To the surprise of many Santorum won all three contests. Polls were not very prevalent in those states so it's hard to see many last minute shifts. The data showed Romney mostly leading in the weeks before but that's not very useful. Internal polling for Romney clearly showed a shift though or he wouldn't have been putting out press releases like he did.

But does this change anything for Santorum? Probably not. Santorum succeeding is as likely as Ron Paul doing so. That is to say almost no chance. For me though the primary had developed a high yawn factor over the last few weeks so this at least gets me back watching polls again.

It will be interesting to see how Romney frames these losses and what this does for the next few contests in February. You'd think Romney would have read the tea leaves and campaigned in those states. I really have to question Romney's game plan there. They weren't worth delegates as far as I can tell but did someone suggest to Romney that if he lost big that most people wouldn't notice he never campaigned there?

It's the little things that derail a campaign in the end. Just ask Hillary Clinton. As strong as she was she failed to compete correctly in caucus states while Obama competed in every state whether there was hope or not. His camp knew that even 2 or 3 delegates from a state loss was better than zero and it would add up over the long haul building momentum. It's this momentum beyond simple delegate counts that Romney seems to discount at this point in the campaign.

The real clown of the night is Gingrich. He's the third part of a great three man comedy team. Call them the Three Stooges. Democrats should grab the popcorn and kick back and watch the GOP voters decide who they hate the least.

The question I got to ask, is that once you've exiled Dirty Harry, who's really safe?

The Party of Lincoln has become the part of Rove, Norquist, and Gingrich, a party where ideological litmus tests and rigid opposition to Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, has become the mark of a true Republican.

The position they took on the Detroit bailout was a terrible one, to be sure. My general rule would be that the less you have to convince people about and explain to get them to like a policy, the better off you will be.

Republicans have to explain what's so good about the destruction of millions of jobs. They have to explain why foreign automakers can get their help, and not their homeland counterparts, here in America.

Here's another thing they have to explain: GM's doing well, whether or not it's got first place as claimed. Obama's policy set it on the road to self-sustainability, arguably the opposite of the message Republicans are sending of excessive dependence. They'll go after Chevy Volt sales, which they helped suppress with notions that every hybrid there was a virtual pinto, and say this proves it was all a failure.

Failure is the word, of course. After the last Republican President, Republicans need to keep the contrast to a minimum. Bush did barely anything right. He started two wars he failed to finish, promised to capture dead or alive somebody it was left to his successor to finally catch, began and ended his administration on recessions that killed several million jobs altogether, leaving us in a pretty pickle from the very beginning of this current administration. Nobody's talking about the hurricanes during Obama's administration the way they talk about Katrina.

So Obama must be undermined at all points. If not prevented from implementing his policies, he must be made to look like as much of a failure as his predecessor. Otherwise, his successor won't be able to squirm out from under his predecessor's terrible record to avoid being defeated by Obama, who doesn't really have to be all that much better to present a stark contrast to Bush.

Which is why Republicans are making a car commercial that takes no more political a message, on behalf of a still private company, than "we're back from the brink, let's work together to have a greater future."

That's Obama's message, really. No point in disputing that. But it isn't his alone, and never was. That's a fundamentally American message, especially for the America whose modern political mythology revolves around how the greatest generation saved their country, and brought it back from the depths of the world's deadliest war, and the deepest depression of modern times.

Chrysler has chosen to sell it's brand based on the same kind of notion, on American recovery. It's a very capitalist sentiment to take, a very stars-and-stripes/apple pie sort of message: economically hard hit portions of the the country recovering and being productive again, America being an economic powerhouse again.

The best messages are those whose basic premises are already shared as conventional wisdom. That's how morning in America beats malaise, even if the guy talking malaise has a better case on the substance. It's one thing, a magical thing to be sure, to get somebody to feel something they weren't feeling before, but it's often as effective, if not more, to give people a message they really want to feel.

Republicans have chosen the message of malaise, of paranoid fear. They've chosen to sell people on the idea that it might have been better to let those factories shut down, let the millions be laid off.

I think that was a queasy enough message to sell people on when folks had hopes of getting better jobs, but nowadays? I think now people, if pushed, will find it very hard to justify exchanging a pair of thriving companies making cars here and competing with foreign automakers for the collapse of the domestic car industry, for millions of jobs lost, or companies in continual financial limbo.

Find me the inspiration in that!

Both Detroit and the White House understand this: People want to be happy. They want the conflict and discord that's torn this country apart to end. People want a better tomorrow.

