This week, one of the few things that anyone found worth talking about in the 2012 race was the extent to which money was likely to determine everything. Let's summarize, shall we? Mitt Romney -- he's got a lot of money. Maybe even most of the money in the entire world? Most of the rest of it is being vacuumed up by President Barack Obama, who's been on a West Coast swing for Hollywood and Silicon Valley ducats to fuel his re-election bid. Newt Gingrich has a little scratch, but a lot of debt. Rick Santorum has got almost nothing. Ron Paul? He's probably got enough to fuel the operation he hopes will make him delegate-rich at the end of the process. And, yeah, Buddy Roemer thinks the whole damn system needs to be thrown on the junkheap.

The dynamic we're seeing ahead of the Michigan Primary, where Rick Santorum has a real chance to derail Romney's machine, is almost entirely governed by money. As we'll go on to detail, Romney's biggest endorser at this point are Stacks Of Cash. Those Stacks Of Cash have really shown up for him in a huge way already. But Stacks Of Cash have some big plans in store for Santorum, in the form of a "coming two-front attack" that will paint him as both an experienced Washington insider who loves pork and lobbyists and an inexperienced yutz who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

Just how confident is the Romney campaign in the ability of Stacks Of Cash to make the difference? Consider this quote, obtained by Ben Smith:

"The expectation is that Santorum, just given his personality, is going to whine like crazy about this," the advisor laughed.

You realize that it's impossible to say that sentence while laughing without sounding like a complete dick, right? Go ahead and practice it! You'll see what we mean. But that's how sure of itself -- or rather, how sure of those Stacks Of Cash -- the Romney campaign is right now.

And that's despite the fact that the poll numbers currently favor Santorum. But the Michigan primary is still many days away, and there's no guarantee that he can keep those numbers up and turn them out if he can't finance the sort of operation you need to keep everyone organized. He's making a game of it, by going on the offensive and releasing ads of his own. But his cash-strapped campaign has limitations.

Just how skint is Team Santorum? Consider this, from Jonathan Chait:

Here are some things to keep in mind when assessing Rick Santorum’s chances of beating Mitt Romney. He has no pollster, no campaign headquarters, and no paid advance staff. He’s currently getting outspent on television in Michigan by a ratio of 29-1.

Santorum is mainly getting help from his super PAC's sugar-daddy, Foster Friess, and boy howdy, if there was ever a time that Santorum probably wishes that guy would just go off somewhere by himself and quietly spend money on his behalf it was this week, when Friess told a shocked Andrea Mitchell that as far as birth control went, women should just content themselves with keeping a Bayer aspirin pinched between their knees. Friess is now doing his version of the "Sorry I'm not sorry and anyway I was only joking gee whiz you ladies take everything so seriously and get so hysterical" routine, but it probably isn't a big help that he accidentally slipped with what Santorum himself likely feels about birth control.

Friess actually ended up being the capper on what had to have been one of the worst weeks for womankind since the invention of foot binding. Between Chris Brown using the Grammys as a means of absolution, Virginia Republicans' plans to expand the State to allow it to have "transvaginal" adventures, and Darrell Issa's all-male mansplanation revue on how birth control is sending everyone to Hell, Friess' remarks almost qualified as comic relief.

Of course, this whole birth control debate we're having was touched off by the White House in the first place. Last week, those inclined to impute an eleven-dimensional chess gambit behind the president's every action were inclined to remark that inviting the conflict was a shrewd move. By agreeing to a compromise, the Obama administration managed to isolate those who oppose birth control outright from those who were merely concerned about the First Amendment. But the compromise has clearly failed to recage that beast.

Again, the multi-dimensional chess enthusiasts are likely to say, "Fine. This issue isn't a winner in Peoria, let those who are bonkers remove their masks and reveal themselves." All well and good if the economy continues to improve. If it doesn't, and bad economic indicators have their historical impact on an incumbent's chances, it may not matter if those masks are off. In the end, this could be an awfully dangerous game the White House is playing.

So. Money, misogyny, madness ... that covers the larger discussion of the week on the campaign trail. For the rest, we invite you, as always, to enter the Speculatron for the week of February 17, 2012.

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Good news, America! It looks as if a revival of the interminable series of candidate debates that dogged the countryside like a Biblical plague in the early part of the campaign season is not going to happen. Everyone can get on with their lives, and, if necessary, just replay highlights of the previous four hundred debates, content in the knowledge that the moderators basically ran out of new questions to ask everybody back in October. Today, a March 1 debate that was to be hosted by the Georgia Republican Party and aired on CNN, has been called off, as candidates signaled they would not be participating:

Leading the way is Mitt Romney. As Elise Foley noted on HuffPost's 2012 blog:

The Mitt Romney campaign confirmed on Thursday that the candidate will skip a March 1 debate due to scheduling issues ahead of "Super Tuesday" on March 6, Sarah Boxer of CBS/National Journal first reported on Twitter.

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, said that he will be campaigning in other states at the time of the CNN debate.

Romney wasn't alone in ditching the Georgia debate. ABC News Political Director Amy Walter reported, via Twitter, that Ron Paul was out as well. Paul spokesman Jesse Benton told Walter that the Texas Congressman was going to be busy on the trail, "focus[ing] on a bunch of western caucuses." ABC's Michael Falcone added: "Santorum campaign hasn't 'made a firm' decision on Georgia debate, but source says they are likely to skip too."

