Colorado and Minnesota held caucuses today, while Missouri held a “beauty contest” primary (that state’s delegates will be determined by caucuses set for March 17). A few links on the Republican presidential race are after the jump, and I’ll be adding results as they come in. Tonight may be Rick Santorum’s best shot at becoming the “not Romney” flavor of the month.

Mitt Romney is favored to win Colorado, as he did four years ago, but Santorum is poised to finish second there, according to Public Policy Polling’s latest survey of Colorado Republicans. PPP also found Santorum leading the field in Minnesota and Missouri. Santorum has been campaigning in Minnesota since before the Florida primary, and he benefits from the absence of Newt Gingrich on the ballot in Missouri. PPP’s Tom Jensen notes,

There are three groups Santorum’s winning in all three of these states: Tea Partiers, Evangelicals, and those describing themselves as ‘very conservative.’ Those were groups that had previously been in Gingrich’s column, but it appears right leaning Republican voters are shifting toward Santorum as their primary alternative to Romney. If Santorum does pick up 2 wins and a 2nd place finish tomorrow that trend is likely to be accelerated.

Santorum’s case to Republican primary voters is simple:

“If you’re a swing voter, who are you going to believe?” Santorum said to a crowd packed into a hotel ballroom here on Colorado’s Western Slope. “America is not looking for well-oiled weather vanes. They are looking for leaders.” […]

“I ask you to reset this race. Create an opportunity for someone who can speak to Americans about what America is all about,” Santorum pleaded at the same hour it became clear Romney was the victor in Nevada.

And he showed no signs of relenting on Romney or Gingrich, even as he appeared at a county GOP fundraiser as results became clear.

“Here are two candidates that are not just compromised but will be slammed even bringing up those issues. Why would you do this? … Why would the Republican Party nominate candidates with those positions?”

Gingrich was last seen campaigning in Ohio, one of the states holding its contest on “super Tuesday” (March 6). Today Gingrich asserted that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney “insisted that Catholic hospitals give out abortion pills, against their religious beliefs.” He is referring to a 2005 Romney policy regarding emergency contraception (the “morning-after pill”), not RU-486, the pill used in most non-surgical abortions during the first two months of pregnancy.

Late last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry asked more than 50 former “bundlers” for his presidential campaign to support Gingrich. Perry endorsed Gingrich shortly before the South Carolina primary.

Romney is a bit unlucky that the Nevada Republican Party’s shocking incompetence overshadowed his victory in the February 4 caucuses. It’s bad enough that the Nevada GOP didn’t finish reporting results until early Monday morning. Even worse, some precincts had more ballots than voters who signed in, and other voters were turned away. Irregularities affected more than 100 precincts. At least one Republican official took ballots from a caucus site uncounted, then stopped at his home in a gated community for about 20 minutes before bringing the ballots to GOP headquarters for counting.

Craig Robinson noted the Iowa connections to the “Nevada fiasco”:

Two former Executive Directors of the Republican Party of Iowa, Gentry Collins and Jim Anderson, were hired by the Nevada GOP to oversee its 2012 caucus operations.  The Nevada GOP contracted CAP Public Affairs, a firm led by Collins, Anderson, and Alan Philp, because Collins and Anderson had overseen the caucus process in Iowa.  The only problem is that neither of them had overseen a contested presidential caucus where tabulating the vote was required.  Their inexperience showed.

Anderson actually served as Matt Strawn’s Executive Director after Jeff Boeyink resigned the position to manage Terry Branstad’s 2012 gubernatorial campaign.  Anderson left the party following the 2010 elections.

Turnout for the Nevada caucuses and Florida primary were below 2008 levels. Beltway journalists are already talking about the Republican “enthusiasm gap,” and if turnout falls below the 2008 benchmark in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, that meme will be strengthened. Santorum has argued that low turnout reflects a lack of enthusiasm for Romney or Gingrich, while Gingrich has said that the Florida counties he carried had increased turnout compared to 2008, while the opposite was true for Florida counties Romney won.

Speaking of the presidential race, Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has changed its stance on super-PACs, which can raise unlimited money.

Obama has been an outspoken critic of current campaign financing laws, in particular a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the creation of super PACs. Until now he has kept his distance from Priorities USA Action.

But in the wake of the group’s anemic fundraising, made public last week, the campaign decided to change its position, and announced the new stance to members of its national finance committee Monday evening.

