SALON

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 11:27 PM UTC

A Political Tip Sheet For The Rest Of Us

By

Topics: From the Wires,

A Political Tip Sheet For The Rest Of UsRepublican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, speaks at a rally in Montgomery, Ala., Wednesday, March 7, 2012. (AP Photo/David Bundy)(Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A political tip sheet for the rest of us outside the Washington Beltway for Wednesday, March 7:

WEDNESDAY’S RECAP

SUPER TUESDAY CHAMP. After racking up six wins, including an Ohio squeaker over Santorum, Mitt Romney spent a relatively quiet day off the campaign trail at home in Massachusetts. He gave an interview to CNBC and was to raise campaign money at an event in Boston. Despite failing to land a knockout punch, Romney insisted in the interview that he’s getting the kind of support across the party that he needs to become the nominee. “We’ve got the time and the resources and a plan to get all the delegates, and we think that will get done before the convention,” he said. His campaign also announced that it raised $11.5 million dollars in February.

OUT NEWT, OUT: A super PAC that supports Santorum in the Republican presidential race says it’s time for Newt Gingrich to drop out. But Gingrich says he isn’t going anywhere. Stuart Roy, an adviser for the Red, White and Blue Fund, told The Associated Press that Gingrich is making it harder for conservative voters to settle on a conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney. Roy noted that Gingrich won only his home state of Georgia on Super Tuesday. Santorum won three. Gingrich says he would have dropped out had he lost Georgia. But he won, and so the race for No. 2 goes on.

DOCOBAMA: Fact checkers: Sharpen your pencils! President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is preparing to release a brief documentary next week about his term in office. Campaign manager Jim Messina says it will “put into perspective the enormous challenges that the nation faced when the president took office and the strides we’ve made together.” The documentary was directed by Davis Guggenheim, the man behind the Academy Award-winning “An Inconvenient Truth,” about Al Gore and his global-warming campaign.

OBAMA’S BODY MAN: In losing his ever-present body man Reggie Love, Obama may have gained a valuable campaign surrogate. The former Duke University basketball player stars in a brief campaign video urging fellow African Americans to vote for Obama in November. “From cutting taxes to passing health care to supporting minority-owned businesses, the president has always had our back,” says Love, who left the White House last year to focus on completing his master’s degree in business administration. “Please visit AfricanAmericans.BarackObama.com and say ‘You’re with him.’ I’d appreciate it and I know he would, too.” Love had worked for Obama since 2006.

GENDER POLITICS: Republicans and Democrats are battling for the women’s vote. President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies say the GOP has launched a “war against women” on contraception and other issues. Republican women, led by Ann Romney, the wife of the GOP front-runner, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are fighting back, saying it’s the economy and jobs that women care about. Why all the attention? More than 90 years after gaining the right to vote, the majority of those who cast ballots in presidential election years are women. Obama won this group by 13 points over John McCain in 2008. Republicans are betting women will evaluate Obama’s stewardship of the economy and find him lacking. But the GOP has helped revive social issues like contraception that many thought were settled long ago.

WHERE THEY’LL BE ON THURSDAY:

— Gingrich: Mississippi

— Paul: Day off

— Romney: Mississippi

— Santorum: Alabama

— Obama: At White House

DELEGATE TRACKER

Totals after Super Tuesday voting. Twenty-six delegates from Super Tuesday have yet to be allocated. It takes 1,144 delegates to secure the Republican nomination for president.

— Romney: 419

— Santorum: 178

— Gingrich: 107

— Paul: 47

IN THEIR WORDS:

— “We are still bogged down shooting at each other and the president is looking presidential.” — Former New York Gov. George Pataki, arguing that it’s time for the party to close ranks around Romney.

— “What won’t they resort to to try to bully their way through this race? If the governor now thinks he’s now ordained by God to win, then let’s just have it out.” — Santorum, responding to a Romney comment that it would take an act of God for his rivals to amass a competitive number of delegates.

— “We think that will get done before the convention, but one thing I can tell you for sure is there’s not going to be some brokered convention where some new person comes in and becomes the nominee. It’s going to be one of the four people that are still running.” — Romney, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

— “If I thought he was a slam dunk to beat Romney and to beat Obama I would really consider getting out. I don’t.” — Gingrich.

More Darlene Superville.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations