Anti-Romney conservatives made a mistake backing Gingrich

That's Ross Douthat's view, expressed over at the New York Times online:  The Last Days of Newt.  Douthat's thinks that conservatives would have done better supporting Santorum instead of Gingrich because of the problems hardwired into Gingrich's candidacy at this point:

Some of what we’ve seen this week are problems inherent to Gingrich’s candidacy: You just can’t expect a rich Washington insider with considerable personal baggage, an endless enemies list within the party, and a long history of ideological flexibility to exploit Mitt Romney’s myriad weaknesses terribly effectively, at least so long as Romney himself is willing to fight back.

Gingrich's performance in South Carolina is showing that his campaign is likely to continue to have critical problems moving forward.  He is rapidly headed towards Ron Paul territory when it comes to electability.  It will be interesting to see if any of Gingrich's supporters come to realize this and shift their support to Santorum.