Largely overlooked in the Arizona and Michigan showdowns between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were signs of resistance from GOP primary voters in each state to key positions held by both men.

Both Santorum and Romney have opposed any pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., with Romney embracing a policy of toughened workplace enforcement that would encourage "self-deportation."

But according to the CNN exit poll from Tuesday's Arizona primary, just 31 percent of Republican voters said that the U.S. should seek to deport all illegal immigrants. A 36 percent plurality instead they should be allowed to apply for citizenship; another 27 percent said they should be allowed to stay as temporary workers.

For months now, the restless Republican search for a Not-Mitt -- a Great Red Hope -- has been described as the central dynamic of the GOP race. But I don't think that is really the story. The real reason so many Republican primary voters are holding their noses, gritting their teeth and still voting for Romney is there's simply no other qualified candidate who is running.

That is the real story.

Consider: One by one the would-be Not-Mitts have risen up, and one by one they have fallen (often helped along by intensive barrages of Romney Super PAC advertising) as it's become clear that even the GOP base, as far-right as it is, can't imagine them in the White House. Michele Bachmann was too crazed, Rick Perry too incompetent, Herman Cain too immoral (and his tax ideas too absurdly simplistic), and Newt Gingrich too hair-on-fire hypocritical and unstable. Ron Paul's role has been not unlike that of the jester in a Shakespearian play; everyone likes having him around to utter counter-conventional wisdom, but no one can imagine him replacing the king. Alone of those running against Romney, Jon Huntsman seemed clearly qualified, but he was also clearly too compromised (by his ambassador service to Obama).

The rise of the latest Not-Mitt, Rick Santorum, and what is likely now to be his inexorable decline, is following the same pattern. No one took Santorum seriously in the beginning because his run seemed self-indulgent at best. Here was a senator who was trounced by 18 points in 2006, hadn't served for six years while racking up millions as an influence peddler (sorry, "consultant") and, even when he was in the Senate, was disliked by his fellow Republicans as well as Democrats for his zealotry, incivility and inability to talk reasonably. ("That Rick is scary," one former GOP lawmaker recalls his wife saying after they left a fund-raising event together.)

Santorum did very well in the debates -- the central factor in these roller-coaster GOP polls-- as long as the focus was on Romney's flaws as a conservative. But as with Newt's penchant for rocketing off into grandiose flights of nonsense (his moon colony remark in Florida was probably the beginning of the end for him), it was only a matter of time before the Santorum that his colleagues knew and never loved --the one almost no one could imagine as president-- reappeared.

That's what happened last week. Santorum, under the apparent delusion that not only the GOP wingnuts but much of the country agreed with him, began imitating Savonarola and doing the Inquisition ("Hey Torquemada, whaddaya say?") on the campaign trail. His lead in the national and Michigan polls evaporated in a matter of hours.

I wouldn't say this if Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Tim Pawlenty  or even Paul Ryan were running. But the real story here is that Romney is virtually certain to get the nomination by default of being the only candidate who is even remotely qualified. The exit poll numbers in Michigan bore that out: the base liked Santorum for his moral character and conservatism, but Romney destroyed him when it came to electability.

Even so, as Romney has twisted this way and that--as well as spent much of his war chest--whack-a-moling pretender after pretender, his own electability has dropped. Which is the next real story.

He was born there. He grew up there. His siblings still live there. His father was governor. He won the state four years ago. His campaign infrastructure from 2008 was resurrected and revamped. His name recognition is high there. He's long been considered the frontrunner, both nationally and in the state. His campaign vastly outspent his competitors there. He had endorsements from the current governor and most of the congressional delegation. And his childhood hero was Al Kaline.

So why are we surprised that Mitt Romney won Michigan?

I'm not sure. But here's a theory: In attempting to bring clarity to a historically chaotic nominating process, there is a temptation to base our expectations on the day-to-day agitations of polling, headlines and cable news rather than trusting what we know in our head and what we feel in our gut. We find ourselves all too often missing the forest for the trees -- possibly because they're just the right height.

In the dark hours of World War II, surging German troops rode their grinding tanks across hundreds of miles of Russian territory, suffering precious loss of life and time with every mile gained. A division commander wrote of the importance of reducing losses "if we do not intend to win ourselves to death."

Winning means different things to different people, a fact that should not escape even the most incidental of political observers tonight as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum take the stage to spin the results of Michigan's hotly-contested Republican primary election.

Much has been made of the potential ramifications of a Santorum "victory" over Romney in his home state, but Michigan's delegate apportionment process muddles the definitions of winning and losing. The state will award a total of 30 delegates tonight: two delegates to the winner of each of the state's 14 congressional districts, and two additional delegates to the winner of the Wolverine State's popular vote.

With that math in mind, there are two ways Santorum can claim "victory" over Romney in Michigan:

When the nation's governors get together for their semi-annual conferences, a few characters always pop out: The media darlings (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie these days), the flavors of the moment (Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wields far less power among her home-state Republicans than the attention she gets would suggest), the policy wonks (Several governors led a panel on the future of the National Guard at this year's meeting) and the chairman (Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has never been so popular).

But the guys who steal the show are invariably the partisans, the two governors tapped to head the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations. They use the annual winter meetings in Washington to sit down with the media and explain just why their party's governors are doing so darn well.

This year, the two heads are almost uniquely qualified to fill their partisan roles and grab the required headlines. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, are widely viewed as rising stars; given their proximity to Washington, they are accessible and well-known to the national political media; they harbor a friendly, and sometimes heated, regional rivalry; and there's a very decent chance that both will eventually wind up on representing their respective sides on a national ticket.

A new poll in Tennessee underscores the stakes for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in tomorrow's Michigan primary.

Like the Quinnipiac University Ohio survey released on Monday, the Vanderbilt Poll showed Santorum marshaling powerful support in Tennessee from the key elements in the GOP's populist wing- particularly tea party supporters and evangelical Christians, while remaining competitive with (or even leading) Romney among more managerial voters. Tennessee, along with Oklahoma and Georgia, loom as, in effect, the top second-tier of contests on March 6, behind Ohio, which is likely to hold center stage on that day. With polls in the GOP race gyrating wildly all year, the results in Michigan are likely to cast a long shadow over those contests.

The Tennessee survey, conducted from February 16 to 22 for Vanderbilt University's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, showed Santorum leading Romney overall by a resounding 38 percent to 20 percent, with Ron Paul (15 percent) and Newt Gingrich (13 percent) lagging. Santorum's lead is grounded in big advantages among groups at the GOP's ideological vanguard. Three-fourths of Tennessee voters in the survey identified as born-again Christians and they prefer Santorum over Romney by 39 percent to 15 percent. Among the nearly two-thirds of likely primary voters who say they support the tea party's ideas, Santorum led Romney even more decisively-43 percent to 13 percent.

First came Mitt Romney's dismissive remarks about President Obama's "faculty lounge" pals. Now Rick Santorum is calling Obama snobby for urging people to go to college - and defending that view in a series of TV appearances.

"There are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don't include college," Santorum said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "We should not look down our nose" at people who go to trade school to learn carpentry or plumbing, he added on NBC's Meet The Press, "and say they're somehow less" because they didn't get a four-year college degree.

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg is out with a must-read polling memo this morning, which offers some eye-opening advice to President Obama and his re-election team.  After testing several of the president's economic messages, he finds the argument that the economy is back on the right track polls miserably - and "produces disastrous results."

"It is weaker than even the weakest Republican message and is 10 points weaker in intensity than either Republican message," Greenberg wrote. "A third said this message made them less likely to support Barack Obama. Alarmingly, this message barely receives majority support among self-identified Democrats - and even less support among all other groups."

The memo reads as a glaring wake-up call to the White House, which has been trumpeting improving economic figures lately.   Greenberg notes that voters are reporting "no improvement" in their job situation since last June, and have experienced reduced wages and benefits and health insurance coverage.  The picture Greenberg's polling paints is an America public still deeply pessimistic about their future, and skeptical of Obama's handling of the economy.

Greenberg writes that the jury is still out on the president's overall messaging, and offered high praise for the focus on protecting the middle class - which ranked as the most effective argument the White House has made.  And he noted that Republicans are performing even more abysmally, with their presidential primary battles pushing independents into the Democratic camp.

It's quite fitting that this year's Republican presidential race, which has often drawn comparisons to reality TV contests, is beginning to immerse itself in the dark art that defines such shady, self-serving competitions: choosing sides. Indeed, much like any suspense-filled home stretch of Survivor, the Republican contestants are now building alliances based on the shared interest of preventing their chief rival from claiming victory.

The most obvious example is the apparent ceasefire between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, who have reportedly forged a strong friendship during their twin presidential bids. The media -- and rival campaigns -- have undoubtedly observed how Paul's presence in the race has helped Romney, yet have chosen to avoid any conspiratorial chatter. But after Wednesday night's debate -- which saw Romney and Paul relentlessly attack Santorum while whispering nary a negative word about each another -- Santorum's camp couldn't hold back its frustration.

"Clearly there is a tag-team strategy between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney," top Santorum strategist John Brabender fumed to reporters after the debate. "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."

Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly characterized the partisan breakdown of the 109th Congress. The partisan breakdown was 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats.

In 2004, Rick Santorum endorsed Sen. Arlen Specter's bid for re-election. It was, judging by last night's debate, the single most influential endorsement in any Senate race in the history of the Republic.

To hear Santorum tell it, his backing meant Specter got another two years as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post from which he shepherded John Roberts and Samuel Alito to Supreme Court posts, and dozens of other conservative jurists nominated by President George W. Bush through the gauntlet of Democratic opposition. To hear Mitt Romney tell it, Santorum's support for Specter gave Specter the opportunity to switch parties and cast the decisive 60th vote on health care reform legislation.

They're both right, to an extent. But Santorum's argument needs a little fleshing out, something that's tough to do in the 60 seconds allowed by a debate moderator.

