RALEIGH – All right, so here’s the first question: is Mitt Romney now the Republican frontrunner?

I don’t really expect his solid first-place finish in Michigan to earn him the kind of massive media embrace that Mike Huckabee got in Iowa and John McCain got in New Hampshire. They are candidates that reporters and pundits find more interesting, winning states with long and storied histories as soundstages for the teleplays that pass for news coverage. Romney isn’t threatening to unravel the Republican coalition, he doesn’t play bass in a rock band or carry the wounds of heroic captivity, and he’s won a state that’s big, complicated, and snowy.

It’s not fair, but that’s the news biz.

The Romney campaign had already come into Michigan as the leader in the medal count (the delegates secured by his two Silvers and one Gold) and has now exited with the best showing in by far the biggest electoral prize to date. He still has a lot of money in the campaign treasury, and there’s plenty more to give or raise if needed. Romney’s prospects in one of the two contests to be held on Saturday, Nevada, are excellent. In the other, South Carolina, he’ll at least be competitive.

By the previous standards of this quirky and often-silly electoral season, in other words, the political talk shows ought to start speculating about Romney’s strategy for November and columnists ought to be tossing around potential vice-presidential picks. It’s all still way too early, of course, which was also true last Tuesday night in New Hampshire and the previous Thursday in Iowa. The GOP race remains competitive. Both practicality and politeness argue for letting voters in other states have their say before packing it in.

Apologists for the other candidates will discount Romney’s win by pointing to his native-son status, the exceptional nature of Michigan’s economic challenges, the lack of a real Clinton-Obama fight to boost political interest among the state’s electorate, and the turnout-depressing weather. The apologists will be right. But where were they when Romney defenders pointed to the idiosyncrasies of Iowa and New Hampshire, and the odd media snub of Wyoming’s Jan. 5 vote (which actually awarded more delegates than Granite State voters did)?

If there is a deeper significance in Romney’s Michigan success, it is that the conservative establishment within the Republican Party retains influence and cohesion. Among the GOP candidates, the divide is between two candidates on the one side (Romney and Fred Thompson) running as conservatives in the traditional triad of economics, foreign policy, and social issues and three candidates on the other side (McCain, Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani) running as conservatives in one or two of those issue sets but not all three. The latter group essentially believes that the GOP coalition is inadequate to defeat either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the fall. Romney and Thompson disagree, believing that Republicans must secure their base and then pitch independents on particular issues where the Democratic nominee will lack credibility or be out of step.

For good or ill, the conservative establishment in New York, Washington, and elsewhere agrees with the optimists, Romney and Thompson. These establishmentarians don’t feel inclined to abandon conservative principles that they believe to be both correct and politically effective. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, many of them have gravitated to Romney (with a smaller group preferring Thompson on grounds of either resume or consistency). The Michigan results please them, though few seem to have yielded to irrational exuberance. That is wise. Super-Duper Tuesday is still to come, then a long, hard slog to November.

Mitt Romney is by all accounts an accomplished, intelligent, and decent person. He could well prove to be an exceptional leader of a country facing great challenges and opportunities. But one might describe several other candidates, Republican and Democrat, with similar language. There’s still no frontrunner.

Isn’t it grand? Now the pundits can start dissecting the intricacies of Nevada labor relations, California media markets, Alabama party organizations, and Pennsylvania political endorsements.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.