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.”

[Read more…]

Jon Stewart points out that Republicans warned that the consequences of the 2008 election could be dire and now they claim that the 2012 election is all that stands between America and catastrophe.

[Read more…]

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds Americans are more likely to say President Obama’s first term has been a failure than a success, 50% to 44%. A 51% majority say Obama is too liberal, and Americans “are inclined to
say they disagree with him on the issues that matter most to them.”

On the positive side, 58% say he “has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have.” His favorability ratings are also higher than any of the GOP presidential contenders.

Meanwhile, a new Quinnipiac poll finds Obama with a negative 45% to 49% job approval rating and voters say by a 50% to 45% margin that he does not deserve reelection.

E.J. Dionne: “They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a ‘Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,’ while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts.”

“Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education.”

“Please forgive this outburst. It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders.”

Tonight’s Republican debate was easily one of the worst of the presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney was armed with opposition research on Rick Santorum but didn’t come close to a knock out. The audience — which was definitely slanted towards Romney — helped cover for many clumsy mistakes. His attempts to throw red meat to conservatives exacerbated his in-authenticity. Nonetheless, Romney did not lose and at the very least held his ground.

Santorum acted as though he was still a non-contender. It’s almost as if he decided in the middle of the debate to run for vice president instead. He also showed how hard it is to run for president with a U.S. Senate voting record. However, he did real damage to Romney in their heated exchange on RomneyCare.

Newt Gingrich scored many points but it’s unclear how he gains against either Santorum or Romney. In the end, he wasn’t much of a factor.

Ron Paul, as always, was consistent on both advancing his libertarian agenda and in helping Romney by attacking Santorum.

The real winner tonight was President Obama. After 20 debates, his potential rivals have done wonders for his re-election chances.

The Fix: “First, this might be the final debate of the GOP presidential race — or at least, the last debate for a while. There are no other debates scheduled before the real Super Tuesday on March 6, and Romney’s campaign has not committed to a planned March 19 debate in Oregon. Indeed, Romney’s campaign looks as though be done with debates altogether, citing the overwhelming number of them in declining to attend a scheduled forum in Georgia next week. That debate fell apart, and without Romney, future debates would as well.”

“It is not accurate to say that a hotly contested convention is
necessarily bad. I am not saying it is necessarily good,
but I don’t think it is accurate to say it is necessarily bad. Let’s
just see.”

— Haley Barbour, in an interview with ABC News.

A new WXYZ/Detroit Free Press poll in Michigan finds Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential primary by three points, 37% to 34%, followed by Ron Paul at 10% and Newt Gingrich at 7%. Another 12% are either undecided or refused to answer.

Said pollster Bernie Porn: “Among GOP voters, Santorum leads Romney by 41%. Among Independent voters, Romney leads Santorum by 30%.”

President Obama’s re-election campaign says they will compete hard in Arizona and a new Public Policy Polling survey suggests they should.

Obama is now tied with Mitt Romney in Arizona at 47%, a dramatic improvement from November when he trailed by 7 points. He leads Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich each by 4 points, 46% to 42% and 48% to 44% respectively. The only Republican he actually runs behind is Rick Santorum, although only by a single point at 47% to 46%.