For more than a year, Rick Santorum has labored to cast himself as an outsider ready to go to Washington to challenge business as usual, which makes it all the more puzzling why he decided to use the crucial debate in Mesa to sound like the ultimate Washington insider. Over and over again, Santorum came off as a defender of Congress, a champion of earmarks and a master of legislative minutiae.

Legislative ratings, Title X, Title XX, earmarks, voting for things you opposed - these are the things that the former Pennsylvania senator talked about. At one point, his tortured explanation prompted Mitt Romney to admit -- or taunt -- he hadn't understood what Santorum was talking about. At other points, his inside-Washington talk and use of legislative jargon set him up for jabs and jibes from Rep. Ron Paul.

It could not have been what Santorum wanted to do in what could be the final Republican debate, the first one held since Santorum surged into the lead in many polls. Perhaps his worst moment was his attempt to explain why he voted for No Child Left Behind even though he opposed it. There were echoes of John Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" only without Kerry's coherence. He said he voted for it because President George W. Bush asked him to do so. "I have to admit I voted for that. It was against the principles I believed in. But, you know, when you're part of the team sometimes you take one for the team, for the leader. And I made a mistake." Not a great answer when you're running to be a leader of a party deeply suspicious of Washington's ways.

Mitt Romney came very close Wednesday night to saying he was ready to go to war with Iran--right now-- if he were president. 

Hammering away, as usual, at Barack Obama's supposed weakness on national security at the 20th GOP debate in Arizona, Romney accused the administration of failing to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran and said that, for him, military action wouldn't be merely "an option." Obama, Romney said, has "made it clear through his administration and almost every communication we've had so far that he does not want Israel to take action, he opposes military action. He should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table. They are in our hand."

The truth about the Obama administration's stance on Iran is much more complicated than Romney laid out. After spending a year offering an "outstretched hand" to Tehran, leading him to fudge his support for the Green movement there--a policy that critics called naive--Obama has delivered up ever-tougher sanctions. He has also cooperated with Israel on what appears to be a covert war against Iran's nuclear program. As one former intelligence official said to me recently: "Everything that Mitt Romney said we should be doing--tough sanctions, covert action and pressuring the international community  -- are all of the things we are actually doing."  

There is also an argument to be made that the repercussions of a U.S. or Israeli strike might not be as terrible as some critics of military action say. Iran's government is mired in chaos and infighting, its military is weak and disorganized, and its economy is crippled. Iran's main proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are not eager to attack Israel, and the United States is less vulnerable in Iraq now that its military has withdrawn. Tehran's lone ally in the region, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, is fighting a civil war. 

Still, the Obama administration has deployed various officials, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, to attempt to slow down what may be Israeli plans to attack Iranian sites this year. Even if the U.S. were to attack, on its own or in cooperation with the Israelis, there is little guarantee of a success. And the danger of a failed attack on Iran is that Tehran rushes ever faster to build a nuclear bomb, while the international coalition that has erected sanctions against Iran disintegrates. 

Rick Santorum took an easy question about contraception that he must have expected and then ran with it--right into a wall.

John King of CNN, the debate moderator in Arizona, asked about an issue that Santorum has taken a hard line on: "If elected you will talk about, quote, what no president has talked about before -- the dangers of contraception. Why?"  King asked. Santorum responded by reeling off putative data that argued precisely for ... contraception, and government support of it.

He spoke about "the increasing  number of children being born out of wedlock in America, teens who are sexually active. ... The bottom line is we have a problem in this country, and the family is fracturing. Over 40 percent of children born in America are born out of wedlock. How can a country survive if children are being raised in homes where it's so much harder to succeed economically? It's five times the rate of poverty in single-parent households than it is in two-parent homes."

Then Santorum segued into an argument for cutting funding to Planned Parenthood. Very little of it added up. Except perhaps that in Santorum's mind, he was making an argument about fundamentally changing the culture in America, dictating from Washington how people are to have children and with whom, and certainly in wedlock.

To wit, Santorum again: "There are bigger problems at stake in America. And someone has got to go out there -- I will -- and talk about the things. And you know what, here's the difference. The left gets all upset, oh, look at him talking about these things. Here's the difference between me and the left, and they don't get this. Just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want a government program to fix it. That's what they do. That's not what we do."

So what is it he would do? He's running for president, not pope. It was an altogether confusing answer.

 Forget the polls. You don't need to monitor the public opinion polls to track which Republican presidential candidate is surging. All you need to do is see which rival Texas Rep. Ron Paul is attacking - and how sarcastically he gets doing it. In the earlier debates, Paul went after Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Wednesday night, in Mesa, it was Rick Santorum's turn in Paul's sights.

The first question from CNN moderator John King was why Paul is calling Santorum a fake in his television commercials. With the bluntness that has gained him a cult-like following, the veteran congressman man responded, "Because he's a fake."