So much of what the Republicans depend upon now to sell their political efforts is about holding somebody else back. They've forgotten something, or more accurately, they've talked themselves out of providing something crucial: the alternative plan.

Part of their problem is, everything has to be different, and everything has to be written according to the dogmas of the current party leadership. They've convinced themselves that they can sell their political worthiness to voters on the basis of being against Obama.

The problem is, Obama isn't against everything they are for, so they end up even dumping their own old policies. Just look at Mitt Romney, who can't mention one of the big programs he created as governor of Massachusetts. The awkwardness of his candidacy, and the way he has to forsake so many of the positions he took as governor just highlights what a terrible price the GOP's paid for the way it's tried to come back to power.

Resentment is not enough. Opposition is not enough. A real political movement, to get somewhere, has to have motivating force of its own. Small government concerns aside, it's got to have more to do with the power people give it than to just cut government. When nihilism about government's all you got to share, and the other side can talk about saving and creating jobs through actual policy, who's going to have the advantage?

Republicans have had to become basic subversives, arguing down, explaining away, minimizing, or ignoring everything Obama's tried to do.

This time, though, that meant that they had to go after an icon not of the left, but of the center right, a man not exactly known for his touchy-feely liberalism. That's a messaging backfire, if you haven't noticed. There's a good argument here to be made that Eastwood never meant his message to be interpreted as a liberal one, that the saving and restoration of Detroit as an industrial power was not a partisan matter for him.

Well, now explained that way, folks might start to think that maybe what Obama did wasn't a particularly partisan thing to do either, which, in truth, can also be argued. There's a good argument to be made that Obama did what he did on functional grounds. Bit by bit, the Republicans lose the argument, having chosen it poorly in the first place. Having not conceded or ignored the matter, Republicans are either making painful concessions bit by bit, or getting beat bloody by the bad press they get from doing things, say, like attacking Clint Eastwood.

I think some people are getting the impression by this point that the Republicans won't concede a single success to the President, and by the converse of that argument, they are accepting exactly the conclusions that Republican don't want Americans accepting, that this President has done his job well, and at the very least can be credited for trying to come to their aid.

The beginning of the Bush presidency's decline in popularity coincided with the Terry Schiavo fiasco, and the same decline seems to have destroyed the viability of the Evangelical right. When it came to the Evangelicals, if there was one thing the vast majority of the electorate was certain of, it was this: most Americans did not want Evangelicals using the power of government to intervene in the personal moments, moments of life and death. And where are we today?

And now, another attempt by Evangelicals to promote one of their favorite issues resulted in an epic FAIL, but not before threatening to harm anyone concerned with women's issues. The social conservatives convinced the Komen charity to withdraw its funding from Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of American fought back in a vast demonstration of outrage. Planned Parenthood won. Komen lost in its clumsy effort to defund PP, and no one lost more than the Evangelicals. Not only have they become politically irrelevant- their support seems to guarantee a loss in the political arena for anyone foolish enough to openly cooperate with them.

As a result, we are all much better off.

There is a new sense of optimism for 2012 that wasn't here this time last year. That has to be worrying conservatives who are banking on a weak economy preventing four more years for President Obama. This jobs report sure won't bolster their arguments but I'm sure some will try pretty hard.

There's always a group of people who smear BLS and the numbers and cry foul. I wonder how accurate BLS would seem to these people if the numbers were bad? Remember when zero jobs were created? I don't remember anyone being mad at that report until that was revised upward two months in a row. Then there was complaining about manipulation.

Picture a fat, sweaty Rush Limbaugh barking out, "Folks, you're being lied to!" Indeed, his listeners are. It's just not by who they think it is.

I love the people like this that point to the net job loss under Obama as a point of concern. We lost 4.4 million jobs before Obama ever took office and 4.2 million more in his first 12 months. Since then we've added back 3.1 million jobs. Obama is in the hole 1.1 million nonfarm jobs but just 549,000 private sector jobs. In the next three months Obama will be about to tout a net increase in private sector jobs during his term in office. In the next 6 months he'll be able to tout a net increase overall.

I'm sure some critics are starting to remember that Obama has nothing to do with these last few decent job reports. But that wasn't the case when it made him look bad though was it?

Whether you credit Obama or not, the economy has improved dramatically under Obama. The job growth has been slow but steady. Job growth is a lagging indicator of the positive growth over the last few months and it will spur on more positive growth from here on out. If conservatives were banking on the "Obama doldrums" to give them President Romney then November may be a rough month for these folks.