That would have left CNN with nothing to do but spend a couple of hours broadcasting Newt Gingrich debating himself. Admittedly, this would have been an inspired idea:

But Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond is basically flipping his lid right now, tweeting, "[Mitt Romney] spits in Georgia's face and cancels Atlanta debate appearance." His anger is understandable. Gingrich has been in need of a debate matchup in a friendly, home-base state for several weeks now. The last time his campaign surged, it was because Gingrich knew instinctively how to excite South Carolina voters. Not getting to take on the field (and the media) in his home state puts a damper on his comeback hopes (which have already experienced a setback in the form of Texas pushing back its April primary to late May).

But it's not going to happen now. In a statement, CNN says, "Without full participation of all four candidates, CNN will not move forward with the Super Tuesday debate." In addition, MSNBC has canceled the pre-Super Tuesday debate that it was scheduled to host at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. That means the only debates on the horizon are CNN's February 22nd face-off in Mesa, Arizona, and a March debate in Oregon hosted by PBS.

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If you think that Canadian-born Chryslers are the only means of conveyance utilized by current presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, well then, think again! While Romney's first love may have been "cars and chrome and fins and roaring motors," he's been known to mount his share of trusty steeds as well. Don't believe me? Here's a picture:

This photo, snapped by Ethan Hill (great photographer whose work you are likely familiar with) for a 2004 Newsweek portrait session, depicts Romney on one of his horses -- we're presuming one of the "six-figure warmbloods" (and one must get this correct) mentioned in this recent New York Times profile, "Two Romneys: Wealthy Man, Thrifty Habits." And it should be said, the man looks gorgeous. Staring brightly into the middle distance against a darkening sky, the Mitt you see here is still a few years removed from having to worry about the sturm und drang of the presidential horse race. The horse looks happy as well, perhaps safe in the knowledge that Romney is secured to the top of him, and not the other way around.

Looking at this, it's pretty easy to imagine how Jon Huntsman got it in his head that the best way to compete for the nomination was to rack up an impressive array of glossy magazine profiles.

Anyway, I read elsewhere that Romney has some sort of "1 percent problem" that's not "going away"? Well, if you ask me, I don't see it.

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Ahh, caucuses. As John Avlon notes, there is no better expression of the "romantic notions" of street-level politics than the sight of friends and neighbors, gathered together in high school gymnasiums, taking those first fitful steps on the year-long journey of our democracy. Is it possible to not love them, and their pageant-drenched role in presidential politics?

Actually, it is possible to do so, now more than ever, because of the numerous problems that have plagued the caucus process this year, which include such matters as "counting votes" and "accurately determining the winner."

Yes, this year, some of the intrinsic difficulties of staging the caucuses, which tend to be woolly affairs compared to primaries, have made themselves manifest. Begin in Iowa, where two weeks after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was declared the winner, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) was declared the winner. Missing votes and counting errors prevented Iowa from determining the winner in a timely fashion, and despite the fact that the confusion briefly made Edith Pfeffer and Carolyn Tallet media celebrities, the overall verdict was that the process had "damaged the credibility" of the Iowa Caucus.

But the snafus did not end in Iowa. In Nevada, the eternity it took to count up the votes were just a sideline problem in a process that was plagued with confusion and disorganization. As Anjeanette Damon of the Las Vegas Sun reported: "Instead of the pride of the West, one national commentator described it as a 'national embarrassment.' And Nevada’s role as a 'major player in national politics' has been thrown into question." And the Maine caucuses might have provided the tipping point in getting the caucus process reformed. There, counting errors were compounded by a caucus that was cancelled due to snowfall and several other precincts whose tabulations were left out of the mix.

Avlon says it's time to do away with caucuses altogether, and not just because of the rampant lack of competence:

Even after the endless media hype surrounding the GOP primary contests this year, turnout was essentially flat in the Iowa caucuses between 2008 and 2012, despite the absence of a Democratic contest to siphon off participants. Turnout was dramatically down in caucuses in Nevada, Minnesota, and Colorado. In Maine, fewer than 6,000 voters bothered to participate--roughly 2 percent of the registered Republicans in the state. Overall, caucus turnout is averaging about 10 percent of registered Republicans in each state.

Moreover, those 10 percent who do turn out tend to be the most ideological and hyperpartisan--meaning that the winner of a caucus is increasingly a bad barometer of who might actually carry the state in a general election by being able to win over independents and centrist swing voters.

In addition, caucuses are one of the chief offenders when it comes to setting the primary season's calendar. Florida and South Carolina both paid a price for moving their primaries up to the early part of the season -- each state's delegation will be slashed in half for ruining the Republican National Committee's sacred rules. But because the caucuses are non-binding, they aren't subject to sanction. As Aaron Blake and Rachel Weiner note, "Minnesota, Colorado and Maine have held February caucuses this year without paying any kind of penalty." But those states contributed to the frenzied calendar chaos just the same.

Yet as Blake and Weiner go on to report, it seems that while this year's caucus mishaps call out for reform, party elites are hesitant to do away with tradition altogether:

“The problems encountered in two or three caucuses does not call out for abolition of caucuses, but for better methods of implementing caucuses,” said Tennessee Republican National Committeeman John Ryder. “And I say this as someone who favors primaries -- at least for my own state.”

Mississippi Republican National Committeeman Henry Barbour agreed, but noted that primaries have experienced problems too: “I think there is definitely a place for caucuses in the nominating process, but not without a transparent, accurate reflection of the vote count.”

In addition, Blake and Weiner note that the Caucusdammerung discussion is an evergreen one:

This debate is leftover from the 2008 campaign, when President Obama won the Democratic nomination largely on the strength of his wins in many caucus states.

