Charles Franklin, who remains somewhat skeptical of the Gingrich surge, points out that Newt's lead is relatively large:
Gingrich has taken a significantly bigger lead over Romney than any of the previous three candidates were able to do. My trend estimate now puts that lead over 19 points. Perry briefly approached a 14 point lead while Cain was only briefly ahead slightly and Bachmann never was ahead.
Eric Kleefeld analyzes the early states:
Taking a step back from the various state polls, and looking at the flow of the calendar itself, something starts to become clear: If a person had sat down to write a primary calendar, designed around the goal of making things hard for Romney, they could not do much better than the current one.
The Dish 