Santorum Declared Winner in Two so far

Willard is polling worse than he did in 2008 and the turnout is low. It's not he's losing, he is being thumped. Even in areas around St. Louis where he was expected to be strong, Santorum beat him. In Minnesota, he'll be lucky to finish third and a weak one at that. Even in Colorado, he is doing worse.

So tonight's quote goes to Howard Fineman:

"Romney is like a giant hairball. They just can't get rid of him."

Frothy Mix Sweeps--It's Santorum's Night

Intrade put Obama's chances of winning re-election today at 60%, while Willard was at 33%. Tonight revealed Romney's weakness--he hasn't won in the Midwest, where the GOP needs a strong showing.

Romney and his surrogates tried to downplay this night but held out hope for Colorado, which at this hour doesn't look good for him. While non-binding the Missouri primary showed up Willard's weakness. Without Newt in the race, Romney lost handily to a man who slept with dead babies. Not only that but as Mr. Invitable, how do you lose to a man without an organization or money? In fact, Romney's attacks the last two days on Santorum as not conservative enough badly back-fired. Santorum has recently modeled himself a working man hero, unlike Willard. And this seemed to pay off.

The interesting story is that Ron Paul's strategy of playing caucus states has been working for him, as he looks to net second in Minnesota. Tim Pawlenty tried to down play Minnesota, his home state, saying that caucus goers always gravitate to the most conservative.

The big surprise so far is the lackluster performance of Romney in the early returns in Colorado. Colorado seemed to be a state where Romney would do well. But as the night unfolds, he doesn't seem to b doing well anywhere. In Missouri, he lost in total votes to Barack Obama, who was running uncontested. Minnesota--he'll be lucky to finish third.

While tonight's contests seem unimportant, they do demonstrate that Willard has not made the sale. And it furthers the argument that anywhere he campaigns, he loses popularity, not gains it. It will be interesting to see how Willard fares when the race goes back South. Santorum is off to Texas tomorrow to gin up some money.

Remember Missouri was a decent state for Romney last time but his vote count looks much less today.

Willard In The Doldrums

Willard seems to be in a rut. Tonight, the memo reads he may not do well against Santorum in Minnesota, Missouri and perhaps even Colorado, where he is favored.

Out of the last 7 polls on an Obama-Romney contest, Obama wins five of them with an average of 6 its and only two are tied. Mitt's average ratings ow are 28.9% favorable and 46.6% unfavorable. And worse, compared to Obama with an average of 49.1% favorable to Romney averaged at 41.9%. Things are not looking up for the inevitable nominee and Mr.Electable.

This is the time for Steve Benen to weigh in but he defected from the Washingtonmonthly and is now a MSNBC contributor. This is a big loss for those of us who depended on Benen to keep monitoring all of Willard's lies and various "untruths". It is too much for sole bloggers to keep track of the various incarnations of Willard.

Today was a special day. Romney blasted the Prop 8 ruling since his "cult" bankrolled it, perhaps with his own money. He attacked Obama on his decision that health insurance companies should cover contraceptives. And he hailed the Komen foundation for withholding funding for Planned Parenthood. Since he has already backed a Personhood Amendment, Romney is not a moderate anymore but a social conservative.

But Today's bit to out-Frothy Mix Santorum reveals Romney's perpetual tin ear. 99% of American women have or are using contraceptives. 98% of Catholic women have practiced sex with contraceptives. 55% of all Americans support health insurance companies supporting contraceptives with no co-pays. The Obama Administration already follows the "conscience clauses" like the states. According to the Public Religion Research Institute 58% of Catholics support the new program, while 37% oppose. Only among evangelicals do you have 38% supporting and 56% opposed. Romney's attempt to embrace the Catholic Bishops denouncing Obama's war against religion is doubly hypocritical since Romney's own plan in Massachusetts paid for contraceptives and his whole faith was founded on nativist sentiments against Catholics.

I fear that if the economy recovers satisfactorily that we will be caught in a cultural war instead and that the whole Republican agenda will be wedge issues, which have no relevance to the future of the country. In 21st century America, there really is no room for a political debate over contraceptives.