At the time, Hillary Clinton’s campaign argued that caucuses didn’t matter as much because they were low-turnout affairs that had no bearing on actual delegates — much the same argument Romney’s campaign made when he lost in Minnesota and Colorado last week.

What's been left out of this discusssion? The campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), and its plan to hack the caucuses. In the coming weeks, as the various caucus states head to the next steps in the process by which the Republican National Convention delegates are selected, we'll see how successful Paul's operation is at poaching delegates from the candidate that everyone presumes is going to the nominal "winner" of the caucuses. If it's successful, you can bet that calls for reform will pick up considerably.

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Having seen Mitt Romney tool around the Greater Detroit area in two campaign ads in which he nostalgically recalls his childhood and his love of cars, you might be wondering, "What sort of car is he driving?" As it turns out, he's behind the wheel of a cherry Chrysler 300, the pride of Detroit. Oh, wait! Did I say "Detroit?" Sorry, ha ha, I meant "Canada."

Yes, as the sleuths at Blue Mass Group report, Romney's whip is a foreign-born Chrysler, manufactured in Brampton, Ontario and imported to Detroit so that it can be imported "from" Detroit. There was a minor kerfuffle over this car when the Made In The USA Foundation filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission after Chrysler launched its "Imported From Detroit" ad campaign, alleging false advertising. Chrysler defended itself, saying that the complaint was "without merit" because the ad campaign -- which famously kicked off with a Super Bowl ad that starred rapper Eminem -- featured the Chrysler 200, which is made in Detroit.

Blue Mass Group made this discovery when it compared the dashboard of the car in Romney's ad to Chrysler's specs, and determined that Romney's was motoring about in the foreign-born 300, instead of the locally manufactured 200. Did no one think to check the birth certificate?

It's understandable that Romney would have an affinity for Canada, and not just because he'd probably fit in a lot better with that nation's notion of a "severe conservative." In Canada, Romney would pay even less in taxes than he does in the United States. And he's made at least one famous trip there -- it was on a family outing to Canada that Romney lashed his dog Seamus to the roof of his car, which inspired the poor canine to defecate in terror. This incident has caused Romney to be subjected to persistent criticism. It has also launched numerous Gail Collins columns. (Romney may also feel the call of Canada because Seamus, upon arriving there, might have fled the Romney family in abject terror, never to be seen again.)

At any rate, when Romney says that "American cars" managed to get "into his bones," maybe he was referring to North American Cars?

[Hat Tip: Liz Mair]

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Mitt Romney’s Michigan ad shows him driving a car that was made in Canada [Blue Mass Group]

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Scenes from a Mitt Romney surrogate conference call, brought to you by Dave Weigel:

So the Romney campaign held two surrogate conference calls today, giving Idaho's Gov. Butch Otter and Missouri's former Sen. Talent (and others) space to trash Santorum. Talent did what he'd refused to in January: He criticized Santorum for supporting Medicare Part D. And then a reporter on the call pointed out that Talent had supported the same bill.

For the record, Butch Otter voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act as well. So it's anybody's guess how the Romney campaign allowed Santorum's support for this to even be broached as a topic on the conference call is a complete mystery.

Later on, Talent made an effort to clean up this mess with the Weekly Standard:

Talent clarified that he didn’t mean to say that Santorum's (and his own) votes for bills like Medicare Part D can't "be explained or justified, because they can" but that Santorum's self-described image as a true conservative doesn't reflect the truth.

"Today, he's running in Missouri anyway as a kind of Jim DeMint conservative, which suggests that during his service he was actually much stronger on those issues," Talent said. "So what he's suggesting is misleading on two levels. He wasn't, even for Republicans at that time, he took a more liberal position on these issues, and then if you look at how the party's judging those things now, it's just hypocritical of him to suggest to people that he’s the conservative they can trust year in and year out, regardless of where the winds in Washington are going."

The Standard's Michael Warren followed up by asking, "But is this a mantle to which Romney himself could lay claim?" and cited Romney's "support for an individual health insurance mandate." Talent offered, "The mandate didn't bother Rick four years ago when he endorsed Gov. Romney [for president]."

But four years ago, the mandate didn't bother a lot of Republicans, including DeMint! (You may have noticed that time in 2008 when "Mitt Romney" ran for "president" on the strength of his novel "Massachusetts health care reform.")

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More on Romney's 2012 campaign:

Romney:

Dave Weigel notes that Mitt Romney's new ad had him back behind the wheel of his car, straight up sentimentalizing about Detroit and the economy and the powerful feelings Romney has for both:

Either Mitt Romney has stumbled into a Michigan-based Beckettian existential hellhole or he is a big fan of recycling. Aficianados of Mitt Romney ads (by which I mean Evan McMorris-Santoro and myself) will recognize that Mitt is on the same journey-by-car that he took for an ad that he released several months ago:

The new ad isn't lacking in improvement -- gone is that awkward moment in the earlier ad where he drives by the same derelict house twice. But the message sure has changed. In the newer ad, Romney says: "President Obama did all these things that the liberals have done for years. The fact that you have millions of Americans out of work, home values collapsing, people here in Detroit are distressed." But months ago, Romney, on the same drive, said: "I know President Obama doesn't have to take all the blame for everything that's gone on in Detroit and other cities in America. But he sure didn't make things better, he made things worse."

What's changed? Romney's had to go from generously letting Obama off the hook for the worst of what happened when the recession came to Michigan in 2003 (and everywhere else in 2008), to going on the defensive against Obama getting too much credit for, you know ... "halftime in America." As I noted earlier, Travis Waldron summed up the matter thusly:

Chrysler posted its first profit more than a decade in last year and expects those profits to continue growing in 2012. It has added 9,400 jobs since its rescue and plans to add 1,600 more at a plant in Illinois this year, and the success of Chrysler and General Motors has helped American automakers control more than half of the industry’s market share. The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year.

So, absent the opportunity to argue that Obama made things worse, what's left is to argue is that Obama hasn't yet made things as awesome as they could be, despite having gotten to do "all these things that the liberals" have wanted to do, which apparently now includes a Bush-era intervention to save the U.S. auto industry.

At any rate, this ad obviously didn't cost the Romney campaign too much too make, since it's essentially a re-edit of a previous ad. Weigel, noting the essential cheapness, asks, "Why not put the guy out there, interacting with people?" Probably because he needs to save that money for Santorum attack ads.

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In an op-ed in today's Detroit News, Mitt Romney attempts to restate and reconfigure his argument against the government's intervention in the U.S. auto industry. He places that intervention squarely on the shoulders of the Obama administration, terming it "crony capitalism on a grand scale."

There's a lot of political strategy at work here. In the first place, this is Romney's attempt at saying something positive about his candidacy -- a must, considering he'll spend most of his money in Michigan trying to tear down Rick Santorum. He's also working to get out from under a previous op-ed on the matter, written back in November of 2008, titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." (That headline was written by The New York Times, not Romney, but it's been an albatross around his neck ever since.)

To that end, Mitt Romney takes a stab at positioning himself as a "Son of Detroit," and a critic of the overall intervention. But his identification with Detroiters is pretty awkward, and his problem with how the intervention was handled really boils down to his preference for moneyed elites over Detroit's auto workers.

Romney begins like so:

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.

Sounds fairly sentimental, right? Of course, what's omitted there is that Romney moved away from Detroit at the age of five for the Bloomfield Hills burbs and never looked back. He hasn't even lived in Michigan since he was 23 and working on his mother's failed bid for the U.S. Senate. And while it's certainly nice that he recalls the stadium that the Detroit Tigers played in up until 1999, Romney is best known for doing something no true "Son of Detroit" would ever do -- rooting for the Boston Red Sox. (Though it should be said he's not a particularly good Red Sox fan, either.)

But without some hint of Detroit nostalgia, Romney is stuck having to live his Detroiter lifestyle vicariously through his father, who became the head of American Motors Corporation in 1954 and later served as governor of Michigan. Beyond that, Romney would have a tough time relating to most of the people who live in the Motor City. According to Census data, the average yearly personal income of Detroit residents is $15,062, an amount that Romney earns in just over six hours.

But fostering that connection to the common man is a vital part of Romney's argument against the government's intervention in the auto industry. Sixty-two percent of Michigan Republicans oppose what they call the "auto bailout." But they're on an island -- only 36 percent of the state's overall population opposes the measure. Which is understandable, given its success. So, for Romney, it's a very difficult bit of triangulating. That's before we get to the fact that his chief competitor, former Sen. Rick Santorum, opposes the "bailout" with equal fervor and has more energetically argued that further steps need to be taken to shore up America's blue-collar manufacturing base.

The thrust of Romney's argument is that while Detroit has rebounded in recent years, it would have rebounded better without President Obama's actions, which were too favorable to unions and were headed up by the "politically connected and ethically challenged Obama-campaign contributor ... financier Steven Rattner." The criticism of Rattner is apt -- Marcy Wheeler notes that Rattner got picked for the job, in all likelihood, because he is "a schmoozy insider with a great talent for self-promotion." (Though anybody who thinks Romney won't feather the nest of his own schmoozy pals is probably kidding themselves.)

It's going to be a challenge to mount the argument that the solution that the Obama administration continued to facilitate -- let's not forget that "the first $17.4 billion for the auto industry came from the Bush administration" -- was a failure, in that it fell short of some magical standard for success that exists, for the moment, in Romney's imaginings. As Travis Waldron notes:

Chrysler posted its first profit more than a decade in last year and expects those profits to continue growing in 2012. It has added 9,400 jobs since its rescue and plans to add 1,600 more at a plant in Illinois this year, and the success of Chrysler and General Motors has helped American automakers control more than half of the industry’s market share. The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year.

Romney isn’t just ignoring facts — he’s also ignoring a Republican who is close to the situation. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has warned candidates against criticizing the bailout and touted its success. “I would have had some differences on how they did it, but I’m not going to second-guess it,” Snyder told the New York Times. “The more important thing is the results. And the auto industry is doing very well today.”

It's also worth pointing out that Romney was for the Obama administration's actions before he was against them. In March of 2009 -- many months after his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed -- he told CNN: "I think a lot of people expected the president just to cave and to write a big check and hope for the better. I'm glad that he's expressing some backbone on this and saying to those guys, 'you have to get your house in order or you guys are gone, you'll have to go to bankruptcy.'"

And that might have been where Romney left things, had he not immediately caught flak from conservative opinion-havers.

Here's what Romney now argues should have happened:

My view at the time — and I set it out plainly in an op-ed in the New York Times — was that "the American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing." Instead of a bailout, I favored "managed bankruptcy" as the way forward.

Managed bankruptcy may sound like a death knell. But in fact, it is a way for a troubled company to restructure itself rapidly, entering and leaving the courtroom sometimes in weeks or months instead of years, and then returning to profitable operation.

