A new NBC News-Marist poll in Arizona finds Mitt Romney leading the GOP primary with 43%
of likely voters, followed by Rick Santorum at 27%, Newt Gingrich at 16% and Ron Paul at 11%.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds Rick Santorum leads the Republican presidential field with 35% among Republican voters, followed by Mitt Romney at 26%, Newt Gingrich at 14% and Ron Paul at 11%.

Santorum leads Romney in a head-to-head match up by 50% to 37%.

Said pollster Peter Brown: “Santorum’s lead among Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents is built on the votes of Republican men, Tea Party supporters and white evangelical Christians.”

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds Santorum at 33%, Romney at 32%, Gingrich at 15% and Paul at 15%.

An analysis by the Boston Globe
shows that President Obama “did not raise as much money from supporters
last month as he did during January 2008 in his first campaign for the
White House,” and he is also “using up cash at a far greater rate than
the last incumbent to seek reelection, George W. Bush in 2004.”

The
numbers: “Contributions to Obama and the Democratic National Committee
combined were down 30 percent last month compared with January four
years ago. Together they raised $29.1 million in January. That is down
from $41.7 million in January 2008… The Obama campaign spent $17.2
million last month, leaving $76 million cash on hand. Eight years ago,
Bush raised $12.9 million in January, spent $7.6 million, and had $104.4
million in the bank heading into February… But the campaign also had a
payroll of nearly 360 employees in the last quarter of 2011, about 200
more than Bush-Cheney during a comparable period eight years earlier.”

Mitt Romney attacked President Obama’s “secular agenda” during a town hall in Michigan, ABC News reports.

Said Romney: “You expect the president of the United States to be sensitive to that freedom and protect it and, unfortunately, perhaps because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda, they have fought against religion.”

Washington Post: “Romney rarely ventures into social issues in his campaign speeches, but people participating in a town hall-style meeting one week before the Michigan primary asked how he would protect religious liberty.”

Donald Trump told CNBC he would “seriously, seriously” consider jumping into the White House race if Rick Santorum wins the GOP presidential nomination.

Said Trump: “Honestly, if Santorum got it, I would seriously, seriously consider it. We need someone that’s really going to be great. This is the most important election in my opinion that this country has ever had. Santorum is not the right person.”

He added that he is a “free agent” after his Apprentice show ends its season on May 16.

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TPM looks at the campaign finance reports and finds that nearly 90% of Mitt Romney’s total haul is from contributions greater than $200.

“By contrast, only around 40% of Obama’s donations are from individuals who have given more than $200 total and his smaller contributors alone raised more money in total than Romney’s entire fundraising operation. For the rest of the Republican field, the ratio is somewhere closer to 50-50.”

A Minnesota judicial panel released new political district lines that place Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Betty McCollum (D-MN) into the same congressional district, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

However, Bachmann said that “she will run for her old 6th district seat even though newly drawn congressional maps put her home in the 4th District, currently represented by McCollum… Members of Congress don’t have to live in the district they represent, so Bachmann is free to run wherever she likes in Minnesota. She said she has not yet decided if she will move her home into the new district.”

Interestingly, Bachmann claimed she went to college in the new 6th district but DailyKos points out her college is actually in the state’s 1st congressional district.

A new Rasmussen survey in Michigan shows Rick Santorum is holding on to a small lead over Mitt Romney, 38% to 34%. They are followed by Ron Paul at 10% support and Newt Gingrich at 9%.

In addition to the Ron Paul campaign’s latest TV ad blasting Rick Santorum, NBC News finds more evidence of an alliance between Mitt Romney and the Texas congressman: The Paul camp is now passing around opposition research on Rick Santorum.

[Read more…]

Larry Kudlow: “Team Romney tells me there will be a bolder tax-cut plan released either at the debate tomorrow night (if Mitt gets it in) or more formally at his Detroit Economic Club speech on Friday. I’m embargoed from releasing details until tomorrow. But I can say that the new plan will be across-the-board with supply-side incentives from rate reduction, and that it will help small-business owners as well as everyone else.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Washington finds Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney in the state’s upcoming GOP caucuses, 38% to 27%. They are followed by Ron Paul at 15% and Newt Gingrich at 12%.

Key finding: “Gingrich’s continued presence in the state is a boost to Romney. If he pulled out before Washington 59% of his supporters say they’d move to Santorum, compared to only 13% who would go to Romney.”

The caucuses will be held on March 3.

A new YouGov poll finds a big difference between the way Democrats and Republicans think about tax fairness — but also shows that independent voters side with Democrats.

Jonathan Bernstein: “The dilemma for Republican politicians here is clear: their primary voters are pushing them into a position on taxes which embraces a version of fairness that few outside the GOP base share. So something such as Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan can be wildly popular among Republican voters, but electoral poison in November. Repeat across enough issues, and you wind up with a Mitt Romney, backing his way into a presidential nomination of party that doesn’t really like him very much while at the same time taking positions that could hurt him in November. For Republicans, there doesn’t appear to be any easy solution.”

“Just as the recovery is finally looking real, surging fuel prices are once again looming as a major threat to the financial health of U.S. consumers and the broader economy,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“That could potentially sting President Obama’s reelection efforts as well — with Republican primary hopefuls already blaming the Democratic incumbent for higher prices at the pump.”

First Read: “The politics of gas prices are always dangerous. After all, this is something that almost every American consumer sees, and every news organization (local or national) is ready to cover it (and usually LEAD their broadcasts with it). The one silver lining for the Obama administration: Given that gas prices were at highs just last summer, were consumers already pricing this in their budgets?”

The volatile Republican presidential primary has given President Obama
an opportunity to take full advantage of an incumbent’s fundraising
advantage, according to The Fix.

“Obama’s
campaign had $76 million cash on hand at the end of the month; the four
GOP candidates had less than $13 million combined. Even better for
Obama is the fact that Romney’s opponents closed the fundraising gap
significantly, which will reduce Romney’s spending advantage going
forward.”

Meanwhile, The Hill
notes that Mitt Romney started January “with $19.9 million on hand and
ended it with $7.7 million in the bank, as expenditures were nearly
triple the amount the campaign was able to raise… The pro-Romney
super-PAC, Restore Our Future, which by law cannot coordinate with the
campaign, also announced its January fundraising figures on Monday,
taking in nearly $7 million while spending twice that amount.”

A new Insider Advantage poll in Georgia finds Newt Gingrich with a slim lead over his GOP presidential rivals at 26%, followed by Mitt Romney at 24%, Rick Santorum at 23% and Ron Paul at 12%.

The Georgia primary is on Super Tuesday March 6.

First Read: “The next seven days until Michigan’s primary may very well be the most important of Mitt Romney’s political life. They could determine if he becomes the GOP nominee; if he does not; and if we might enter — as we’ve described it before — the political equivalent of Thunderdome, with either a ‘brokered’ or ‘contested’ convention in August. All of these things are on the line for Romney next Tuesday. And in between, he will have two big opportunities to right his campaign’s ship: 1) Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona and 2) Friday’s economic speech in Detroit.”

David Challian: “Nothing matters more for Romney than coming out on top after the votes are counted next Tuesday, but getting there will likely require a winning debate performance on Wednesday night in Arizona and a rousing economic speech in Detroit on Friday… This is the kind of week for which Romney has been spending the better part of the last six years preparing. To regain the upper hand in this nomination battle, Romney will need to turn that preparation into flawless execution.”