City Councilman David Greenfield will be introducing a resolution at tomorrow’s stated City Council meeting encouraging the U.S. Congress to pass an amendment to the Help America Vote Act.

The amendment would allow the use of lever machines in federal elections.

The current machines being used are optical scan machines, which have brought an array of complaints from voters.

Some say the accompanying paper ballot is confusing and illegible, others that the machines break down too easily, and still others that they do not provide enough privacy.

Ultimately, Greenfield says voters—not simply his constituents, but voters nationwide—have to deal with too much confusion with the optical scan voting machines, which leaves them at greater risk of being disenfranchised.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has begun campaigning for mayoral candidate Joe Lhota, penning a fundraising letter that praised him for standing up “to the destructive policies of tax-and-spend politicians who put New York and America in peril.”

Lhota, who worked as a deputy mayor under Giuliani and later headed the MTA, is considered the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination. He would then face off against Christine Quinn or whoever else comes out of the Democratic primary.

“Make no mistake,” Giuliani said Saturday in his letter. “If you don’t think the city can slip back to its unmanageable, ungovernable ways, just listen to Joe’s Democratic opponents.”

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If a quartet of state senators gets its way, then lever voting machines will replace electronic ones. Credit: Getty Images

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling for old-fashioned lever voting machines to replace electronic ballot scanners.

The lever voting machines had been used successfully in the city for over 100 years, according to state Sens. Martin J. Golden and Andrew Lanza, both Republicans, and Simcha Felder and Diane Savino, both Democrats. But things have not gone smoothly since the Board of Elections switched to electronic voting in 2010, the senators alleged.

“These new-fangled voting machines are a disaster,” Felder said in a statement. “Seniors can’t see the ballot text, voters are confused about how to fill out the ballot, and election day in New York City has become synonymous with chaos and dysfunction.”

Under a bill that the four introduced Friday, the Board of Elections would be authorized to conduct local elections, such as this year’s mayor’s race, using lever voting machines. Federal elections in 2014 would still have to be done with electronic voting.

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Washington Post political correspondent Ezra Klein shook up the erudite politisphere last week when, in an essay for The New Yorker and then in a reprise during guest-hosting duties on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes”, he put forth the mysteriously uncommon yet surprisingly obvious assertion that presidential speechifying can actually have a net negative effect on  administration success, as opposition politicians are actually heavily incentivized to ensure the failure of their across-the-aisle rivals.

Klein sought to dispute the historical wisdom that “the power of the president is the power to persuade,” arguing that grand speeches from the executive actually do his platform a disservice, since the other party cannot reasonably be expected to offer “bipartisan” support to a group of people whose successes inversely affect their own re-elections. The bigger deal a president makes of any one issue — witness, in recent months, Obama’s failed pursuit of the American Jobs Act; or, in years past, President Bush’s colossal efforts and, ultimately, failure at privatizing Social Security — the more vigorously opposition lawmakers are encouraged to oppose it. In this polarized environment, policy wins for one party can be directly interpreted as failures for the other; so pols stymie the efforts of their rivals regardless of any potential benefits.

Klein pays particular attention to the way in which a president’s message can backfire, as opposition figures are put in the clear position of 1: supporting their rivals and, thereby, losing; or 2: torpedoing rival legislation and improving their own political futures. But we think this analysis, while certainly interesting, misses the wider implications: that U.S. politicians personally benefit from weakening America, when to help the country would mean also helping party rivals and hurting themselves.

The two-party system has many flaws, but none quite so damning as this: Americans suffer as a direct result of the petty machinations of our two grand political parties. This is how, under Obama, Republicans have suddenly reversed their beliefs on, for instance, the insurance mandate in health care, originally developed by right-wing think tanks and backed by all manner of establishment R’s: To support it would mean supporting the president, so they thought up reasons to dislike it. And similar things happened with cowardly Democrats under Bush.

So long as we vote for D’s and R’s, we suffer. Because no matter which party wins, Americans inevitably lose.

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Then there’s Newt Gingrich, whose second-place finishes on Tuesday invalidate his so-called Southern strategy, predicated on the historian’s ability to sweep the more conservative U.S. states. The feisty former Georgia congressman failed to deliver wins in the region presumed to be most receptive to his patented big ideas — like moon colonization and helping poor children by giving them jobs cleaning schools. Regardless, Gingrich reiterated his intentions to stay in the race all the way, posing a serious threat to Santorum’s prospects, which fare much better given a one-on-one battle with Romney.

OK, but where does that leave us? Well, the same place we were before, mostly. Despite his losses Tuesday, Romney’s math argument, while not exactly inspirational, does hold a certain unassailable logic: Unless something big happens to change the race’s dynamics — like, for instance, Gingrich deciding to suck it up and drop out — it remains unlikely for Santorum to top Romney in delegates. And, again, the name of the game is 1,144; any candidate that reaches this number of delegates will automatically be declared the Republican presidential nominee. Estimates put Romney way out in front.