But for all Bush and other Republicans did, the economic miracles they predicted never materialized. Tax cuts in the trillions of dollars did not change Bush into a job creator on par with Bill Clinton. He wasn't even a Jimmy Carter, for crying out loud. Republicans have built a mythology about tax cuts and Ronald Reagan's supposed success with them that conveniently leaves out his massive tax increases in the wake of that.

Getting people back to work for Mitt Romney doesn't involve creating actual programs that do that. It involves the same talk about reducing regulations on big corporations, reducing taxes on those who can accumulating the most money, and simply hoping they do the right thing and employ more Americans.

That, even as the Chainsaw Als and Sam Waltons encouraged folks to cut jobs here to increase their profits, and make their products where they could pay people slave labor wages with fewer of those troublesome rules. See, that's the farce of it. For these people, there is no floor to the depths they would take our society, looking for that extra dollar for their bottom line, before they would ship jobs back.

Romney's version of hope is vain hope. It's the hope that job creating strategies that failed to create jobs will work. It's the hope that people who deliberately lowball wages and ship jobs overseas will somehow find it in their hearts to create jobs here, and in vast numbers.

Our policies in the Democratic party are not built on such elaborate castles of air. Jobs don't create themselves. They come when you invest in domestic industries. They come when people on the street have money in their pockets to spend, not a yawning hole in their finances consuming every dollar they make.

We haven't solved everything. With the Republicans standing in the way of anything and everything we try to do, it's been an epic effort to get anything done. But if you want the truth, it's this: The Obama Administration, following job losses brought on by an out of control recession that was taking several hundred thousands jobs a month when he took office, has managed to keep consistent job growth.

Considering that Bush's version of a so-called "jobless recovery" had us actually losing jobs in the month after the recession ended by the tens of thousands, Obama's efforts have yielded better real world results than those who would now challenge what he promised as mere bumper-sticker fantasy.

In short, this is because we recognize that there's nothing magic about good policy, and that hope alone is not enough. We cannot simply hope that jobs will appear out of the goodness of the hearts of the corporations and the rich. They're comfortable socking back record amounts of cash, and not having to take actual risks in the market. They don't have to suffer like the unemployed do, even if they get fired. After all, they have their golden parachutes. Funny how all the talk of the need for consequences, for punishments as well as rewards fades out when we talk about those on top.

It's Romney and Republicans like him who would have you believe in faded bumper stickers, not us. It's Romney and the Republicans who operate from a fundamentally naive, truly failed policy of hope unchecked by reality. We Democrats don't just seek after hope, we seek after the means to realize those hopes, and that is what makes the difference.

Both Democrats and Republicans continue to hold Bush responsible for the current state of the country.

And that tells us something else very important:

I could tell Allen West in turn to leave this country, but do you know what? He's a free American citizen. I couldn't tell him crap and make him do it. I'd be just flapping my gums.

The real problem in what he says isn't that it's inherently dangerous or all that effective, but that it gives some people the idea that this is a worthy political goal. There is a totalitarian impulse there, whatever party might express it, one that is unworthy of anybody to consider. Rather than win by persuasion or by honest competition in an election, Allen West's notion is that those who dissent from his views ought to simply disappear, be excluded, since he's got such a problem with it.

But you know what? Anything he believes could be wrong. The big reason why Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others is simply that human beings are universally fallible. The strength of our beliefs is no insurance against our error. In fact, it usually works the other way around. And no, that's not some abstract observation, but a hard-won bit of experience on my part. By my nature I'm black and white about what I believe, so I need to be careful to stick to the facts, because I know how far off the green I can get with my shots.

Allen West? He and other conservatives strongly believe things about us that I would hardly believe of a James Bond villain. We want to promote small business (which suffered greatly under Bush and the GOP) We want to promote the equality of opportunity; the equality, superiority or inferiority of achievement is up to your own talents and inclinations.

As for economic dependency? We want the opposite. We've learned from our policy mistakes. We're not looking for people to remain on government assistance forever. In fact, we want them to get jobs, want them to be independent.

The problem here is that Allen West and other Republicans, right-wing pundits and voters are operating from an argument whose basic premises come right out of the party's propaganda.

If a liberal is evil, what good is moderating your opposition to them? If they are depraved, what good is letting them have their freedom? Where they are stupid you are not motivated to trust their judgment, where they are foolish, why believe their wisdom?

