Mitt Romney’s inability to put Rick Santorum away is the story for the rest of March and into April. Spoke McKay Coppins, Buzzfeed, in Boston with the Romney campaign, and he pointed to the lack of a Plan B if Santorum wins Ohio. The results show that Romney will win Ohio late, and will have the lion share of delegates after March 6.

What is it good for? Rick Santorum wants the VPOTUS? Am told that Romney is not offering Santorum any prize.

POTUS Obama press conference was artful — emphasizing three foreign policy questions to begin his performance. The price of gasoline is still on the ticket. Will $5.00 a gallon on Memorial Day determine the election for November? Unknown. Read the rest

Santorum and Gingrich are genuinely delusional. Each lacks a national organization. Both continue to demonstrate complete incompetence when it comes to registering delegate slates and getting on the ballot. As we learned in the case of Obama vs. Hillary it is all about the delegates.

Romney now has more delegates than Santorum, Gingrich and Paul combined. That number will continue to grow. Both Gingrich and Santorum demonstrated in their speeches tonight why they are so damn clueless and unpresidential. Read the rest

Super Tuesday state map, The National Journal (click image)

DETAILS ON EACH of the 10 STATES as well as some fun images found along the way … UPDATES (there’s one that’s especially hilarious) can be found at the END of this post … Read the rest

Next door is a Pagan, and across the street is a Catholic family, and next to them are Unitarians and on the other side are Mormons. At the end of the lane are Presbyterians. Inside my home are Christians and Jews. Our best friends are Buddhists. And so it goes. We get along. We break bread together. We watch out for each other. We forget that so many died so that you and I could enjoy this seemingly prosaic yet richly colored tapestry of religious diversity and even joyfully participate in each other’s holiday celebrations.

Then along comes Rick Santorum.
Read the rest

In a way, this robo-call says it all. Can you imagine Barbara Bush agreeing to do a robo-call for Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich? Can you? There is no way she’d ever do it. After all, the woman has class. Yes, she is a dutiful Republican, but she’d never go the extra mile — make a robo-call, of all things! — unless it were for a candidate who merits her considerable influence.

And Donald Trump did the same for Mitt Romney:

FROM FLOP-FLIPPER (a comment posted by him last night that is worth reading, as are many more comments by so many people here): Read the rest

The Republican party is skittish enough with the muddy primaries so that the Limbaugh flap has quickly turned to a panic. The Democrats hold a large advantage with women voters in the recent polling, and the ad hominem attack on a single woman does not move the needle back toward 50-50.

Am told by Lara Brown, Villanova, that women split evenly between Bush and Kerry, and that was why Bush prevailed. In 2008, Obama enjoyed a huge women vote advantage over McCain. Am told that the women vote in 2010 favored the GOP. Does this scandal promise positive women vote for 2012? Unknown but also unlikely.

Limbaugh has not used fresh information for a long time. Limbaugh is about edgy performance. When Limbaugh uses ad hominem on public officials, it is old-fashioned, off-the-shelf, 20th century trash talk.

Limbaugh has grown lazy as well as sloppy. Fluke is not a celebrity, not a pol, not even known to the public before these days. The early signs are not positive that Limbaugh can survive this contest without damage to his brand. Read the rest

Boy, I tell you! The Republicans have obviously not gotten any for a while because they’ve been doin’ it with nearly every candidate. Hopping around the candidates like bunnies! There were a lot of one-night stands, a few relationships that lasted weeks, but most Republicans behaved like teenage rabbits. The whole concept of “until death us do part” was waaaay too serious, especially since there were other candidates to check out and score.

But now — and it’s obvious from all of our comments, me too — we’re starting to settle down. It’s hard to remember that most of us did it with Gingrich, but his numbers are dwindling dramatically, which says a LOT about, well, you know … unless Calista mucked things up.

Mitt Romney gave me his letterman’s jacket. Oh god. I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Read the rest

Fox panelist Steve Hayes tweeted, “The best moment in the campaign for Romney … Compassionate, sincere and tough. And authentic.”

It is my sincere belief that Barack Obama would find similar words but is incapable of expressing the same emotions. Why? Barack Obama is too cool, too hip, and too distant. Letting such raw emotion shine through is just not part of who Obama is. Romney is too modest and formal, most of the time, to let his emotions show that much, but we know that Romney has such emotions within him. Obama is simply a cipher. Read the rest

Fresh brief on war warning. PM Netanyahu sits with POTUS Obama for a few hours Sunday 5. The subject is Iran. The skies are clearing over the target. Smile.

The first priority is the back door of Gaza, where Hamas has stockpiled the missiles and weapons from Libya. Good ground to ground and ground to air missiles. The IDF must clean out the nest with air and ground forces.

Hizballah in Bekaa also is stocked with reported 40 thousand missiles. Am told to expect a massive air operation in Bekaa. Massive and troubling for the usual suspects.