In the case of Chrysler and GM, that was precisely what the companies needed. Both were saddled with an accumulation of labor, pension, and real estate costs that made them unsustainable. Health and retirement benefits alone amounted to an extra $2,000 baked into the price of every car they produced.

Shorn of those excess costs, and shorn of the bungling management that had driven them into a deep rut, they could re-emerge as vibrant and competitive companies. Ultimately, that is what happened. The course I recommended was eventually followed. GM entered managed bankruptcy in June 2009 and exited it a month later in July.

But if the "course" he "recommended" was "eventually followed," where's the problem? In reality, the problem is Romney's. He agrees, today, that managed bankruptcy was a necessary step to take. But it's important to remember that managed bankruptcies require funding, and in the case of the auto industry, there was only one funding source imaginable -- U.S. taxpayers. No one in the private sector wanted to step up and fund this bankruptcy. (Romney suggests that it's inconceivable that "visionaries like William Durant, Walter Chrysler, and the Dodge Brothers" would have gone anyplace other than "private individuals" for help, but Forbes contributor Micheline Maynard reminds us that this did not pan out for Durant.)

As Jonathan Cohn pointed out back in June of 2011, "If Romney wants to disown that part of the package, then he has to disown the whole thing."

The conservative base, of course, has no problem disowning "the whole thing" -- it's the government and taxpayer intervention to which they object. But without the taxpayers, the only option left for Chrysler and GM would be the sort of bankruptcy that ends in liquidation and mass unemployment. If we take Romney at his word that he has a sentimental attachment to "Detroit," then that's not an outcome he could have supported. Hence, his praise for Obama -- for a few hot minutes, before he realized it was an election year liability.

So Romney had to be very specific in his piece for the Detroit News about why he's up in arms about the managed bankruptcy he urged and the overall outcome he applauded. It all boils down to a class argument. He's angry that "secured creditors" had to take a haircut, while the workers under union contract did not lose their pensions or healthcare benefits. Non-union workers did lose in the deal, which to my mind is a good argument for unionization. If Romney had his way, no one's pensions or insurance would have survived. (Romney glosses over this, because the voguish thing to do these days is to get one group of have-nots riled up and angry at another group of the same -- see also: Wisconsin.)

As Wheeler points out, though, the idea underpinning Romney's op-ed amounts to a "stick up for the one percent" argument:

He’s complaining, of course, that VEBA (the trust fund run by professionals that allowed the auto companies to spin off contractual obligations–retiree healthcare–to the unions) got a stake in Chrysler while Chrysler’s secured creditors took a haircut.

So, in part, he’s basically complaining that the bailout preserved the healthcare a bunch of 55+ year old blue collar workers were promised. He’s pissed they got to keep their healthcare.

He’s also complaining that banks took a haircut, as would happen in any managed bankruptcy.

But it’s more than that. He’s complaining that a bunch of banks that themselves had been bailed out had to take a haircut. He’s complaining, for example, that JP Morgan Chase, Chrysler’s largest creditor at the time and the recipient, itself, of $68.6B in bailout loans, had to take a haircut on $2B in loans to Chrysler.

Romney now demands that "the Obama administration needs to act now to divest itself of its ownership position in GM." But elsewhere in the piece, he argues that the "shares need to be sold in a responsible fashion and the proceeds turned over to the nation's taxpayers." These two demands are incongruous. Per Justin Hyde, at Motoramic:

If the Obama administration sold its 500 million shares in GM today, it would lose at least $14 billion. GM shares have struggled even as the company reported strong profits, in part over concerns about an underfunded pension plan. If GM shores up its pension costs, its shares could rise — although they would need to nearly double before the government broke even.

There's ample factual reasons to criticize the bankruptcies — from the treatment of Delphi's retirees and GM's unsecured bondholders to the advantages GM, Chrysler and Chrysler's new parent Fiat gained over Ford. But doing so requires acknowledging that Obama's decisions, including his call to save Chrysler when some advisors were ready to let it go, were mostly right: GM and Chrysler came out stronger and leaner, keeping jobs in the country that would have disappeared if they'd gone out of existence.

And Romney is the candidate who understands the economy and finance and how jobs are created? Compared to that argument, his "son of Detroit" label actually seems like less of a stretch.

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Over at Buzzfeed, Ben Smith gets a Mitt Romney adviser to detail the coming two-pronged attack that the Romney campaign and its affiliated super PAC -- who haven't coordinated with each other, no siree, you can totally trust them! -- plan to launch on Rick Santorum. Color me unimpressed:

The first is a comparison to Barack Obama: "He's never run anything," said the advisor. The Pennyslvanian's experience is limited to roles as a legislator and legislative staffer. "The biggest thing he ever ran is his Senate office," he said.

The second is a challenge to Santorum's Washington experience.

"They're going to hit him very hard on earmarks, lobbying, voting to raise the federal debt limit five times," said the advisor. "The story of Santorum is going to be told over the next few weeks in a big way."

Come on, now. This is about as generic as it gets. Yes, Santorum is best known as a senator. Yes, Romney is best known as the governor of Massachusetts and the head of Bain Capital...and, oh yeah, he ran the Winter Olympics. But Romney's been making the case for his managerial acumen since he got into the race. I'm not sure how Santorum is caught off guard by this. (Besides, doesn't Santorum have a better "compare X to Obama" argument to make on Romneycare?)