Mitt Romney has finally acknowledged what seemed painfully obvious to so many three years ago: The most politically perilous aspect of his 2008 op-ed piece in the New York Times wasn't its content, but its headline, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Romney has suffered widespread Democratic derision for his well-known opposition to the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors, a position shared by many fellow conservatives. And while the crux of his argument -- that the automakers could have obtained private financing for a managed bankruptcy -- has been dismissed as everything from dishonest to fantastical, the brunt of the backlash against Romney centers around his seemingly callous dismissal of the city where he was born.

After three-plus years of reflection -- interrupted by constant criticism from his political opponents -- Romney now recognizes the headline is hurting his campaign. The Republican presidential hopeful told the Detroit Free Press editorial board on Thursday that, if given the chance to go back to December 2008 and re-title his opinion piece, he would change the headline to "How to Save Detroit."

The Michigan primary will test one of the most common- but as yet unproven - assumptions in the Republican presidential race: the expectation that Rick Santorum will be a strong candidate for blue-collar voters.

From the moment Santorum emerged as a serious contender in Iowa, many analysts (present company included) have assumed he would run well among the growing ranks of non-college white voters in the Republican electorate. On a policy level, Santorum stresses his determination to rebuild the nation's manufacturing capacity and laments the decline of upward mobility for working-class Americans in language rare among Republicans. On a personal level, Santorum highlights his years growing up in Western Pennsylvania steel country, and his grandfather's experience as a miner; he also projects a regular-guy aura that contrasts with rival Mitt Romney's vast wealth.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum's campaign is preparing its own ad buy in response to Mitt Romney and a Romney-allied political action committee, according to new ad data provided to The Hotline. But even with the big infusion, Romney and his super PAC are still likely to outspend Santorum.

Santorum's campaign is spending $426,000 on cable television advertisements in Michigan this week. Beginning next week, they'll start a statewide broadcast blitz of at least $416,000. The Red White and Blue Fund, a pro-Santorum super PAC, is spending $671,000 on cable and broadcast advertising of their own this week.

It's all an effort to keep pace with Romney and Restore Our Future, both of which are spending heavily on flights of anti-Santorum advertising. Romney's campaign is spending $706,000 on television ads this week, while Restore Our Future is spending $908,000 this week. Romney's camp has already bought $714,000 for next week, and Restore Our Future has spent $673,000 on next week's ads.

A full look at ad spending in Michigan this week, with estimated gross ratings points in parentheses, after the jump.

With apologies to my colleagues from Detroit, Mr. Fournier and Mr. Alberta, President Obama's trip to Washington State on Friday underscores one of the biggest overlooked success stories in American manufacturing: On the shoulders of new products and new airline strategies, Boeing has grown American jobs and its sales figures to record heights -- and this year it's likely to once again become the largest aerospace manufacturer in the world.

Obama visited Paine Field, a plant just outside Everett, Washington, where workers are assembling the new 787 Dreamliner commercial airplanes (Paine Field is also the plant where Obama's own airplane, a 747, was constructed). While there, he was announcing new loan programs aimed at spurring export businesses; Boeing itself is providing more than $700 million in credits toward some of its parts suppliers.

While the automotive sector has gotten all the attention of late, the fierce rivalry between Boeing and Airbus has been similarly good for the American manufacturing sector. Boeing itself added a net 10,000 jobs last year, mostly in the Puget Sound region, as it amps up production of its 737, 777 and 787 lines, according to a Boeing spokesman. Airbus is based in Europe, but it has engineering facilities in Kansas and Alabama, and the company claims credit for supporting 180,000 manufacturing positions at suppliers in 40 states.

Rick Santorum's fierce condemnation of "bailouts" before the Detroit Economics Club on Thursday was a good ideological fix for those who like to mainline pure market smack. But Santorum's remarks misrepresented or ignored so much of the actual history of the financial catastrophe of 2008 and the auto industry crisis that they raise questions about how well he understands that history. Not to mention economics. Not to mention the job of president.

President Obama has been quite insistent that he is not ready to engage the Republican presidential candidates until the GOP settles on its nominee. "Once they narrow it down to one of two, I'll start paying attention," he said several times. And in his Super Bowl interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, he insisted he will hold his comments "until the Republicans decide who their nominee is going to be." He added, "I think most people are thinking the election is nine months away; the last thing we need is to start it right now when the other side hasn't determined its nominee."

But it's not too early to call attention to the success of one of his policies that was opposed by the leading Republican candidate. And as the good news keeps rolling in from the U.S. auto industry, the president has not been at all bashful about calling attention to what the White House sees as the politically unpalatable position taken on U.S. automakers by that Republican candidate - even if the president is always careful not to mention him by name.

One key reason why Democrats have grown more competitive in presidential elections since 1992 (after losing five of the previous six) is the steady growth in the minority share of the vote. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected, non-whites cast 12 percent of the vote. When Barack Obama won in 2008, the minority share stood at 26 percent, more than double. How much more it grows, if at all, looms as one of the critical variables for 2012. The Obama camp is beginning to zero in on its projection.

A common misconception is that the minority share of the vote experienced an unsustainable surge in 2008 because of Obama's history-making status as the first African-American presidential nominee. In fact, the growth in the minority role has been steady over the past two decades, according to network exit polls. From 12 percent in 1992, the minority share of the vote increased to 17 percent in 1996, 21 percent in 2000, and 23 percent in 2004, before reaching its 26 percent level in 2008.

