they will again run as delegates from the county convention to the state convention.

Here's video:

The problem with Ron Paul's strategy, in many ways, is the problem with Ron Paul's strict Constitutionalist worldview: It's way too literal. There's no way the Republican bosses are going to let this happen. They'll make new rules, they'll ignore the votes, they'll do anything they can to ensure that Ron Paul's delegates don't manage to throw the convention in favor of Ron Paul. It's kind of clever of Paul to try to game the system like this, but I can't imagine the Republican leadership is inept enough to let this kind of mutiny happen*.

* ....right? Surely they're not that inept, right?

The Maine state Republican Party announced that Mitt Romney has won Maine. This is not shocking. The results:

Romney—39%—2,190 votes
Paul—36%—1,996 votes
Santorum—18%—989 votes
Gingrich—6%—349 votes
Other—61 votes

Turnout was way lower than 2008, when Romney won with 2,837 votes.

The Conservative Political Action Conference has voted in a straw poll to determine the party's favorite, and that favorite is the same old favorite:

Romney won 38 percent of the 3,408 votes cast in the straw poll, edging Santorum’s 31 percent. Gingrich won 15 percent of the vote and Paul took 12 percent.

I bet if CPAC had been held a month earlier, Newt Gingrich would've had that 31 percent second place, but Santorum is the not-Romney of the moment. CPAC also overwhelmingly chose Marco Rubio as their VP pick, with Chris Christie and Bob O'Donnell way in the rear, tying for second place. And Sarah Palin gave a keynote speech that made her 2008 VP acceptance speech sound liberal in comparison—she got a few good not-so-subtle digs at Romney in there—but if we continue to ignore Sarah Palin, she'll eventually go away, so let's do that.

The CPAC straw poll is essentially meaningless. Ron Paul wins it every non-presidential-election year, and the favorite of the party machine always wins it in presidential election years. Also meaningless? The Maine caucus results, which will be announced in an hour or so. Maine has been caucusing for a week now, so Santorum's Second Coming is unlikely to show up in the results here. The turnout will be low, which favors Romney. A lot of Massachusetts conservatives retire to Maine, too, so he's likely to have some support there, too. In the past few days, pundits have been dreaming of a Ron Paul win in Maine, because he's been campaigning there for a while. I don't think that's likely, but it would be a lovely slap in Romney's face, so let's hope for that result.

In any case, I'll be writing about the Maine results when they come in, right here on Slog. Stay tuned.

Bits and pieces of polling data have been oozing out for days, but PPP just released its latest nationwide poll in the Republican presidential nomination race, confirming that "Santorum surges into the lead":

Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul.

Oh, and with Gingrich out of the race, PPP finds that Santorum would lead Romney by an impressive 50 percent to 28 percent margin.

This may be Santorum's first ride atop a national poll, but it isn't the first time Romney has seen his own frontrunner status challenged. And each time, Romney has fought back with a deluge of attack ads. But how exactly does Romney attack Santorum?

Point out that Santorum's Christianist anti-sex agenda is bat-shit crazy? That's what helped propel Santorum into the lead in the first place.

Unlike the previous non-Romney frontrunners, Santorum isn't a philandering hypocrite (Gingrich, Cain) or a deer-caught-in-camera-lights idiot (Bachmann, Perry). He was a K Street shill, sure, but Santorum's personal profiteering was relatively minor by DC standards, and harder to portray as scandalous.

Unlike Gingrich and Romney, Santorum is authentic. He actually believes the horrible words he spews. And that's what the Republican base seems to crave: authenticity. Drop a hundred million dollars in his lap to do to Romney what Romney will now attempt to do to him, and Santorum wins the nomination.