Steeped in all the negative stuff, it's no wonder some feel like Allen West. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near true, and it's also confounding their own party's judgment.

I mean, think about it in these terms: if we're right about a given subject, if we have a point, then ideally you should either work towards agreement with us, or you should figure out things for yourself, and make another good point (not every problem has only one possible solution.)

If you do not determine things objectively, if you're more concerned about being on the other side of a subject, and being "right" on that account, then I'm sorry, you're going to be wrong a lot of the time, and right only by luck. We have only to look at the budget situation to understand that. Republicans, nowadays, try to insist that tax cuts are necessary to improve the economy. However, the economy didn't improve, and most people's economic outlook went down in the years leading up to the crisis. Despite some of the largest tax cuts in history, Bush's job creation numbers were the worst since WWII, when they started keeping track.

GOP policy has gotten strained on that front, all tax cuts, no tax raising. I think it's all because of what happened to Bush. Unfortunately, people took what was an ill-conceived promise for a President running a deficit, and took it to heart as a viable political strategy. His son learned his father's lesson, but learned it too well. What was once a set of options for the GOP became an addiction to one option, one that helped create a deficit where the previous deficit had been undone.

But what if we need things otherwise? In some forms of government, we would see the strain simply build up, the government BSing everybody about whether something was working, and nobody able to do anything to get them to admit the problem, much less take care of the problem. This strained state of affairs is what helps bring down governments, or turn them tyrannical in their measures to maintain power.

We have a release valve on this, when we in the majority (I'm thinking any majority- imagine one you'd fit in) are wrong. What happens is that another majority develops among the people, who say, "change things, we've had enough." Now it isn't always clean, but sooner or later, these things get pushed through, and the tension is released.

I've seen it happen before, and I see it happening now. It may not be perfect or painless, but it makes me proud of my country to see it happen. We are not doomed to a decline into foolishness and stupidity, into corruption and decay. We have recourse. We just have to dump this inferiority complex we've developed, one where we look at everybody else and blame them for our lot in life, rather than realize that we really haven't been standing up for our own interests.

People have lost their morale about their democracy, about their people, told for too many years that we're in decline, a modern day Babylon and Rome ripe for destruction. Too much of the rhetoric seems to be aimed at disheartening people about current conditions, or blaming somebody else for it, rather than actually solving the problems. And as the problems pile up, the whole mess seems insoluble, and we wait for some leader, some party, some movement to save us.

We really shouldn't. This is our Democracy, ours together, and we really should learn to save ourselves. Rather than lament the lack of smart, wise people, we should endeavor to be smart and wise. Rather than lament the maturity of people in this country, we should stop waiting for others to grow up, and do so ourselves. Rather than hope that the other half of the country will take a hike, we should acknowledge that this isn't going to happen, and then decide to talk about all this like adults, not like a bunch of children button pushing and lamenting that we're not the ones in charge. We are. We just have to be in charge with everybody else, not just by ourselves.

We need to learn a little bit of what we call, "the social graces."

Values reflected by Portland include favoring mass transit, often in the form of bicycles; independence and the pursuit of self-actualization; the greenest enviromentalism, including shopping locally; an exaggerated politeness; an even more exaggerated PC correctness; and tattoos. In Portlandia, "the hot girls wear glasses," a reference to the penchant Portlanders have for reading.

In Portlandia, when a couple orders chicken at a restaurant, they want to know all about this locally grown chicken. What was its name? Did it have friends?

The show appears on an obscure network, IFC, Sunday evening.

Newt Gingrich proposed founding a colony within eight years, and received scorn from both liberals and Romney. Does Newt deserve it? What are some of the results of space exploration to date?

http://www.problem-solving-techniques.com/US-Space-Program.html

Off the top of my head, I can name just a few: weather satellites, GPS, and computer technology. Not a bad day's work.

Of course, Gingrich envisions a free enterprise version of space exploration and colonization, and that will be virtually impossible, due to the enormous investments of capital up front. However, we do have an entity that can make that investment: the federal government.

Are the days of aspirational goals over for the US? Are we incapable of taking risks on R&D and exploration?

I think a lot about the disconnect between the protection of certain animals in the United States and the treatment of the animals we eat. Dog fighting is a popular subject since Michael Vick. But why do people get so outraged by dog fighting while no doubt eating animals that suffered immense cruelty and torment while waiting to be slaughtered for our food?