A central strength most pundits (including this one) have cited when describing Mitt Romney as the Republican front-runner is money: He has it, his opponents do not.

The 20 days leading up to Super Tuesday will show whether we were right. Romney and a super PAC that backs his campaign are about to embark on an all-out television blitz aimed at tearing down Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, an assault that already adds up to more than $5 million in key primary states -- and there are few signs either of Romney's rivals have the financial ability to respond.

Ad buy data we've obtained from sources keeping an eye on the race show both Romney's campaign and Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, are buying much more television time than previously thought. Restore Our Future will spend a total of $1.25 million in Michigan in the two weeks leading up to the state's February 28 primary; Romney's campaign is augmenting that with $617,000 in Michigan ads this week, though they haven't bought time next week yet.

Under fire from Republicans for a promise he won't be keeping about cutting the deficit, President Obama might consider emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found himself in a very similar bind eight decades ago. In October 1932, Roosevelt told a crowd in Pittsburgh that he would balance the budget and cut government spending by 25 percent in his first term. But when he got in office, the only way to combat the Depression was to increase spending.

It was the right course for governing. But it presented Roosevelt with a real political challenge when he was running for a second term and returning to Pennsylvania. He asked speechwriter Sam Rosenman how to handle questions about the broken promise.

Much has been written in the past 48 hours regarding Rick Santorum's chance to score a major upset victory over Mitt Romney in Michigan, Romney's home state, where Santorum's manufacturing message and blue collar appeal are likely to resonate with voters ahead of the state's Feb. 28 primary.

On Tuesday, Romney responded with an unambiguous message: You're not the only one with roots in the Rust Belt.

In today's Detroit News, Romney used an op-ed -- written with the primary purpose of defending his opposition to the auto bailouts -- to reintroduce himself: "I am a son of Detroit. I was born in Harper Hospital and lived in the city until my family moved to Oakland County. I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan & Trumbull. Cars got in my bones early. And not just any cars, American cars."

Much of what's been written about Rick Santorum's political history has centered on 2006, the year he suffered an 18-point landslide loss to Democrat Bob Casey in an otherwise awful year for Republicans.

But the more instructive campaign to look at to assess Santorum's electability is his 2000 victory against then-Democratic Rep. Ron Klink, an election he won with 52 percent of the vote.  What's striking about the exit polling from that race is the huge gender gap Santorum engendered even in victory.

Against a Democratic congressman who opposed abortion, Santorum dramatically underperformed with women voters.  That would likely repeat itself if he emerged as the Republican nominee against President Obama.

Santorum won an impressive 57 percent of the vote among men; that number increased to 60 percent just looking at white men.  But among women, Santorum lost to Klink, winning just 48 percent of the vote.  Among white women, he barely inched past the Democrat, 52 to 47 percent.

The national Pew Research Center poll released Monday confirms that President Obama, at least for now, is reassembling the coalition that powered him to his 2008 victory.

The Pew survey, closely tracking last week's ABC News/Washington Post poll, shows that in a potential general election match-up against Mitt Romney, Obama's support among many of the electorate's key groups has converged with his 2008 showing against John McCain. In almost all cases, that represents gains for Obama since polls from last year.

Mitt Romney has won two nominating contests by spending millions of dollars, and with the help of millions more from a supportive super PAC, on television advertising. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina by pursuing the same ad-heavy strategy, to the extent his poorer campaign could.

But Rick Santorum's campaign has won four primary and caucus states in a much different manner: His campaign and its affiliated super PAC haven't spent the kinds of big bucks the others can afford.

By all accounts, Santorum's campaign should have desperately needed every penny in those three states. After coming in a distant third in Florida, Santorum sat mired in third place in national surveys; Gallup's tracking poll showed Santorum at just 16 percent between Jan. 31 and Feb. 6, six points below Gingrich and 21 points behind Romney.

But Santorum's wins this week in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri were notable for the lack of money spent in each state.

As the Republican presidential race continues its unexpected twists and turns, Arizona has suddenly emerged as a critical state in the fight for the GOP nomination. The Grand Canyon State, along with Michigan, will host presidential primary elections on Feb. 28, and represent a final opportunity for the Republican contenders to pick up delegates -- and perhaps more importantly, momentum -- heading into the March 6 Super Tuesday contests.

With so much at stake, the Arizona primary contest has suddenly been pinned under the media microscope, with observers obsessively opining over whether Rick Santorum can parlay his new-found momentum into another upset victory over Mitt Romney. There's only one problem: Santorum, and the rest of the Republican field, seem content to concede the state to Romney.

Rick Santorum's clean sweep of Tuesday's lightly-attended GOP contests underscored front-runner Mitt Romney's continuing struggles with the Republican base, even as recent national surveys show the former Massachusetts governor's standing eroding among independents.

