House Republicans give up entirely on payroll tax front, agree to pay a clean, ten-month payroll tax cut extension.
We now have real evidence that Mitt Romney could have a race on his hands in the state of his birth and the one where his father was a longtime governor. PPP reported last night that its first night of polling in the state showed Santorum well ahead of Romney. And an ARG poll out this morning shows Santorum with a 6 point lead. I’ve always thought Mitt’s connections to Michigan are overstated — his father was governor in the 1960s, which is basically ancient history in political terms, and he hasn’t lived there since he was a kid. But if he were to lose there, where everyone assumes he should win, it’ll be a massive blow.
The Michigan primary is on February 28th.
So in the pretty unlikely scenario that the Republican nomination fight goes all the way to the convention, what are the rules governing what the delegates would be allowed to do? Here’s our primer.
President Obama’s approval rating just went back into positive territory in our TPM poll average.
Santorum tells George Stephanopoulos that Romney is getting “desperate.”
Pop star, model, and actress Whitney Houston has died at age 48, the AP reports.
The latest poll from PPP shows Rick Santorum opening a commanding 15 point nationwide lead over Mitt Romney.
You may remember Kris Kobach, arch-anti-immigration hawk, Kansas Secretary of State and author of Arizona’s anti-immigration law. He’s surprisingly close to the Romney campaign. Not only was he an advisor to Romney’s campaign in 2008. Romney touted his endorsement this year and then sorta campaigned with him a few weeks later in South Carolina. For Romney, it’s a classic case of drawing Kobach close enough to power him through the primaries while not getting so close that he’ll totally poison relations with Hispanic voters in the Fall.
So the Romney campaign hasn’t wanted to talk much about Kobach of late. But the same doesn’t apply for Kobach about Romney. We caught up with him at CPAC. And Kobach told TPM he’s been “much more involved” in Romney’s campaign this year than he was back in 2008.