There’s another possibility, though less remote. If none of the candidates hits the magic 1,144 number, the nomination will go to a brokered convention, where party leaders will be forced to decide the nominee themselves. This is the outcome Gingrich favors. “I believe that after the primaries are over it will be obvious the so-called front-runner in fact didn’t get there, and from that point we will be in a whole different conversation,” Gingrich said in defeat. A conversation, presumably, involving child janitors and space fantasies.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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You might be a redneck if you’re voting in the Deep South primaries in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday. (We mean no offense by this; more on it in just a bit.) Of course, there are many possible neck colors among the Southern voting populace, but Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are probably hoping for the darkest crimson as they attempt to convince conservatives that they best represent old Dixie ideology in an effort to amp their flagging candidacies.

Now, we belong to the camp that sees Mitt Romney as the inevitable GOP presidential nominee. That’s based on the potent combination of his superior (estimated) delegate haul and his advantages in establishment support and, the real vote-buyer, campaign cash. But math and numbers have never had strong support among the Republican base, so we’re guessing that today’s elections will exist outside of this framework.

Romney understands his campaign’s failure to gain serious conservative traction in the South, with its large evangelical demographics. (He admitted that the contests were “a bit of an away game” for him.) As such, he’s stooped to Gingrich-levels of obvious pandering, telling a Mississippi audience last week that he’s “learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits, strange things are happening to me.” He’s also enlisting the support of You Might Be A Redneck luminary Jeff Foxworthy. (See? Foreshadowing, not hate speech!)

What makes the whole situation even more cringeworthy, though, is this: There is some evidence to suggest that these deceitful tactics might actually work. According to Public Policy Polling data, a near-plurality of likely Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi hold seriously questionable views on Barack Obama, including the pervasive belief that the president is in fact a secret Muslim. It’s not a huge leap to imagine that a group of people so fundamentally opposed to Obama that they believe this sort of unsupported fallacy might actually fall victim to the irreconcilable idea that Romney may truly be representative of the Deep South, with its historical poverty and, yes, love of grits.

The Not-Romneys must be hoping that the South asserts its famous independence and refutes Mitt’s awkward vote-shopping. It’d take a huge upset to change the campaign narrative. But then, stranger things have happened.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

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Rick Santorum added to his delegate count during the weekend with an overwhelming victory in the Kansas caucuses, taking more than half of all votes. But contests in Wyoming, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, won by Mitt Romney, reinforce the new campaign reality: No matter how well any of the not-Romneys do, the math matters, and ultimately the numbers will decide the nominee.

See, the candidates are vying to secure enough delegates — done by winning states and/or congressional districts in the various elections — to win nomination before the August convention, and the magic number is 1,144. A candidate who secures that number of delegate votes will be declared the presidential nominee to take on Obama in November. Overwhelmingly, it’s looking like that candidate will — eventually, inevitably — be Romney.

This is no idle claim, but rather a fair analysis of the numbers. Following this weekend’s contests, Romney assumed an estimated count of 454 delegates to Santorum’s 217. (Gingrich and Paul claim fewer.) In other words, Romney has more than twice the number of his closest competitor; and with most upcoming elections awarding delegates proportionally, an alternate scenario looks improbable.
Santorum downplayed the delegate gap on “Meet the Press” yesterday after host David Gregory argued he’d need to win 61 percent of upcoming elections to overshoot Romney. “These numbers are going to change dramatically,” Santorum said. “A lot of these delegates are uncommitted.”

Santorum’s latter point is true enough; at this time, delegate counts are merely estimates and anything could, supposedly, happen. But his former point may be a decimal off: With Gingrich committed to “going all the way to Tampa,” the numbers just don’t add up. And numbers, unlike presidential hopefuls, don’t lie.

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While the Republican candidates battle each other over the dubious distinction of most likely to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, and as they relentlessly — and, if we must say, factlessly — attack the president over alleged weaknesses in foreign policy, they ignore how the Obama administration has been busy radically rewriting constitutional powers of the executive.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday finally got around to explaining, sort of,  the president’s supposed justification for assassinating U.S. citizens abroad. “Due process” — the constitutionally enshrined right of Americans to basic legal protections, like not being killed by the CIA?in your sleep, for instance — is not necessarily the same as “judicial process,” he said. In other words, we are not actually guaranteed, as many had previously thought, the right to a fair trial before being judged guilty and terminated. Or, as Stephen Colbert parodied Tuesday night: “Due process just means there’s a process that you do.”

The administration simply wants us to trust that they will not abuse their newfound powers of execution. Bizarrely, the right wing is OK with this; or rather, judging from their public statements, they (the non-Ron Paul presidential candidates, at least) find the policy not quite extreme enough. Even more bizarrely:?Democrats don’t seem particularly stressed over it either.

Here we see how party loyalty distorts independent belief: If this was a Bush — or, God help us, a Romney, Santorum or Gingrich — trying to pull something like this, Dems would be frothing at the mouth. Instead, they cheer this erosion of individual liberty.

But Obama won’t be president forever. U.S. politics are reactionary: Even if Obama wins re-election, we’ll have a Republican executive soon enough. So while the GOP pushes the limits of extremism, let’s not lose sight of extremity in the White House. The next tenant may not be quite as trustworthy.