As for the rest of it, earmarks are consistently overrated as an election year issue. Santorum has already responded to this charge, noting that several of the earmarks he supported "were necessary for defense and health," and that he's criticized the abuse of the earmark process. Beyond that, Romney has also -- wait for it! -- supported earmarks:

Under his leadership, Massachusetts sought tens of millions of dollars in earmarks for transportation projects through the state's congressional delegation.

A prime example was the $30 million that the Romney administration requested to renovate the historic Longfellow Bridge that spans the Charles River between Cambridge and Boston. The landmark is seen in many movies and television shows.

Romney's transportation secretary, Daniel A. Grabauskas, asked the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to include the money in a transportation spending bill. That bill was full of thousands of earmarks that sparked public furor and became a symbol for Washington's out-of-control spending when Congress passed it in 2005.

It's also going to be a little bit comedic watching Romney criticize Santorum for lobbying, considering the fact that the Romney campaign is lousy with lobbyists. And as for the debt ceiling, I assure you, as president, Romney is going to want to raise the debt ceiling, again and again. As will Santorum. It's only very recently that the insane position that defaulting on our sovereign credit and sending the global economy into a death spiral became a popular point of view. Should Romney or Santorum become president, you'll never again hear of it. Like Jim Newell once said of Michele Bachmann, I will "100% guarantee" you that if Romney or Santorum become president, they will sign one or more bills that raise the debt ceiling.

Of course, the no-brainer way of attacking Santorum is to go after him on his extreme social positions. Unfortunately, now that Romney has decided to be a hardline conservative, that option is not open to him. So if all things were equal, it's hard to imagine Santorum not fending off this weak sauce offensive.

Unfortunately, all things won't be equal. While Romney's "Get Santorum" message itself is as spicy as vanilla ice cream, the money that Romney is prepared to invest in this all-out-attack is going to buy plenty of scoops. The Romney super PAC has already dropped $500,000 in to Michigan to begin mounting attack ads (though the first round attacked Gingrich, not Santorum). Santorum may struggle with this attack, but his struggle won't be on the merits -- it will be because Romney drowns out his counter-argument. (Though there is some concern that Romney's patented technique of launching negative ad blitzes may backfire -- especially if voters come to believe that this is Romney's only play when the going gets tough for him.)

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Here's Romney's Plan To Take Out Santorum [Buzzfeed]

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More on Romney's 2012 campaign:

Fans of the National Basketball Association have a saying about the league's playoff series: It's not a competition until the visiting team shows up and beats its opponents at home. This week, the 2012 race for the GOP nomination finally got interesting in the same way. It's not much of a surprise that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won -- in the end -- the Iowa caucuses. He'd camped out in that state all year. In South Carolina, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich demonstrated that he knew just what buttons to push to turn the voters on and get them out to the polls. And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was well at home in places like New Hampshire -- where he actually lives -- and Las Vegas, where he drew on the support of the state's large Mormon community.

This week, it was anticipated that Santorum was going to have a decent night on Tuesday. There was a mostly meaningless "beauty contest" primary in Missouri that only he was taking seriously, and in Minnesota, the social conservatives who form that state's conservative base were more Santorum's flavor. But when Santorum completed the sweep that night by notching a win in Colorado, that got people's attention. Romney was not supposed to lose that state. Sure, Santorum's success in the Centennial State was due in large part to the fact that Romney hadn't bothered to turn on his super PAC Money Spigot Of Certain Death, but the story remained that Santorum had stolen a win away from the presumed front-runner on Romney's home turf.

But the changes wrought in the past week weren't limited to the horse race. A far more interesting dynamic surfaced in the national news cycle, where a range of events -- the Komen/Planned Parenthood kerfuffle, the Proposition 8 ruling, and the hot controversy over the Obama administration's ruling on contraception coverage -- brought the 'culture war' back in a big way. As NBC's First Read put it: "You know the economy must be improving when cultural and social issues come roaring back into the national spotlight." And over at Business Insider, Michael Brendan Daugherty took it a step further, cautioning readers to "forget jobs" as an election year issue:

Everyone thought that the 2012 election would be about jobs, jobs, jobs.

They were wrong.

First corporate profits went up. The market has been strong for almost two months. Unemployment is falling. And there are even signs of life in the housing industry.

Yes, America still has long term debt problems. And Americans are saddled with lots of household debt.

But the last three weeks prove that what gets Americans really fired up is the culture war.

The confluence of Santorum's success and the rise of culture war issues raises an interesting question. If the economy actually improves, does Romney still have an argument for why he should be president? And if events require the GOP contenders to earn the nomination based on fealty to true red-blooded conservatism, isn't Santorum in a better position? Can Gingrich earn the mantle based upon his past triumphs? Or is Texas Rep. Ron Paul already using his well-trained army of supporters to steal enough delegates to earn a seat at the table?

And in a wonderful example of serendipitous timing, the week has swung from the midwestern nominating contests back to Washington, D.C. and the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). At CPAC, the vagaries of the economy never matter much. Whether the economy is booming or breaking down, at CPAC you're always supposed to lower taxes on the wealthy, gut government programs and slash entitlements. All of that is a given. When candidates come to CPAC, they're coming to the Temple, to prove that you deserve to be ordained in the spirit of Saint Reagan. And at CPAC, these culture war issues matter greatly in how well you're received, and how much support from the conservative movement you're likely to take with you as you return to the trail.

Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all made the pilgrimage to CPAC. Paul didn't make the trip, opting instead to keep working on the trail. (CPAC is old hat to Paul, so the decision to keep working at winning votes on the trail is the smart play.) We invite you all to follow our CPAC coverage by clicking here, and here. And, of course, we invite you all to enter the Speculatron for the week of Feb. 10, 2012.

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We've spent a lot of time talking about Ron Paul's "caucus strategy" approach to the GOP nomination season, but haven't really been able to illustrate what's actually going on behind the scenes. The lackadaisical approach is to liken Paul's strategy to the advantage Barack Obama took in the caucuses in 2008, where the distribution of delegates by vote proportion was better understood by his campaign team than by the team of his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. Taking advantage of complacency is sort of what the Paul campaign is up to, but Paul's strategy hinges more on a careful study of the process and not so much on Mark Penn being an idiot.

What's important to note about these nonbinding caucuses in states like Iowa and Colorado is that they are part of a long, drawn-out process. The klieg lights and the cable teevee cameras have captured the sexier, drenched-in-pageantry opening act, but the real work is actually still to come, and when it does, it's not going to get covered in the same glittering way.

In Iowa, for example, what we all call the "Iowa caucuses" do nothing more than select delegates who then go to county conventions next month, where the delegates selected in January will be winnowed down into a group of delegates who will attend congressional district conventions and, finally, the state convention, where the 25 delegates who will eventually attend the Republican National Convention are selected.

To use another example, Colorado has a process that's much the same. The best source for learning the ins and outs of the process is The Green Papers, and here's how they describe what actually happened this past Tuesday:

Tuesday 7 February 2012: Precinct Caucuses meet in each precinct at 7p MST to choose delegates to the County Assemblies and District Conventions. Caucuses last about 1.5 hours. There are 2,917 precincts.

• There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucus to relate the presidential preference of the participants to the choice of the precinct's delegates to the Colorado County Assemblies and District Conventions; however, a non-binding Presidential Preference poll of the delegates will be conducted. (NOTE: It is the District Conventions and the State Convention that will actually pledge Republican National Convention delegates to presidential contenders).

Delegates selected at the Precinct Caucuses may (but are not required to) declare their Presidential Preference.

Since no National Convention delegates are bound to Presidential contenders, the Precinct Caucuses do not violate the RNC's Tuesday 6 March 2012 timing rule.

That forms the foundation of what's to come, which -- like in Iowa -- is a process that involves later conventions in which the delegates selected Tuesday night are winnowed down to those who will eventually go to Tampa.

I've bolded a couple of points in the block quote above that are pertinent to explaining Paul's strategy, which is best illustrated by a campaign email to supporters that Dave Weigel published yesterday:

We are confident in gaining a much larger share of delegates than even our impressive showing yesterday indicates. As an example of our campaign's delegate strength, take a look at what has occurred in Colorado:

- In one precinct in Larimer County, the straw poll vote was 23 for Santorum, 13 for Paul, 5 for Romney, 2 for Gingrich. There were 13 delegate slots, and Ron Paul got ALL 13.

- In a precinct in Delta County the vote was 22 for Santorum, 12 for Romney, 8 for Paul, 7 for Gingrich. There were 5 delegate slots, and ALL 5 went to Ron Paul.

- In a Pueblo County precinct, the vote was 16 for Santorum, 11 for Romney, 3 for Gingrich and 2 for Paul. There were 2 delegate slots filled, and both were filled by Ron Paul supporters.

- We are also seeing the same trends in Minnesota, Nevada, and Iowa, and in Missouri as well.

See what's happening there? Way back in January, Josh Putnam made note of how well Paul's people understand this process, specifically noting the attention they were paying to "the back end of the process." To that end, Paul's caucus attendees have been well coached and instructed to go to their precincts looking well-dressed and well-groomed. And Paul campaign adviser Dan Godzich told Business Insider that "part of what we've been training the Ron Paul people to do is not to leave after the vote. ... Stay and get elected to the conventions and get us those delegates."

Now you know why Paul, in greeting his supporters Tuesday night, particularly hung on that word: "Delegates."

If the story the campaign is telling its supporters is true, then Paul's organizational efforts are really paying off. Those downstream convention events may be populated by far more Paul delegates than might otherwise be expected, given the results of the vote. This doesn't mean necessarily that Paul will notch the nomination, of course. But it could mean that the rest of the field are going to discover they don't have the number of bound delegates heading to Tampa that they think they'll have.

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From time to time during the campaign season, the candidates vying for the GOP nomination have been set upon by marriage equality activists at public appearances and subjected to "glitter-bombing." This tactic has been highly effective, as each of these candidates have, post-glittering, completely reversed their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Ha! Just kidding! It's actually just sort of been a mild annoyance. But after Mitt Romney's post-primary speech in Colorado Tuesday night, stuff finally got real for a glitter-bomber, as Romney's newly-assigned Secret Service detail immediately apprehended 20-year-old University of Colorado Denver student Peter Smith, and turned him over to police. He now faces a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for his troubles. It's as if local law enforcement authorities are treating the glitter-bombing as something dangerous. Well, guess what? It actually is.

Per Judy Kurtz at The Hill:

But Stephen Glasser, an optometrist in downtown Washington, tells [The Hill] that while they might seem harmless, glitter bombs can cause real damage: "If it gets into the eyes, the best scenario is it can irritate, it can scratch. Worst scenario is it can actually create a cut. As the person blinks, it moves the glitter across the eye and can actually scratch the cornea." Although not likely, it can even cause a potential loss of sight.