Proposition 8 Ruled Unconstitutional

The 9th Circuit Court ruled by a margin of 2-1 that Prop 8 was unconstitutional and was a form of unlawful discrimination. They also mentioned that Vaughn Walker who originally ruled it was unconstitutional was right to do so even if he could have benefited from the decision since he was gay and opponents accused him of bias and special interest.

What the ruling did do was put obstacles in the way of other states with referenda to roll back already existing same-sex marriage laws. It will be doubly difficult for states to take these rights away.

But the ruling was narrow and very specific to California. It made a point to avoid the broader question of whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. It did affirm that the issue of marriage was significant as different from same sex unions.

The court ruling drew a lot of support. I wonder what took them so long. It seemed to take forever. But Republican presidential candidates all denounced the decision and Prop 8 defenders vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court. Quite frankly it is hard to envision how today's court ruling will be the basis for a broader ruling on same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. It is more likely that the decision would simply be affirmed.

The more interesting case would be over the Defense of Marriage Act, which also has been ruled unconstitutional and seems now to be a broader platform to rule on same sex marriage on a national basis.

The More You Know Him, Is --well--Not to Like him Much

The Romney campaign is crying about the ABC/Washington post poll, which shows Obama with a 51-45 lead over Willard and independents now backing Obama 48-47, when Willard had a 12 point lead in January. 50% of Americans believe President Obama deserves re-election, which is higher than Bill Clinton at the same period of his re-election bid and the same as George W. Bush, one month out from his re-election in 2004. President Obama now has an approval rating of 50%.

What must gall the Romney camp is that 52% of Americans say the more you know about Willard, the less you like him. That's double the number who say they like him better now they know him.

Even Republican pollster Rasmussen now has Obama at a 50% approval rating and beating Romney by 49-42 in the general election.

Well,Romney did manage to squeak out a 50% victory in Nevada, but he did worse than in 2008 in terms of total votes. In fact, 27.2% lower. The turnout was almost 25.6% lower. In the end, Romney won 3% of the Republicans in the whole state.

It seems the Romney campaign have wrapped the candidate in Saran Wrap since he has not answered a question from a voter since January 13. With the new Secret Service detail, observers are debating whether the removal of Romney from people is a plus or a negative. But as we have seen so far the more he campaigns in a state the less popular he becomes.

Romney is sticking to his guns that Obama made the recession worse. He is now using U-6 unemployment figures, which are always higher t prove his point. But Ezra Klein of the Washington Post points out that even those figures are reducing in the same proportion as the regular figures. Let's not forget January's figures showed the private sector grew at 254,000 jobs and George W. Bush's last January was a loss of 818,000 jobs. But as Rush Limbaugh says, that was caused by the election of Barack Obama.

The former Republican mayor of Caramel, California didn't win the hearts and minds of Republicans with his Super Bowl ad for Chrysler. "It's half-time in America" wasn't as good as Eminem's Detroit ad last year. But it got Karl Rove steamed. You thought Clint Eastwood after delivering a pep talk to America was going to endorse President Obama. Rove cried this was "Chicago-style politics" orchestrated by the Obama campaign and then he bitterly complained that the President bought the car industry's allegiance with government loans.

Remember "Bin Laden's dead and General Motors is alive." The Eastwood ad should run every time Romney airs an ad in the Michigan primary.

Why are the Republicans constantly throwing tantrums? Ezra Klein tries to explain in today's Washington Post that President Obama is the most polarizing moderate ever. Klein indicates that Obama is the most moderate Democratic President in the post-WWII period but draws fire all the time. The reason is that Republicans have gone farther right than the Democrats have ever gone Left in our modern history. For this reason, Republicans on ideological grounds oppose President Obama, even though Gallup shows that vast majorities of Americans support his policy initiatives.

Frank Schaeffer in his personal blog wrote that President Obama will be vindicated. Frank was a Republican and co-founder of the religious Right and warns about the people now controlling the Republican Party. Frank has been tossed off progressive blogs for defending the President against Republicans and reasoning why he has not pushed progressive ideas as the liberal/ Left wanted. It's worth a read.

