I woke up this morning with an odd and unfamiliar feeling. That feeling was optimism.

After Romney’s slaying in the debate last night, I’m starting to think he might actually have a shot at this thing.

Even the liberal media had no choice but to admit that Romney clenched the first debate by a long shot.

Chris Matthews in his typical unintelligible fashion, had an angry meltdown and implored the president to “Watch MSNBC, you’ll learn something every night.”

Michael Moore tweeted “This is what you get when you pick John Kerry as your debate coach.”

And Van Jones said Romney “out Obama’ed Obama” and won the debate last night. Van Jones, people. Van. Freaking. Jones.

There is a poll out from CNN that is also contributing to my optimistic state of mind. Now I usually don’t think these debates affect the polls very much, but this time is different.

In CNN’s post debate polling, 67% thought Romney did the best job in the debate.

That is a phenomenal stat, but it gets even better when you put it in perspective. Let’s looks at this poll from a historical standpoint.

In the last debate of 2008, John McCain lost to Obama by 27. You read that right…McCain -27.  Last night, it was Romney +42.

That lead is almost absolutely unheard of in presidential debates, a 69 point swing from the last time Obama took the debate stage.

Going back to Reagan, only Bill Clinton ever won a debate by 42 points, but that was in 1992 with a third party splitting his opposition.

In that debate, Clinton had 58% saying he won, over Bush’s 16% and Ross Perot’s 15%.

Romney is also the only Republican to acquire such a large lead in this poll.  In fact, his lead was three and a half times as big as any other republican since 1980, including Reagan.

Bush won the second debate by 12 over Gore, Reagan had a mere 3 point lead over Mondale in 1984.

Historically, a +42 for a Republicans is completely uncharted territory.  It was a horror show for Barack Obama.  The downside is that debates have traditionally only moved the polls by a maximum of around three points.  The upside is—this is one of the widest victories of all time.