That's almost what happened to one of Glasser's patients, who was out at a New Year's Eve soiree where partygoers were tossing glitter around: "It literally scratched not the cornea, but the white of the eye ... [S]ince [glitter isn't] exactly what you'd call sterile, there's not only a chance of a scratch, but giving the person an infection."

Yeah, as soon as we get to "scratch the cornea," I'm done. So, how about we all agree that "glitter-bombing" is totally played out before anyone else gets blinded and/or arrested? Okay? Terrific. Good talk, guys.

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None. People are still getting this wrong. Don't be one of them.

President Barack Obama's decision to give his "reluctant blessing" to a super PAC supporting him, Priorities USA Action, has created something of a low-grade mess for his campaign team, which has had to spend the past few days fending off charges of hypocrisy from the press. This is understandable! President Obama, after all, famously defamed the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that has allowed these secretive organizations to flower and flourish. And the president has taken his share of shots from those on his side of the aisle as well: Russ Feingold characterized Obama's embrace of the super PAC system as "dancing with the devil."

Of course, the argument in favor of getting into bed with super PACs is equally compelling and typically involves the phrase "unilateral disarmament." Bill Burton, who runs Priorities USA Action, made the argument on MSNBC this morning, saying, "This is not a perfect system, and these are not the rules that we would have if we were able to just make them from whole cloth right now, but it's the rules that we have, and we are going into an election where Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and others have pledged millions of dollars against Obama ... we do not like the rules but we have to have a force against what they are doing."

In other words, Team Obama Re-Elect can fight according to the established rules of the game -- including those they do not care for -- and thus avoid going into a knife fight armed with a plastic spork, or they can stand on principle, get obliterated in the general, and everyone can spend the rest of their lives as private citizens, lamenting the corrupt campaign finance system with Buddy Roemer. As a tactical decision, it's the right one. It's the one I'd make, if I were in charge of tactical decisions.

But I'm not. It's my job to fret about the corrupt campaign finance system. Now, in terms of how this issue might impact anyone's electoral hopes, it's safe to say that at the moment, this is not going to be a matter that voters consider too deeply. With a fragile economy and high unemployment, I doubt it really even rates. But that could change. Sen. John McCain predicts that at some point, there's going to be some massive scandal that arises from all the money that's sloshing around. If something like that happens to Mitt Romney, it could end up costing him. But if it happens to Obama, it costs him double, because he's the guy in the race who took a principled stand against super PACs in the first place, and who is continuing to profess those principles, even as he fudges them.

My feeling is that if Obama is not going to unilaterally disarm, that's fine. But he's going to have to take some steps that might nevertheless place him at a disadvantage.

First, he will have to insist that his super PAC do the one thing it is legally entitled to abstain from, and offer absolute and total transparency. Priorities USA is going to have to disclose the sources of their funding -- the individual donors, the bundlers, right down to how the administrative costs of running the super PAC are funded. No part of this operation can be permitted to operate in darkness. What that means is that not only will the Obama campaign have to endure process stories about who is financing their effort, they'll also have to endure process stories about who is refraining from offering assistance. And shady money? That will have to be returned, no excuses.

Second, Obama is never going to be allowed to do what Mitt Romney has done during the primary season -- pass the buck. The main reason to have a super PAC in the first place is to have a campaign entity that can do all the dirty work -- the deceptions, the brutal attack ads, the low blows -- while giving the candidate something that looks like "plausible deniability." But Obama can't be the guy standing onstage at the debate, pretending to have no idea how it came to pass that his super PAC put out a controversial ad, and gosh golly if he had his way he'd put a stop to it ... but, you know ... that would be considered "coordination," so his hands are tied, shucks. If Obama is going to maintain some semblance of a principled stance, it's a luxury he can't claim for himself. In this way, someone like Mitt Romney is going to have a natural advantage over Obama, but what can you do? Romney never took a principled stand against super PACs!

Finally, Obama is going to have to find a way to convince voters that he's hot to reform the system he's using to win the election. Or at the very least, it's something that he should articulate, since many of his defenders are putting their principles on the line by making the argument that the only way to fight the system is to use the system, as Jonathan Chait argues:

Indeed, if you want to change the system, unilateral disarmament seems like a pretty bad way to go about it. Republicans are already pretty strongly opposed to campaign-finance reform. If keeping the current system means preserving a system in which their side gets unlimited outside spending and Democrats abstain, then the GOP is never going to agree to change it. Not that matching their money will force them to agree to reform, but eliminating the GOP's partisan self-interest in the status quo seems like, at minimum, a necessary step toward reform.

On a conference call with the Obama campaign yesterday, Greg Sargent and David Dayen attempted to get the president's aides to discuss how they might go about instituting reforms after the fact, should they win a second term. It doesn't sound to me like there's a lot of fervor for it:

"Should a constitutional amendment be necessary to reverse the worst aspets of the Citizens United law, he would support those efforts," the official said. "But ultimately as we look at what's possible this year, we recognize the reality of what the Republican Congress will and won't support."

"That doesn't mean his commitment to reform isn't there. But we're recognizing the reality of the political situation. We're going to need to elect a Democratic majority in Congress."

And there's the rub! Should the Democrats, with Obama as their standard-bearer, manage the feat of electing a Democratic Congressional majority in 2012, how inclined do you think the lawmakers who make up that majority will be to dismantle the mechanism they all used to win or retain their seats? I'd say it's not bloody likely that they would. And that's why, no matter how hard Obama and his super PAC try to walk with the angels, it's still a dance with the devil.

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