These are early days. Romney feels that he must do in Frothy Mix Santorum to nail down the nomination. Luckily. we will have a brief period of quiet on the primary front until Super Tuesday.

Romney Wins Nevada--Sort Of

Mitt Romney won Nevada with less than 50%. Republican turnout was lower than 2008 and only 35,000 voted or approximately 10% of the GOP in the state. Only Romney and Ron Paul advertised in the state, since Newt is gearing up for Super Tuesday.

The Nevada victory solidified the notion that Romney is the front-runner but it didn't do much more than that.

The lack of enthusiasm should alarm Republicans. Voter participation in the primaries and caucuses so far have been lower than in 2008 around the board. To give you some idea of what this means, Romney's vaunted victory in New Hampshire , his new home state, should be measured by the recent New Hampshire poll, which shows Barack Obama beating Romney there by double digits in a general election.

Beltway pundits are writing that Romney is picking up the Tea Party support and conservatives after Nevada. Well,that's true if conservatives are Mormons. 26% of the Nevada voters were Mormon and Romney won 91% of them. Keep in mind, there are only 7% Mormons in the whole state.

The demographics of the primaries and caucuses should be dispiriting. In 2008, 88% of the primary voters were white, this year it has topped 90%. In Nevada last time 8% of GOP voters were Latino and now with a Latino Governor it was 5%. For all the mention of Israel and the Jewish vote, it was identical to last time--2%. For the youth (17-29 age group), last time it was 11% and this year it was 8%.

So far, Romney has not won a thoroughly Republican state. Gingrich won South Carolina and Florida has been trending Democrat in general elections. Even New Hampshire is purple.

The President's Day

Let's give Barack Obama today. The jobs report came out and it revised both November and December upwards and showed that January produced 257,000 new private sector jobs, while losing 14,000 public sector jobs. The real good news is that projections that public sector losses have bottomed out look to be true.

So now we have a standard unemployment rate of 8.3%, which might mean that we could see unemployment around November at slightly under the 7.8% Obama came in with. Nate the Great Silver does an analysis at www.fivethirtyeight.com where he projects Obama's re-election chances with various job creation rates. Silver believes Obama's approval rating is not quite into the re-election territory but could get there soon. He says based on his regression analysis that if the economy generates about 151,000 jobs per month until November, then Obama has a great chance at re-election.

The other good news was that veteran unemployment has fallen dramatically from horrible highs.

The DOW and Nasdaq are now at the highs of the pre-financial levels. Nasdaq closed to day at a 11-year high.

Oh, another item. It appears Orly Taitz lost another one--the case in Georgia, where Obama has been subpoenaed and refused to go. The judge today flat out told her that her case had no basis in fact or merit. This case had generated enormous news among right-wing bloggers, saying this would finally prove President Obama wasn't eligible for the presidency. No dice.

If you can figure out the Susan Komen Foundation mess, you are better than I am. One can not think of such a perfect storm of a PR disaster as their announcement they were cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood netted a few million in just 24 hours. Mayor Bloomberg pledged $250,000 and then Lance Armstrong came in with a matching grant. Presidents of state Koman Foundation branches abandoned ship. Then Komen went further by saying they would not longer fund stem cell research on breast cancer. All of this motivated by extreme anti-abortion members of the organization and their policy chief. By this afternoon, after considerable damage has been done, they claim to have reversed their decision. Planned Parenthood up a few million and Komen seriously damaged. For what?

Another bit of good news for President Obama--The Koch Brothers held their billionaire retreat and they pledged $60 million of their own money and combined with their friends a total of $100 million to defeat President Obama. Maybe it was President Obama's ads about secretive oil billionaires attacking him that prompted this little snit fit.

Apparently Willard looks like he will win Nevada, since he gets about 95% of the Mormon vote. Willard is looking just terrific after receiving the Donald's somewhat botched endorsement. He was almost speechless on the jobs report. Congressional Republicans are taking the tack that this is good news for Americans but more should be done. However, their biggest jobs program initiative, according to Speaker Boehner, is the Keystone XL Pipeline. I guess you can hoodwink some people some of the time.

And a look back--The last January of George W's Presidency saw jobs losses of 810,000. Heckuva Job, Brownie.