It was not the easiest of nights for Mitt Romney, who spent much of the evening on Super Tuesday watching Rick Santorum pile up unexpected victories in three states while taking an early lead in the big prize of Ohio. Yet when the dust had settled, Romney wound up squeaking out a 10,000-vote win in Ohio and could claim triumph in six of the ten states that held elections. This allowed him to pad his already large lead in delegates.  Just as important, Newt Gingrich’s win in his home state of Georgia gave the former speaker an excuse to stay in the race and therefore deny Santorum the opportunity to go head-to-head with Romney as the sole conservative in the race.

Santorum can claim to have exceeded expectations and to have held his own across the nation despite the grave financial and organizational advantages Romney holds over him. That Romney is a weak frontrunner who will continue to be damaged by a lengthy and nasty race cannot be denied. But unless Santorum can get Gingrich to drop out almost immediately — something that is not going to happen — the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from a long evening of watching results from around the country is that Romney is still the only one of the GOP quartet who has a path to the nomination.

Romney is still losing conservatives and evangelicals as the GOP grassroots continue to resist the likely nominee. That’s why he had such a scare in Ohio and lost Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota to Santorum. If he had but one conservative opponent that might be fatal, but so long as Gingrich continues to drain right-wing votes from Santorum, it will allow Romney to squeeze by with pluralities.

Yet, Romney is also the only candidate with the organization and the financial wherewithal to compete in every region of the country, allowing him to amass wins one way or the other. With Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia, Idaho, Alaska and Ohio now in his column, Romney’s share of delegates will grow. At this stage of the race, the delegate math is more important than Santorum’s moral victories, meaning that despite the bad optics of the near loss in Ohio, Romney must still be considered the eventual nominee.

But so long as his opponents continue to win states, they will not drop out. The exception to this is Ron Paul, who failed again to win a single state but who will continue flogging his libertarian extremism. In the case of Gingrich’s taking Georgia, that is very much to Romney’s advantage. So far, Gingrich has flopped everywhere but in Georgia and neighboring South Carolina. In his speech last night, Gingrich again put on display the petulance and lack of grace that has become the hallmark of his presidential run as he spent most of his half-hour address whining about opposition from elites, “Wall Street” and Romney’s negative ads. Though his continued presence in the race seems motivated as much by spite against Romney as his own ambition, it is no small irony that by doing so he is providing inestimable aid to the former Massachusetts governor by taking away support from Santorum.

Santorum cannot help but be encouraged by his three wins as well as by the narrow loss in Ohio. That will allow him to continue to raise the money he needs to keep running though not enough to compete with the Romney juggernaut. One can look at the Pennsylvanian’s candidacy and ponder just how well he would be doing if Gingrich had dropped out weeks ago when it became apparent he had no chance of being the nominee. But even another couple of months of Santorum upsets and near-wins are not likely to accomplish anything more than to do further damage to the eventual nominee.

That’s a problem for Romney, who will spend the rest of the spring trying in vain to convince conservatives he is one of them while being belabored by Santorum for his Massachusetts health care law. But as trying as this process is for him, he must content himself with the fact that most of those now voting against him in GOP primaries and caucuses will eventually rally to his side once the alternative becomes another four years of Barack Obama.