Although exit polls were not conducted Tuesday night, the three states that Santorum swept --  Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri -- are all places where social conservatives represent a central component of the Republican electorate. And in all three states, one of the most striking aspects of Tuesday's results was the sharp decline in the number of people who came out to vote for Romney, compared to four years ago.

President Obama's about-face on soliciting donations under a Supreme Court ruling he denounced is another reminder that we're living in times not unlike Teddy Roosevelt's -- and that Obama is no TR.

This isn't the first time Obama has defied TR's legacy.

With Obama now rising in some polls, Romney seems to be running out of good talking points these days. So here's a freebie for ya, Mitt. Look, we certainly don't want to begrudge the New York/Jersey Giants their just deserts. But isn't there something just a little lopsided about the fact that the Super Bowl winners are getting a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan today, while the Obama administration prefers to restrict the honors for our war veterans to a polite dinner? 

OK, fine, the Giants actually won something, and America's devastating and horrifically costly experience in Iraq was so far from a win that we may end up with little more than Saddam-lite, as my colleague Yochi Dreazen has written.

But let's have a sense of proportion, shall we? According to Veterans for Common Sense, America has now suffered 108,974 total war zone casualties since 9/11/01, most of them in Iraq. That includes 6,211 dead. Yet when was the last time you heard about a national event honoring our recently withdrawn troops from Iraq?

If they don't get a parade, can we at least give them a Wall? And will Obama need to do more--a lot more--in an election year?

If President Obama wins re-election, he'll point to the last couple of weeks as a turning point.  He's sharpened his economic message, emphasized fairness for the middle class, and most importantly, he's benefited from an economy that's showing some signs of improvement.

But the most underplayed development are signs that the president's approval rating is ticking upwards with the group most resistant to him, non-college educated, working-class whites.  Over the last week, several surveys have suggested that Obama is gaining some ground with this group, in both national and statewide polling.  If these gains stick, it's something that should be very concerning to the Romney campaign, which is dependent on winning overwhelming support from blue-collar white voters as part of a winning GOP coalition.

Clint Eastwood's implicit plug for Barack Obama in last night's halftime-at-the-Super Bowl ad for Chrysler, in which the iconic actor declared optimistically that it's only "halftime in America," made me wonder whether the presidential race between Romney and Obama is going to play out like the ending to another famous Eastwood performance. In 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars," Clint's character outlasts what seems sure to be his demise by revealing that he has a steel chest plate hidden beneath his poncho. Clint, known only as The Stranger, taunts his opponent to "aim for the heart" but the bullets bounce off, and he wins the gunfight. 

Now Obama, whom many on the Right are still scurrilously casting as a Stranger to this country, must hope that the fistful of dollars that Congress reluctantly granted him to resurrect the economy--and the auto industry--will produce enough of an economic protective shield to withstand the relentless barrage being aimed at him by Romney. As I have written previously and as Paul Krugman noted today in his column, certain pathological conditions such as long-term unemployment mean that things are not OK despite one of the few truly positive jobs reports to come along in a long time. In a recovery that is still full of more Bad and Ugly than Good (sorry, I'm an Eastwood aficionado), Obama may still need to make history for an incumbent to overcome current jobless levels and get re-elected.

But Clint's pitch for Chrysler was a telling reminder that the president does indeed have some good-news stories to tell about the economy. And one of the biggest stories starts in Mitt "Let the Markets Work" Romney's home state of Michigan. It's not just Chrysler that has made a comeback; General Motors is likely to report its highest ever income for 2011, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Romney, recall, vigorously opposed the auto bailout. 

The real question is whether the Obama team can forge a consistent and inspirational message reflecting a coherent economic philosophy, one that will effectively counter Romney's simplistic--but clear--appeal to free markets. The president may do well to declare that what passes for economic wisdom in Washington today is a debunked mythology, and that America has succeeded, long term, largely thanks to a mixed economy of free markets and government support. 

If Obama can do that successfully, he might just find that he gains, if not Teflon, then at least an aura of the old Clint Eastwood movie toughness come November.

President Obama's ad-makers may have to pay royalties to Clint Eastwood after a remarkable two-minute Chrysler commercial that aired on the biggest of all stages - the Super Bowl - and gave a pretty good preview of what the president's reelection commercials might look like. At the very least, the ad and Eastwood's powerful narration make it much, much more difficult for Republican front-runner Mitt Romney to keep pushing his line that Washington should have let the automakers go into bankruptcy.

And don't think that Team Obama wasn't watching the Super Bowl along with millions of other Americans and immediately grasped the boost they could get from the commercial. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer quickly tweeted "Saving the America auto industry: something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on." Senior strategist David Axelrod tweeted "Powerful spot. Did Clint shoot that, or just narrate it?"  Former White House aide Bill Burton tweeted, "Clinton Eastwood #winning."

Of course, this isn't the first time Eastwood has been identified with cars -- he starred in Pink Cadillac in 1989 and Gran Torino in 2008. But those weren't in the Super Bowl with a bigger audience than probably saw both those movies combined.

