I think Santorum hurt himself (as usual) with his play to Democrats. Obviously, in a general election crossovers are encouraged, but this looked like a ploy to get people who were going to vote Obama in the general election to vote Santorum as a way of denying Romney the win. That is not only desperate, it's also probably the most underhanded play of the whole primary season.

Based on the map, Romney has a good chance to win the Presidency, particularly if a few swing states are mad enough at Obama.

I think both Florida and Ohio are likely to vote Republican, the former because the Jewish vote will either stay home or vote Romney given Obama's stance on Israel and the latter because the economy is worse there than in other areas and the "recovery" has yet to be felt. The whole of the South will likely go Republican (we all know that VA and NC voting for Obama was a complete one-time affair, or rather, anyone who has ever spent time there for an appreciable period knows that). Add in Missouri and it's bye bye Barry (time to open the champagne).

Things that could further hurt Obama include a stalled recovery, lingering high unemployment (which Bernanke warned about today), perceived US weakness over Iran's nuclear program and/or the Syrian crisis, an overturn of Obamacare in the Supreme Court, or just further missteps in the everyday things.

As for Ron Paul, I'm surprised you haven't forwarded a conspiracy theory that he's there to divert potential third party supporters from someone else and help get Romney elected, and that he was playing that game from the beginning. Of course, he might be trying to gun for VP or at least some position of influence in a Romney White House. In that sense, you are wrong about saying there's no prize for second place. Historically, there always have been prizes for those sorts of things (George H.W. Bush in 1980, Al Gore in 1992, both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in 2008 are the most recent examples I can think of).