Romney has stopped the bleeding in the latest Zogby tracking poll and retaken the lead from John McCain in New Hampshire.

As I mentioned below, Mitt may have Barack Obama to thank for it.

Obama is pulling independents in New Hampshire who might otherwise go to McCain, who has a strong advantage over Mitt among independents.

So Obama’s gain is in some respects McCain’s loss, and it’s keeping Romney in the race.

Mason-Dixon has new numbers out. Obama up two points over Hillary. And McCain up eight over Romney.

To say Mitt Romney had a bad debate last night is an understatement for the ages. Some of the best moments came when Mitt was getting so knocked around that he seemed to forget which side of the argument he was arguing.

Sometimes as a debating technique one will embrace an opponents contention only to flip around the significance of the fact as a point in your own defense. But there were several times — most notably in the fracas over ‘amnesty’ with John McCain — where Mitt basically fell into arguing McCain’s point for him and then didn’t seem to have any follow up to explain why this didn’t mean McCain was right and he was wrong. It was like the rhetorical equivalent of getting so punch drunk that you start walking into the other guy’s punches.

Mitt’s big point in his argument with McCain was that his (i.e., Romney’s) attack ads didn’t really say McCain’s bill was ‘amnesty’ like McCain claimed. And given how much Mitt hung on this semantic point, I figured he had to be right. And McCain did not seem to directly contradict. But apparently on This Week this morning, Mitt had to come clean and admit he was wrong. It did say amnesty.

At TNR, Noam Scheiber says he thinks actual voters will react more negatively to the attackers than to the hapless Mitt as the target of the attacks. And I certainly hope he’s right. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Thompson, of all the attackers seemed cocky and a bit of a prick. But Thompson is cocky and a prick. So I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. What made him seem that way in this case was that in his jibes against Romney he didn’t even seem to have any real points to make. Mitt was just already getting knocked around so much that he figured it would be fun to get in a few whacks too.

What struck me more about McCain and Huckabee’s attacks were that they felt very personal. As a lot of other commentators have noted, it was hard not to get the sense that these guy’s really don’t like Mitt. And my hunch is that rather than feel sorry for Mitt or think badly of the other guys, voters’ first sense would be to think: wow, they all really hate this guy. I wonder why?

Both in my Mitt-supporting alter-ego and in my real desire for how this race plays out I’m rooting for Mitt. But I fear Mitt has fallen and cannot get up. Hope I’m wrong, of course. And I’m going to have my ear to the ground for signs of resurgent Mittmentum.

TPM Reader DK chimes on the Mitt Slapfest …

I can’t believe you haven’t made this point yet. All the Republican candidates (except Ron Paul) were jumping on top of one another to basically call Mitt Romney a weak conniving empty suit in extraordinarily snide and disrespectful tones.

All Romney could do in reply was stutter about the unfairness of personal attacks. Isn’t this a perfect example of the bitch-slap theory of electoral politics? What’s important here isn’t the content of the attacks, but the way they made Romney look incapable of standing up for himself. Will voters rally to Romney out of sympathy, as Noam Scheiber suggests? Did they rally to Kerry? I think we have some relevant data on how Republican voters respond to this sort of thing.

TPM Shrink Reader MB too …

Just a bit of psychological thinking from a shrink:

I think what happened to Mitt last night looked more like a football tackle. A pile-on.

If you think of a pecking order, well Mitt for sure is at the bottom of it. Rather than empathize with the underdog, and he acquitted himself poorly in whining about it, people will often distance themselves from a loser. It’s a psychological thing. There’s a sense that the loser deserves it. That they must be piling on him for a reason. People like a winner. At some point they are looking to root for a winner.

So, if it had been one repub only attacking him you could sympathize with that. But the guy kept interrupting last night. Wanting the last word. Hogging the time. I simply don’t think he came off well. What was there to sympathize with?

TPM Reader SG throws me a bone …

A couple of quick points on the Romney drubbing last night:

1) My sense was the others don’t so much dislike Romney as that they have contempt for him. The sharp barbs were delivered with an undercurrent (or in McCain’s case, overtly) of derisive laughter. Give Romney his due: It is quite an achievement to be too phony for even the GOP.

2) There’s still hope for your boy: There’s another GOP debate tonight on Fox. Viewership should skew heavily toward registered Republican voters who still have a basic distrust of McCain, so Romney has another shot at rehabilitating his traditional GOP charlantry with the voters he must win.

I’ve been chronicling my disappointment in last night’s Mitt Trainwreck. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one goof knocked around more or say how good the beating he’s taken is for him in 150 seconds of video.

My money is on the Mittmentum hittin’ high gear tonight …

The new Rasmussen tracking poll in New Hampshire shows that Barack Obama’s newfound lead over Hillary Clinton is holding steady, and maybe even growing — he’s now ahead by 12 points, up from yesterday’s 10.

Meanwhile on the Republican side, Mitt Romney might not be dead just yet. Yesterday he trailed John McCain by seven points, but now he’s only behind by two.

Hillary, today in Nashua: I never would have taken us to war in Iraq.

The new CNN/WMUR/UNH poll is out and it suggests a huge post-Iowa bounce for Obama. A ten point lead in today’s poll 39% to 29% against the tied (33%-33%) poll they put out just yesterday. It’s just one poll but this is one of the most respected ones for New Hampshire elections.

As I explained last night, one big plus side of the current battle going on in New Hampshire is that it might finally disrupt (hope springs eternal) the mind control powers Mark Penn uses to get Democrats to pay him money to lose their campaigns for them. Earlier I’d noted Penn’s use of tendentious polls and politics by gimmick and catch phrase. But some knowledgeable campaign watchers have now confirmed me in my impression that virtually every Democratic primary campaign Penn has run going back to 2000 or earlier has lost — Checchi, Blanchard, Cuomo, Lieberman, Deutsch. The guy has an absolutely terrible record.

He’s the Shrum of Triangulation. Only, outside the presidentials, Shrum actually won a lot of elections.

And now he’s smacked himself in the face with yet another embarrassment.

I know a lot of journalists are looking for angles now to write about in chronicling what is at a minimum shaping up as a major setback in Clinton’s campaign. But I think the Penn angle bears much more scrutiny and consideration.

Late Update: Ken Baer has some more.