Two Obama campaign aides confirmed that senior campaign and administration officials who participate at fundraising events for the president’s campaign will also appear at events for Priorities USA Action, the PAC supporting Obama.

“This decision was not made overnight,” one campaign official said. ” The money raised and spent by Republican super PACs is very telling. We will not unilaterally disarm.”

The floor is yours, Bleeding Heartland readers. Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread.

FIRST UPDATE: It didn’t take long for the media to call the Missouri beauty contest for Santorum. With about 70 percent of the primary votes counted, he has 55 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Romney and just 12 percent for Ron Paul. You have to wonder how different the results would be if Gingrich were competing for that conservative “not Romney” niche.

SECOND UPDATE: Santorum wins the Minnesota caucuses with 45 percent of the vote (39 percent of precincts reporting). For now Paul is in second place with 27 percent, followed by Romney at 17 percent and Gingrich at 11 percent. That’s embarrassing for Romney. Speaking of which, Romney may not have won any counties in Missouri (some have yet to report).

THIRD UPDATE: At 11 pm central, 99 percent of the Missouri votes were counted, and the results didn’t change: Santorum 55, Romney 25, Paul 12. Minnesota now has 75 percent of precincts reporting, and Santorum still has 45 percent to 27 percent for Paul, 17 percent for Romney and 11 percent for Gingrich. Nearly half the vote is in for Colorado, and Santorum leads with 41 percent to 30 percent for Romney. Gingrich and Paul are well behind with 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Republican base doesn’t want Mitt Romney to be the nominee. Gingrich has to be worried about conservatives deserting him for Santorum before super Tuesday.

I only caught part of Santorum’s victory speech, delivered from Missouri. I think he made a very strong case to GOP primary voters in upcoming states. The Washington Post published the full transcript. Excerpts:

Wow! Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota.

Thank you all so very, very much. It is great to be here. I just can’t thank the people of Missouri; we doubled them up here and in Minnesota. […]

Your votes today were not just heard loud and wide across the states of Missouri and Minnesota, but they were heard loud and louder all across this country, and particularly in a place that I suspect may be in Massachusetts. They were heard particularly loud tonight.Tonight was not just a victory for us, but tonight was a victory for the voices of our party, conservatives and Tea Party people, who are out there every single day in the vineyards building the conservative movement in this country, building the base of the Republican Party, and building a voice for freedom in this land. Thank you.

There’s probably another person who maybe — maybe is listening to your cheers here tonight, also, and that might be at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You better start listening to the voice of the people.

But then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t listening. Why would you think he would be listening now? Has he ever listened to the voice of America before? […]

Here’s the problem. The problem is, in this Republican field, you have been listening. Tonight, the voters of America, the voters here in Missouri, the voters in Minnesota — and I’m hopeful the voters in Colorado, right?

I hope you have been listening to our message, because if you’ve — you listen to our message, and you found out that on those issues — health care, the environment, cap-and-trade, and on the Wall Street bailouts, Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama and, in fact, would not be the best person to get up and fight for your voices for freedom in America.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.

Tonight — tonight, we had — tonight, we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn’t outspent 5 or 10 to 1 by negative ads impugning their integrity and distorting their record. This is a more accurate representation, frankly, of what the fall race will look like.

FOURTH UPDATE: Santorum won the Colorado caucuses as well with about 40 percent of the vote to 35 percent for Romney, 13 percent for Gingrich and 12 percent for Paul. In his concession speech, Romney didn’t criticize Santorum.

After congratulating Santorum, Romney attacked Obama for the struggling economy, reprising a standard part of his stump speech. Romney pointed to Obama’s 2008 convention speech in Denver to claim that “by his own definition, President Obama has failed. We will succeed.”

He then tried to reach out to blue-collar voters by bringing up his father’s humble beginnings, making his remarks on a night that Santorum won two blue-collar states by wide margins.

“My father never graduated from college. He apprenticed as a lathe and plaster carpenter,” he said, seeming to choke up a bit as he discussed his dad, who was a governor of Michigan and a successful head of American Motors.

“There were a lot of reasons why my father could have given up and set his sights a lot lower. But my dad believed in America, and in the America he believed in a lathe and plaster guy could work up to become the head of a car company,” he said. “For my dad, and for hundreds of thousands, millions of others like him, this was a land of opportunity where the circumstance of birth was no barrier to being able to achieve one’s dreams.”

Cue the pro-Romney super-PAC to start hitting Santorum hard in the super Tuesday states. I wonder what they’ll focus on?