In an appearance in Arizona, Mitt Romney mocked Rick Santorum for his attempts to “explain why he repeatedly voted against his conscience while in Congress,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Romney: “We saw Senator Santorum explain most of the night why he did or voted for things he disagreed with. And he talked about this as taking one for the team. I wonder what team he was taking it for. My team is the American people.”

Expect to see the “taking one for the team” line in an advertisement very soon.

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A new Brown University Poll in Rhode Island finds Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s (I) approval rating is a dismal 22%, down from 27% in December.

Rep. David Cicilline’s (D-RI) approval rating is even worse at lowly 15%.

A new Rasmussen survey in Georgia finds Newt Gingrich with a small lead in the GOP presidential race with 33%, followed by Rick Santorum at 28%, Mitt Romney at 20% and Ron Paul at 9%.

The Georgia primary is on March 6.

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) has not ruled out a rematch with current Gov. John Kasich (R), the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Said Strickland: “I haven’t ruled it out, haven’t ruled it in. I continue to be interested in, engaged in Ohio politics. I certainly want to keep my options open at this point.”

Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) forthcoming memoir has a title: An American Son: A Memoir.

The Miami Herald has an interesting tidbit from the book: “When Marco was 8 years old and living in Las Vegas, the Rubio family attended a Mormon church for a few years.”

BuzzFeed confirms Rubio was baptized in the Mormon church and says it “could complicate his political future at a time when many Republicans see him as the odds-on favorite for the 2012 vice presidential nod. Vice presidential candidates are traditionally chosen to provide ethnic and religious balance to a ticket. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and Rubio’s Catholic faith would already mean the first two members of minority traditions on a Republican ticket in American history. Rubio’s Mormon roots could further complicate that calculation.”

Rick Santorum launched a new negative ad in Michigan hitting Romney on his past statements on abortion, guns, taxes, earmarks and RomneyCare.

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Here’s a must-read: The Magic Number: Inside Obama’s Chase for the Presidential Nomination by Jeff Berman, who led the effort to create and execute the delegate plan that Barack Obama used to capture the presidential nomination in 2008.

Ben Smith: “Rich in procedural detail, the book will be a textbook for the small cadre of mechanics who steer the arcane process of delegate selection. But The Magic Number …is also a kind of secret history of the Obama campaign and an antidote to the sweeping narratives that suggest Obama was the inevitable product of historical forces. Berman’s account is the tale of the little things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, and the small but crucial victories that, taken together, won the White House.”

President Obama “is highlighting his support for the federal assistance plan that helped rescue Detroit automakers in a new television commercial that accuses Republican presidential candidates of abandoning the industry in its darkest hour,” the New York Times reports.

The 30-second commercial also mentions Mitt Romney’s now well-known opinion article that carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

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A new American Research Group poll in Michigan finds Rick Santorum continues to lead the GOP presidential field with 38%, followed by Mitt Romney at 34%, Ron Paul at 12% and Newt Gingrich at 7%.

First Read points out that the retreat by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and other state Republicans on that ‘transvaginal’ ultrasound bill “was the worst of all worlds for the GOP in this very important battleground state.”

“The good news for Republicans: It’s over; they’ve folded. The bad news: The retreat has disappointed their base, the original legislation fired up Democrats, and the whole matter took Republicans away from the one issue that won them success from 2009-2011: the economy.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) speculated that Christie Vilsack’s (D) campaign against him has as much to do with her husband’s political ambitions as her own, the Des Moines Register reports.

Said King: “I’ll just tell you what I’m being told, and that is that it’s likely that Tom Vilsack is positioning himself to run for United States Senate here in Iowa in 2014. That means that if Christie Vilsack wins this race, they have now knocked down a guy that could be a potential challenger.”

Mitt Romney campaign adviser Stuart Stevens was so confident after the GOP debate last night that he guaranteed his candidate would win the Michigan primary next week, CNN reports.

Said Stevens: “We are going to win Michigan. We are going to win Michigan.”

“He also dismissed as a ‘parlor game’ the chatter among some Washington insiders that a savior candidate might swoop in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa and rescue the party from doom in November.”

Florida’s Republican U.S. Senate primary is off to a nasty start.

The Miami Herald reports former Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL) ripped into Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) after a report showed he had a history of financial troubles and fights.

Said LeMieux: “Connie Mack IV is the Charlie Sheen of Florida politics. Mack IV does not have the temperament or the character to serve in the United States Senate.”

He also drew attention to what he called Mack’s “rap sheet:” four physical confrontations when he was in his early 20s, one arrest and then a host of financial troubles that became clear during his divorce shortly after he was elected to Congress.

After a debate in which he was attacked from two sides, Rick Santorum told Byron York he suspects something is up between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Said Santorum: “You have to ask Congressman Paul and Gov. Romney what they’ve got going together. Their commercials look a lot alike, and so do their attacks.”

Santorum aides are convinced Romney and Paul have some sort of deal by which they attack other candidates but not each other.

Said strategist John Brabender: “Clearly there is a tag-team strategy between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. There’ve been 20 debates, right? Why don’t you go back and see how many times Ron Paul has ever criticized anything Mitt Romney has done.”

“My greatest fear is it seems that Mr. Romney has set his path to the
nomination based on carpet-bombing his opponents to oblivion with false
negative advertising… that’s the kind of thing that engenders a
third-party candidacy, which would be a disaster for us.”

— Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), quoted by Politico.

Miss the GOP presidential debate? I thought it was easily one of the worst of the campaign.

The Daily Beast has video clips of the seven best moments.

Paul Begala: “Santorum was clearly thrilled to be in the spotlight. But he spent way too much time splitting hairs and explaining the protocol and procedures of Washington in defense of earmarks and defending his support for Specter. As he has done in the past, he couldn’t resist picking a gratuitous fight with Ron Paul. That’s called punching down, and it rarely works. He played too much defense and too little offense. His job should have been to use every opportunity to define Romney as a feckless liberal and himself as a principled conservative. He didn’t accomplish that.”

Roger Simon: “This was the first debate in which Santorum sat atop the national
polls. And he was nervous. Very nervous. So nervous that he looked like a
graduate of the Bob Dole School of Debating, in which you are allowed
to speak only in the impenetrable language of Capitol Hill.”

Howard Kurtz: “In the end, the debate did little to shake up the race, perhaps because the candidates–seated this time, close to one another–muted their criticism in what was the last such face-off before Super Tuesday. Even moderator John King, famously roughed up by Gingrich in their last encounter, emerged unscathed.”

Andrew Sullivan: “Maybe I’ve lost my mind after all these debates, or maybe I secretly want him to win (because he would finally expose all the insanity that has been building in this party and needs venting). But I thought Santorum was on form tonight. My sense is that he will not lose his current momentum after tonight. I didn’t feel Newt tonight. Romney doesn’t wear well. Paul was great and funny and human.”

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