A new Gallup Poll finds just 35% of Republicans say they would vote “enthusiastically” for Mitt Romney if he wins the GOP nomination — “similar to Republicans’ feelings about voting for Romney in early 2008, but lower than the enthusiasm level for that year’s eventual GOP nominee, John McCain.”

Just 34% were enthusiastic about voting for Rick Santorum and only 28% were enthusiastic for Newt Gingrich.

“Republicans are also less enthusiastic about voting for their party’s current pool of candidates than Democrats were about voting for their potential nominees in both 2008 and in 2004.”

“It’s the equivalent of malpractice to nominate someone who gives away the most important issue in this race.”

— Rick Santorum, in an interview with Mark Halperin, saying “there could be no person in this country we could nominate who would be any worse on taking on Barack Obama on the most important issue of the day, ObamaCare, than Gov. Romney.”

ABC News
reports that Rick Santorum’s visit to Puerto Rico ahead of its
Republican presidential primary on Sunday has not been the smoothest of
campaign trips.

“Rather than boost his standing, the trip has ignited a
firestorm with Santorum’s comment that English would have to be ‘the
main language’ in order for Puerto Rico to become a U.S.
state… Santorum’s comments left one of his supporters, Oreste Ramos,
so upset that the former Puerto Rican senator rescinded his
endorsement.”

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) announced that he will not seek another term in Congress this year, the New York Daily News reports.

“On the eve of the Federal Circuit Court’s approval of Congressional
district lines that were seen to be extraordinarily favorable to
Ackerman, and with the primary-free backing of the Democratic Party
virtually assured, Ackerman has informed his family, staff, friends and
party leaders that he will not seek a 16th term of office.”

“One of my opponents recently said that it would take an act of God for me to win this primary. I agree with him.”

— Rick Santorum, quoted by ABC News.

Oregon Republicans were forced to cancel the planned GOP presidential debate in Portland next week after Mitt Romney said he would not attend, the Oregonian reports.

Walter Shapiro: “How unfortunate. Republican voters need to hear more from the candidates than stump speeches and dueling calculations of delegate arithmetic. Newt Gingrich has had this one right from the beginning — more debates are always better. Now that the Republicans have been given (and not cursed with) the gift of time in choosing a presidential nominee, it would be folly if the debates — and the serious policy discussions — ended just as the race entered the home stretch.”

Newt Gingrich explained to Laura Ingraham why his staying in the presidential race will ultimately help deny Mitt Romney the Republican nomination.

Said Gingrich: “I think one of the reasons that Mitt Romney’s been much less effective since Santorum emerged is that he’s had to split his attacks. It’s very hard for him to attack both of us. There’s real danger, from his perspective, that attacking one of us just drives votes to the other, and he still doesn’t get the votes.”

“If we’d fix our courts and our tort reform issues, we’d stand a lot better chance of getting a cracker than we would be in passing this huge bill that we just pull our pants down to get a cracker, when everybody should be getting the same tax breaks.”

— West Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bill Maloney (R), quoted by the Charleston Gazette, alleging that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) gave up too much in tax incentives to bring a cracker plant to the state.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and his wife were found to be ineligible to vote in their former home precinct, the Indianapolis Star reports.

However, “there may be an easy fix — the Lugars could submit new voter registrations that are based on a physical address in the county with which they currently have a connection. That could be a family member’s home or, possibly, the Lugar family farm. There is no house on that farm but it might satisfy the requirement.”

Lugar’s residency has been an issue in his re-election race.

BuzzFeed: “Mitt Romney and his SuperPac have dumped nearly $3.5 million combined into Illinois television advertisements before next week’s primary, outspending Rick Santorum by a nearly 8:1 margin, according to data from a Republican media-buying source.”

Andrew Sullivan: “Most Americans, and the vast majority of Republicans, don’t realize that taxes have decreased under Obama.”

Jonathan Karl explains why: “Gingrich firmly believes that staying in the race is the best way to prevent Mitt Romney from clinching the nomination before the convention in August. And he actually may have a point.”

Said Gingrich: “We’re actually helping because between us — Santorum and I — are stopping Romney.”

“Gingrich knows that it is virtually impossible for him, or Santorum for that matter, to beat Romney on delegates, but he makes the case — and it is not far-fetched — that unless Romney starts winning delegates at a faster pace he won’t clinch nomination by end the end of the primaries.”

In fact, ABC News notes Santorum’s best chance may be Gingrich’s remaining in the race.

In an interesting Fox News interview — which ABC News described as “candid and even feisty” — Mitt Romney once again struggled to assert himself as the frontrunner in the GOP presidential race and again had trouble defending his health care law in Massachusetts.

First Read: “In fact, Romney looked uncomfortable during the entire interview. And we’ve learned a couple of new things about Romney that we might not have known four years ago: 1) it’s pretty easy to get under his skin; and 2) he’s not very nimble when it comes to turning lemons into lemonade.”