What will POTUS Obama do while the IDF and IAF pound the Tehran surrogates? And what of Tehran? Does Tehran wait while Jerusalem reduces Gaza and Beirut? Read the rest

As a centrist, you might think the current administration would be somewhat to my liking. But you’d be wrong. It’s easy enough to cherry-pick issues from both ends and call yourself a centrist. For example, suppose a politico supported gay marriage, but wanted to repeal Roe-Wade. That’s centrist, isn’t it?

Or maybe they wanted to end our military engagements and slash the defense budget, but also wanted to get rid of entitlement programs? That’s Ron Paul’s mix, but I don’t think many people consider him a centrist. In fact, he claims to be the only true conservative in the election, and many people agree, while others think he’s the most liberal. Most people just think he’s nuts.

If you support legalizing marijuana, you’re a liberal. If you support tax reductions, you’re a conservative. In the polarized political ideologies of the times, people tend to think everything is black and white, overlooking all those lovely shades of gray in between. Or to put it another way, between the extremes of left and right, smack dab in the middle is the heart. Without the heart, left and right couldn’t exist. Well, I guess they would still technically exist, for awhile, but the rapid decomposition would make them rather disgusting! Or maybe I should say it would make them even MORE disgusting!

Here’s a little exercise in centrism. Read the rest

The hypocrisy on the left about Rush Limbaugh’s inept attempt at humor in discussing Sandra Fluke’s condom fetish is not unexpected, but is worth noting.

Remember when Sarah Palin was called a “Cunt” by a parade of lefties?

The list includes Bill Mahrer and Howard Stern as well. Read the rest

UPDATE: Bret Baier’s panel spoke highly of Mike Huckabee’s forum today. Huckabee’s show reruns at midnight, and tomorrow. The panel spoke particularly about Romney’s ability to truly connect with a father whose military son suffered traumatic brain injury, and Romney’s later conversation with the father about his small business, which the panelists found a compelling example of Romney’s exceptional ability to turn the economy around.

ROMNEY WINS BIG: 37% of vote, Paul – 24%, Santorum – 24% (less than Paul), Gingrich – 11%.

BELOW the fold, don’t miss some fascinating excerpts from Politico‘s WA state caucus prognostications. Fox’s Bret Baier will be cutting into Fox programming as results come in; at 10 p.m. ET, Baier will have a full program on WA results. CLICK this image to get The Seattle Times‘s full results and several stories about the statewide caucuses:

CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW RESULTS

Read the rest

Barack Obama will try to milk every ounce of credit for being drug against his will to sign off on killing Bin Laden, but his real accomplishment will be the loss of Afghanistan. Since the Obama Administration decided to go on its Qu’ran apology tour, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan have ceased. We are hunkered down doing nothing.

General Jack Keane was on the tube today (Megyn Kelly’s show) and cited three specific recommendations from military commanders that he rejected. While I’m not arguing for a permanent occupation of Afghanistan or a stepped up counterinsurgency effort, the fact is that Obama has not accepted the guidance of senior military leaders. Keane laid it out in detail (I have not yet found the video on Fox or the web).

A major part of our problem in Afghanistan is President Karzai. He is a corrupt, borderline personality lunatic and has zero appreciation for the sacrifice of American lives over the last ten years. Karzai reportedly is insisting on taking full control of Afghanistan territory and, just like the Iraqis, preventing U.S. forces from conducting unilateral strikes against terrorist targets.

George W. Bush deserves blame as well. He diverted U.S. forces from Afghanistan to Iraq in December 2001. He failed to address the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan until the summer of 2008. His legacy of debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan will haunt him. But he will have company. Obama is helping speed up the scuttling of these two adventures. Read the rest

Do we have to discuss the latest Rush Limbaugh idiocy? God I hope not.

But … we should remind ourselves of Limbaugh’s blathering on and on without an iota of fact-checking. We know the man isn’t a journalist, but he is on “news radio,” which creates a false assumption that he knows about, cares about and speaks about issues based on facts — none of which he does, reliably.

For starters, who among us can forget the utter stupidity of what Limbaugh tried to do to this blog’s owner, Larry Johnson. Don’t know? Well, you will want to know, considering that MILLIONS of Limbaugh’s minions heard him make completely false allegations against Larry. Read Larry’s own account here: “Rush Limbaugh Crowns Larry Johnson Creator of the Birthers.” Read the rest

Spoke Binyamin Applebaum, NYT, re the Bernanke testimony on the Hill on Wednesday 29 February, and learned that the outlook is less glum than ever. The caution relates the similar moment in March 2010 and March 2011, when the economy stalled an obliged the Fed to move by buying MBS.

The jobs report aims to sound better (no BLS report until Friday March 9; however the first time unemployment claims are the lowest since March 2008).

Is this a recovery at last? No one is certain, but the consumer confidence points to better weather. Here’s for luck. Read the rest