What would happen if I had a well-read blog and I published a story about how police had found a man who had taken thousands of dogs and cats and placed them in small cages their whole lives, transported them all over the country, then slaughtered every last one of them? No doubt the comment threads would be full of outraged individuals calling for life in prison for the man, or worse. Of course this is the way chickens and turkeys are treated each and every day. They don't feel pain any different or comprehend their suffering existence on any different level than common house pets. So why is there a disconnect there?

I grew up in an area where people hunt and fish pretty much year around for one type of animal or another. Every now and again I'll run into people who consider themselves above the cruelty of shooting animals for sport. Sometimes I ask them if they eat meat from the store or at restaurants. Often these people are shocked to hear me defend hunting and fishing. I'd prefer it not happen but what would I rather people do? Kill wild animals that lived free on their own until their untimely, cruel demise? Or eat animals raised their whole lives in confusion and pain, shipped around, killed by somebody paid to slaughter animals for a living, packaged in neat little boxes making everything tidy and edible? Give me the hunters and fishers any day.

I gave up meat seven years ago this May. It doesn't seem like that long sometimes. Other times it seems like forever. Most people don't understand how comforting and social food has come for Americans until you're sitting in a group of people eating meat and dairy or eggs and you don't eat any of that. People who have food allergies or religion based dietary constraints will know what I'm talking about. Every social food gathering is a giant hassle.

Every time I meet new people and they find out then they want to ask certain questions. There are a couple of different types of people who want to ask me questions. First there are the people who are instantly concerned I'll die without animal based fats and proteins. I won't of course. Then there are those who understand the health benefits and want to think of me as a health conscious person. I haven't been that healthy though. When I tell them it has little to do with health and much to do with animal cruelty there are some that get immediately defensive about it as if I've just indicted them for their own eating habits. You never know what kind of person you'll get when you approach the subject in public.

I joked months ago about Herman Cain's connection between eating meat and being a man. That is a familiar story in America on TV and other media. If a man doesn't eat meat then he's not a real man, apparently. I'm OK with that though. I enjoy the food I cook for myself and my family. Heck, even my dog is a vegetarian and he's doing fine.

What I want folks to do is consider where their food comes from. Consider the cruelty involved. Consider the resources wasted in raising animals for money. Stop thinking of cattle, pork, and poultry as somehow lower than the house pets you'd guard almost as much as your own children. Stop being outraged by stories of cruelty to dogs and cats without being outraged that millions of animals are slaughtered every year for our food and fashion.

Factory farming will never end over night but we can begin to change the way we eat and change where our food come from over time. As an old vegan friend of mine always says: It will be better for the animals, better for the planet, and better for our bodies.

What we have seen in the last week has been an intense erosion of faith in Mitt Romney as the presumptive nominee. It's now a wide open race and in fact Gingrich leads in delegates. Who would have guessed that a race going through cycles of up and down support for candidates would continue doing so even during the voting? I didn't. I figured it would settle down a bit and not be very interesting.

Last week some were saying Romney would sweep all three of the first primaries. Now we know he lost Iowa and blew it big time in South Carolina. Now he could lose Florida too. Could Newt be the new favorite? Maybe. Could President Obama get that lucky? I don't know. Am I starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld? Yes, I am, and I'm sorry.

One of the biggest mistakes I've made in the primary prediction business this time around was to openly mock Newt Gingrich to my friends when he suggested it would eventually come down to he and Mitt Romney in the race. I laughed big time. But can you blame me for laughing? That was close to the time Newt's whole campaign quit on him while he was off on a cruise with his third wife.

Mitt Romney has one week to restore supporter faith in his ability to move forward. If not then Newt could come out of January feeling like he's got major momentum. I'll drink to that. Newt will need a major upset though for momentum. If he barely wins or barely loses then it really could be a long race.

Let me just add for the record, anyone on the right thinking the left is scared of Newt Gingrich hasn't caught on to how unpopular Gingrich is in America or seen the head to head matchup. I can't speak for the whole left but let me just ensure you now that I would LOVE to see Obama run against Newt Gingrich.

Part of me wants Gingrich to win South Carolina just so that there are three 1st place winners in the first three contests. It doesn't look like Ron Paul can win Florida or that would be really funny.

Another part of me thinks that last minute voters are going to break for Romney and at least shrink Gingrich's lead if not even doom him to defeat in the state. South Carolina voters have to be able to remember that Gingrich's campaign has no substance at this point other than to fling poo at the other candidates, at President Obama, and at the news media for daring to report on issues relevant to values voters.

