“I’d like everybody to get out.”

— Rick Santorum, in an interview on Meet the Press, about his GOP presidential rivals.

A new Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll in Illinois shows Mitt Romney leading the GOP presidential field with 35%, followed by Rick Santorum at 31%, Newt Gingrich at 12% and Ron Paul at 7%.

However, 46% of voters said they could still change their minds before the March 20 primary.

Mitt Romney “won the presidential delegate vote at Wyoming’s county conventions, picking up seven of 12 delegates after local party meetings that also delivered at least two delegates to Rick Santorum,” the Casper Tribune reports.

Wyoming will send a total of 29 delegates this year to the Republican National Convention — “more than such larger states as Connecticut, Oregon and Nevada. Under Republican National Committee rules, Wyoming gets additional delegates for having a Republican governor, Republican congressional delegation and Republican majorities in its state Legislature.”

Google has a nice map of the Kansas caucus results as they come in.

There are 40 delegates are at stake: 12 are
congressional-district delegates awarded on a winner-take-all basis, 25 are awarded proportionally
based on the statewide vote provided the candidate breaks 20%, and an additional three delegates go to
the statewide winner.

Complete results are expected by 6 pm ET.

Update: The AP reports Rick Santorum “appears on his way to taking most of the state’s 40 delegates.”

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will announce today that he is resigning from Congress to devote time to his run for governor, the Huffington Post reports.

“The move should allow the long-serving Washington Democrat to up his name recognition across the state, which has been one of the difficulties facing his gubernatorial campaign. The trans-continental commute from D.C. to Washington has severely limited the amount of time Inslee has been able to campaign in the state.”

Alan Colmes has an interesting interview with Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, who commented on the viral video of Derrick Bell and Barack Obama, saying, “Of course we hid this throughout the 2008 campaign. I don’t care if they find it now.”

He says he was joking, but it’s lost on those who insist the tape is a smoking gun that will help torpedo Obama’s re-election chances.

Despite previous indications that Newt Gingrich might quit the presidential race if he does not win in Alabama and Mississippi this Tuesday, Gingrich put that speculation to rest and committed to staying in the race to the convention, according to ABC News.

Said Gingrich: “We’ll clearly do well enough to move on and I think there’s a fair chance we’ll win. But I just want to set this to rest once and for all, we’re going to Tampa.”

A new Alabama State University poll shows Newt Gingrich surging into the lead in Alabama’s GOP presidential race with 21%, followed by Mitt Romney at 20% and Rick Santorum at 17%.

Said pollster Thomas Vocino: “According to our poll results that ended last evening, Gingrich is coming on strong in Alabama and his numbers are still rising. His support was declining five weeks earlier and now Gingrich appears to be the comeback candidate at the expense of Santorum and Romney.”

The New York Times looks at Mitt Romney’s “sometimes awkward style and aloof manner” which as governor affected his relationship with lawmakers he needed to pass legislation.

“For officials used to the glad-handing and alcohol-lubricated culture of local politics, Mr. Romney was an unfamiliar breed: a data-driven chief executive used to delivering unquestioned orders, a political newcomer who cast the legislature as a foe, a delegator who preferred working with just the leadership and an emotionally remote figure who tended not to socialize — and because of his Mormon religion did not drink. Even though he worked just a few hundred feet from them for four years, Mr. Romney displayed little interest in getting to know lawmakers and never developed real relationships with most members of the Democratic-dominated body.”

Interestingly, President Obama is also frequently criticized for his equally aloof governing style.

Ross Douthat: “While there are still scenarios in which the frontrunner ends up 50-100 delegates short of the magic number at the end of primary season, it would take a truly extraordinary turn of events (a huge scandal, say) to deny Romney the nomination at this point. The chaos-at-the-convention scenarios were almost plausible pre-Michigan, but they only made sense in a world where the leading candidate ended up well short of the necessary delegates. Now Romney is on track to win at least a clear plurality, and if he goes to the convention with over a thousand delegates, Jeb Bush isn’t going to sweep in and swipe the nomination out from under the man who won the most primary-season votes. It just … isn’t … going … to happen.”

Mitt Romney won nine delegates each from Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands after Republicans there met Saturday at their state conventions, National Journal reports.

“I’m not really a politician.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by National Journal, then correcting himself: “I
guess I kinda am, because I was governor for four years and I’ve run for
office. But my heart is a conservative businessman.”

Mitt Romney and some of his top aides used private email accounts to conduct state business at times when Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the Associated Press reports.

“The communications were legal, even though Romney’s own administration warned state agencies against the practice due to cyber security concerns. The state archives in Massachusetts — which learned about Romney’s emails from the AP — now says the private emails should have invoked rules about preserving copies of state records.”