RELATED: Chrysler Super Bowl Ad Removed From YouTube

With 30 second spots selling for $3.5 million, the commercial cost Chrysler an estimated $14 million and was kept under wraps by the automaker, which, with the help of the Obama administration, has come back from the dead after being counted out in 2009. And one can only guess what the automaker paid Eastwood. Whatever, it was worth it for it was a master stroke. The 81-year-old actor has told interviewers he has always voted Republican for president, though he has endorsed some Democrats in California and has praised libertarians.

The commercial itself was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" commercials, though with the famous Clint Eastwood tough guy touch. Shown shortly after Madonna's halftime performance, it began with the silhouette of Eastwood, walking in the dark and recognizable only for his gravelly voice. "It's halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game," he says. "It's halftime in America, too." With scenes of an iconic front porch and a city skyline," he continues, "People are out of work and they are hurting. They are all wondering what they are going to do to make a comeback. And we're all scared because this isn't a game."

With more every day scenes flashing on the screen, Eastwood adds, "The people in Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again." With the music punctuating his remarks, Eastwood goes on: "I've seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. Times when we didn't understand each other. It seems that we've lost our heart at times. The fog of division, discord and blame, made it hard to see what lies ahead." As scenes of protesters give way to black and white photos of kids and firefighters, Eastwood builds, "But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right and acted as one. Because that's what we do. We find a way through tough times. If we can't find a way then we'll make one. All that matters now is what's ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together?

At this point, viewers see Eastwood in the light. "And how do we win? Detroit is showing us it can be done,. And what's true about them is true about all of us. This country can't be knocked out with one punch." To conclude, a close-up of Eastwood fills the screen. "We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, its halftime America and our second half is about to begin."

All that was missing was him turning to Mitt Romney and challenging him to "make my day."

In the last day we've heard experts in the political world issuing various sounds of celebration (Obama) and consternation (Romney) over the new jobless numbers and the booming stock market. But the reaction on both sides is probably premature at best. Just as this is no ordinary economic recovery, it's wrong to assess the presidential election odds using the ordinary metrics.

True, the Obama-ites have reason to peek up from their defensive crouch, and the Romney camp has been forced to duck into one. The drop in the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent continues what will be the president's best hope of re-election: an upward trend in hiring that persists until election day and undermines Romney's claim that only he can turn the economy around. We've now had five consecutive monthly declines in the unemployment rate, and if that continues, voters may react more to the forward motion than the absolute numbers, even though the current 8 percent levels are still hard for an incumbent to overcome and the jobless rate is likely to remain higher than it was at Obama's inauguration (7.8 percent) by election day. The Dow's return to levels not seen since May 2008, before the final financial collapse, is also a major milestone back into positive territory for Obama.

But keep in mind: this is still the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. "We have never seen unemployment this high for this long," says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, who notes that jobless rates have now exceeded 8 percent for a record 35 months, surpassing the early '80s recession mark of 27 months.

As I've previously written, an issue that could be more telling for Obama's future could well be the long-term unemployment rate--workers who have been out of a job for more than six months, in many cases a year or more, and can't find a new one no matter how hard they try. "What's really different in this recession is that we have people who really want to be working and really can't find work," Betsey Stevenson, until recently the Labor Department's chief economist, told me recently.

The labor market simply isn't clearing as readily this time around, in part because of long-term unemployment, in part because of business uncertainty over Europe, regulation, political gridlock and other issues, in part because of other pathological conditions that the nation has rarely, if ever, dealt with before. That's especially true of the underwater housing market that Obama only now seems to be realizing is far worse than he thought. "I'll be honest, the programs we've put forward didn't work at the scale we'd hoped," Obama said this week, and on Saturday he pressed the point home in his weekly radio address, urging Congress to pass a plan he took far too long to develop: using the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee refinanced loans at lower rates for underwater borrowers.

But Obama is still not using the sort of strong-arm tactics he could be employing, critics say, such as forcing Fannie and Freddie to take more action to help mortgage holders (they are in receivership, after all). That would require extraordinary political courage. And in the Bizarro world of Washington, it's somehow OK to ignore the "moral hazard" of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks with no questions asked, while the idea of helping the victims of those banks is still deemed a sin that might undermine the beautiful purity of capitalism.

As a result, the mortgage and foreclosure crisis remains a spreading infection that has gone largely untreated. It has prevented a resurgence of demand in a consumer economy that, because of stagnant wages, had become dependent on debt and refinancing for growth until the crash. Both the size of the housing bubble and the implosion that ensued also were unnaturally severe because of the sheer amount of housing and securities fraud that fed the mania. Many banks may still be technically insolvent because of the devalued mortgage-based securities and loans they have on their books. Even so, "from the beginning, all the proposals for relief were too small," whether from the administration or the Congress, says Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center.  "They underestimated the amount of fraud. And I think they overestimated the good will of the bankers."

What the Obama team, and the Congress, failed to estimate well at all was the unusual nature of this economic disaster.

Much will depend on the political success that Obama has pinning a good part of the blame on George W. Bush and the Republican-led Congress, versus the skill with which Romney pins much of it on Obama. And that is why when it comes to this presidential election, the usual numbers don't mean a lot.