My wife mentioned last night how someone's ethics at their workplace tend to mirror their ethics in their personal life. I think she had a great point, and Newt would have made that same case against Clinton for sure. But the relevance of such things now against Gingrich are apparently quite despicable. Go figure.

Either way I think you'll see the end of easy going Mitt Romney with today's vote. He can't stay above the fray anymore and he'll need to get tough if he's going to stop another outbreak of Gingrich in the race. I think Mitt felt the illness had passed so he stopped taking his antibiotics early. He knows now that he has to keep taking them until the whole bottle is empty.

Internal polls for Romney must have shown Gingrich surging days ago because Romney has been on the attack again for a few days. Now external polls have caught on and there is a lot of buzz about the race.

Gingrich's performance in the debate couldn't have hurt him in the state. He was tossing big chunks of red meat to the South Carolina conservative crowd the whole night. I was very impressed with his performance.

Now Perry is out of the race and endorsing Gingrich. This was a long time coming for the Perry camp but I don't know why they stayed in as long as they did. Maybe they just wanted to outlast at least Jon Huntsman.

Everything is falling in Gingrich's direction now it seems. The South Carolina vote is just 2 days away. But can Gingrich still make a difference in the race? Yes he can. If he wins South Carolina it could boost him going into Florida. Ten days may not be enough to erode Romney's solid lead in Florida but I'd like to see how Gingrich manages things if he wins this weekend.

It's interesting to me that the first 3 votes in the primary season could have 3 different 2nd place winners. This is part of Gingrich's problem. He could never get the anti-Romney voters to come completely over to his side.

Also if Santorum has his way the 3 first place winners may be Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich, in that order. If that was true that would certainly put a damper on Romney's projection of inevitability.

Romney still has all the money and is in the driver's seat but it's clear he's not won over enough voters yet. He's still got a few more parts to win over before then. If he stays ahead in South Carolina and Florida it's over but he's got to be sweating this next race for the first time so far in the primary.

So here is in no particular order, a list of some economic measurements in pretty graph form that are better now than when Obama took office:

• Initial Weekly Unemployment Claims
• Small Business Hiring Plans
• Housing Starts
• Constuction Spending Year over Year
• US Retail Sales
• Light Vehicle Sales
• Real Annualized GDP Growth
• Capacity Utilization
• Industrial Production
• Small Business Optimism Index
• US Trade Exports and Imports

Some will point out that Obama has little or nothing to do with these measurements improving. That's not the argument though, is it? Is the economy better now than when Obama took office? Yes, it is. We can see all the ways it is.

Yes, debt is bad, employment is improving but needs more time, and the housing market is still struggling a little. As the economy continues to improve though so will those three things.

Sadly we're in the middle of another jobless recovery. The rest of the economy has improved slowly month over month but jobs got left behind. That's a concept lost on Republicans apparently for having slept through Bush's jobless recovery. Now without swift job growth the whole economy is ruined.

It took over four years to decline from a high of 6.3% back down to near the 4.3% pre-recession level. In a little over two years unemployment has gone from 10.1% in October 2009 to 8.5% in December 2011. It's going to be two more years probably before unemployment returns to a decent rate and another two after that before it's at pre-recession levels.

Now it's just a matter now of who is in the White House to take credit for that improved job situation. If it's Obama then Democrats will say it was Obama's actions and Republicans will say the economy recovered on it's own despite Obama. If it's Romney then Democrats will say it was Obama's actions and Republicans will say Romney turned the economy around.

So is South Carolina going to change the profile of the race in a way that Romney doesn't want? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing is clear though. The more the media pretends Romney is inevitable the more people on the right have started to come unglued.

South Carolina and Florida have become the final showdown for the TEA Party and the religious right. They don't want Romney but so far Romney hasn't cared at all. The problem is there is no united front against Romney. These folks can't decide who to support if not Romney. And it's clear why not. There's just no easy way to decide between Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman.

Ron Paul has a core of kooky support but it's not mainstream conservatives. Newt Gingrich is stomping, pouty mad these days like a child who isn't getting the toy he wants at Wal-mart. Jon Huntsman is...well, Plain Jane Jon Huntsman.

If Mitt Romney is getting a bounce from winning Iowa and New Hampshire it hasn't showed yet. But the next vote is so far away that he has plenty of time to spend money and bolster a victory. I've convinced myself the voters will ultimately side with Romney but I'm not convinced yet they're done test driving these other guys.

We'll just have to wait and see what the polls are showing in the next 2 weeks.