Interesting polling in Santorum's backyard; a Franklin and Marshall poll has a hypothetical general election at Obama 41 Romney 33 and Obama 45 Santorum 37. Both are a +8 spread for the Old Man (a day older thay I, at least) but Santorum gets 8% off the fence vis-a-vis Mitt, four on each side. He's divisive, but that isn't always a bad thing; if you cut things such that you get a bigger piece of the swing vote, you're ahead of the game.
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Last night's debate.... Yes, Santorum was on the defensive, since this was his first go-round as the pinata du jour. However, the good thing was that the contraception debate got defused by Newt before it got to Santorum; Newt turned the question from the merits of birth control (where Rick is a bit of an outlier) to that of government overeach and religious freedom (where Rick is GOP normal). Santorum even got some mileage out of the earmark debate, pointing out that (1) everyone wants it for themselves and (2) in the case of divided government, earmarks are a tool to make sure the guys in the White House do what Congress wants.
If this is the last debate, it would be sad. Debates actually work well when whittled down to a manageable number and the moderator lets the candidates debate rather than trade one minute pre-packaged sound-bite buffets.
There were some lame questions, like the one-word description (I'd have gone down with "thoughtful" if I were on the podium) but a good evening nontheless. John King largely stayed out of the way, with only his interruption of Mitt's avoiding a question in favor of a stock spiel being notable.
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The Detroit News endorsed Romney. That might be a bigger deal than the Rick Snyder endorsement, but it fits the News' establishment libertarian worldview; Paul's too radical, Santorum's too devout and Newt is too Newt.
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