The Gallup state-by-state average approval numbers for 2011 released this week don't necessarily predict where President Obama will finish on Election Day, but they do measure the hill he must climb to win re-election.

The most important number in presidential elections, of course, is 270 - the number of Electoral College votes it takes to win. The best way to examine the Gallup numbers is to measure them against that yardstick.

In 2010, if you sorted down from Obama's highest approval rating to his lowest, he could reach 270 Electoral College votes by carrying the 22 states plus the District of Columbia where his approval rating stood at 46.9 percent or more. Since one of the states above that line was Mississippi, a state Obama has almost no chance of carrying in practice, a more realistic scenario was that to reach an Electoral College majority he would have to carry those 21 states plus Virginia, where his approval rating stood at 46.6 percent.

Anyone getting a sense of deja vu? For the Republican National Committee, the eerie feeling that they've lived this day before is exactly the reason why former Speaker Newt Gingrich won't be able to snag any delegates from Florida, even though the state broke party rules.

Remember, Florida was the catalyst for this year's rush to the front of the primary calendar. After both parties reached an agreement to begin the presidential nominating process in February instead of January, Florida Republican legislators threw a wrench in those best-laid plans by refusing to change their primary date, which is set by law, from January 31. That meant party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina all had to move their primary contests ahead of Florida and into January.

The RNC and their Democratic counterparts will never fix the primary process without a sufficient mix of carrots and sticks, and the stick Republicans tried this year -- penalizing Florida half its delegates -- wasn't enough.

But Florida broke two rules: Under the calendar agreement the RNC passed last year, no state that holds its nominating contest before the first Tuesday in April may award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Every state that holds a contest before April 3 must award delegates on a proportional basis. If a state awards delegates on a winner-take-all basis before April 3, they are subject to -- you guessed it -- losing half their delegation.

Rick Santorum is out with an effective new television ad in Nevada and Colorado, a 60-second spot that opens with three playing cards lying face-down on a table. "On the other side of these cards are the pictures of three politicians," the narrator says, his voice ominous. "Here are some clues as to who they are."

The narrator proceeds to detail four policies that all three politicians have previously supported, including: "radical cap and trade legislation," "giving illegal aliens some form of amnesty," "government health mandates" and "Wall Street bailouts."

You can see where this is going, right? The cards will flip over, showing President Obama in the middle, flanked by Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, further emphasizing the message Santorum has been pushing relentlessly in recent weeks: That he is the only "true conservative" in the race, the lone Republican candidate capable of drawing a bright contrast against Obama.

Isn't there something a little strange about the way Newt Gingrich keeps talking in ever greater detail about what he will do his first day in the White House? Even in conceding a devastating loss in Florida--one in which many voters spurned him on the basis of moral character and electability, according to exit polls--Gingrich went on and on last night about moving into the WH. He said he'll be so busy his first day--signing,  "two hours after the inaugural address," executive orders abolishing "all of the White House czars," opening the embassy in Jerusalem and "recognizing Israel" (sic), and reinstating Reagan's anti-abortion "Mexico City policy" -- that he and Callista will barely have time to have fun at the inaugural balls.

That's what you might call a rich fantasy life. And not only, by his lights, is Newt all but certain to be president, he will be a world-historical one. "This is //the// most important election of your lifetime," he told his supporters, deploying the usual self-referential superlatives. He embellished his speech with his usual grandiose references to Abraham Lincoln (the Gettysburg Address), Thomas Jefferson ("I pledge to you my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor") and the other Founding Fathers. He even used the royal "we."

If it were just an isolated incident, one might write off Newt's rambling concession speech to exhaustion and shock, and, as he said, the lack of a teleprompter ("I'm going to have to wing this," Newt said). But it's not isolated. As Jacob Weisberg noted in a fine Slate piece ("Is Newt Nuts?"), Gingrich exhibits "certain symptoms--bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees--that go beyond the ordinary politician's normal narcissism."

All of which suggests that, while Gingrich is unlikely to get the nomination at this point, his enduring fantasy of himself as a great figure in history may propel him to carry on this primary race far longer than reality might dictate. He said last night he's going all the way to the convention. He talked about coming back again and again. I think he believes it.

Every presidential election, there's a new development that changes the nature of campaigns that one party, often the one out of power, takes advantage of.  In 2008, it was the Obama team's impressive use of social media to connect with new young voters and expand the electorate. In 2004, it was the Bush campaign's savvy use of micro-targeting technologies to identify narrow slices of the electorate, and get them to show up and vote Republican.

This year, it's the Republicans' adept and aggressive use of super PACs to even the financial playing field, blunting the often-massive money advantages that an incumbent president has at his disposal. With the emergence of American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS and Restore Our Future, a well-stocked Romney super PAC, the Obama fundraising juggernaut no longer looks so imposing.  If Romney is the Republican nominee, he won't be overwhelmed with a wave of negative advertising, and will have the resources to fight back.

Take a look at the end-of-year numbers.