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Romney won as expected in Virginia, Vermont and his home state of Massachusetts, while rival Rick Santorum captured Oklahoma and Newt Gingrich won Georgia, according to network projections. Results from the five other states holding contests on “Super Tuesday,” the biggest day so far in the roller coaster Republican campaign, were expected in the coming hours. More than 400 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the party’s nomination are at stake.

Polls in recent days showed Romney had effectively erased Santorum’s lead in Ohio, a traditional bellwether state that could play an important role in deciding the Republican nominee to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama on November 6. Television networks said the race was too close to call after voting concluded at 7:30 p.m. EST (0030 GMT Wednesday).

Exit polls showed that Ohio voters viewed Romney as more likely to defeat Obama, but thought Santorum was more sympathetic to average Americans’ concerns.

Tennessee was also too close to call. Contests were also being held in Idaho, Alaska and North Dakota.

A victory in Ohio and a good showing elsewhere would make Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, the favorite to win the nomination. Even without an Ohio win, his strength in other states all but ensures he will extend his lead in the delegate count.

“This is a process of gathering enough delegates to become the nominee, and I think we’re on track to have that happen,” Romney said after voting in his home town of Belmont, Massachusetts.
A less impressive showing could prompt renewed doubts about his ability to secure the nomination as Republicans continue the state-by-state battle to pick a nominee at their August convention.
Romney, who built a fortune of at least $200 million as a private-equity executive, has struggled to connect with conservatives and blue-collar voters in a campaign that has focused on his business career.
“He doesn’t really know what he stands for,” said Santorum supporter Katherine Frenz, 36, of Hilliard, Ohio.
In the last days of the Ohio campaign Romney made a point of trying to attract blue-collar voters, but CNN’s exit poll indicated that Santorum received more support among those who said their annual income was $30,000 to $100,000, a group that made up 55 percent of the electorate there. Romney topped Santorum among voters with income of more than $100,000, while those who earned less than $30,000 were divided between the two candidates.

Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, has won the support of religious conservatives thanks to his opposition to gay marriage and his views on other hot-button social issues. He has fought charges that his Senate career makes him a “Washington insider” and culture warrior who would alienate independent voters as Romney has pelted him with negative ads.

Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, was counting on his Georgia win to claw his way back into contention. Ron Paul, a U.S. congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, hopes to score his first win in Alaska.

In recent presidential campaigns, the Super Tuesday wave of primaries and caucuses has often settled the Republican race. But while this year’s contests could establish a clear pecking order, the race is likely to stretch until April or May under new rules designed to attract more voters and boost enthusiasm.

But recent polls indicate the lengthy primary season may actually be alienating voters. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Tuesday showed that more voters view the candidates negatively than positively. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Monday found that 40 percent of voters view the Republican Party less favorably than they did before voting started in January.

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Mitt Romney won the day on Tuesday (following Santorum’s surprise February hat trick) with a pair of much-needed wins against his Republican primary opponents.

Or did he?

In Arizona, at least, Romney carried the day, collecting all 35 delegates in the state’s winner-take-all contest. But in Michigan — the candidate’s home state, where his father once governed and held an executive position at local job provider AMC — the win was murkier. There, Romney prevailed by a slim 3 percent margin, despite a significant money and ground advantage. And aside from the theoretical effect of his win-mentum, the fact is that the pair will mostly split the state’s delegate votes.

So where does that leave us — and them? Pundits are mixed on whether the lack of a delegate majority will force a brokered convention, but next week’s Super Tuesday may clear that up. In the meantime, we present some pertinent stats below to help inform your opinions.

Election by the numbers

46
Romney won an estimated 46 delegates on Tuesday to Santorum’s estimated 13. (The Santorum camp claims 15, but the final count will take a little while to sort out.)

14
Due to GOP?sanctions related to Michigan’s state party moving its primary to before Super Tuesday, however, only 14 of Romney’s estimated 21 Michigan delegates will be able to vote. Likewise for
Santorum:?Only 12 of his MI?delegates can vote at the national convention.

$100,000
Romney handily carried Michigan voters earning $100,000 or more annually — taking this influential demographic by a 14-point margin. On the other hand, Romney lost out among voters making less than $100,000 and those who have not attended college.

1,144
In order to win the nomination, a candidate will have to secure 1,144 delegate votes by the August convention in Tampa — a majority of the total 2,286 delegates. Fox News estimates candidates’ current delegate shares as follows: Romney 209, Santorum 96, Newt Gingrich 32 and Ron Paul 19.

3 to 1
Democratic voters pulled the lever for Santorum in Michigan by a 3-to-1 margin. Whether that was due to the Santorum camp’s controversial robocalls — in which they called Democrats, encouraging them to come out and vote against Romney and, of course, for Santorum — remains unclear. Nearly 10 percent of voters in the open primary identified as Democrat, according to exit polls.

36%
On Super Tuesday — next Tuesday, March 6, 2012 — voters in 10 states will hand out 419 delegates to the Republican candidates, representing more than a third needed by any one candidate to secure the party’s nomination.?Georgia alone will award 76, which Newt Gingrich — of the perpetual comeback and fall-back-down continuum — hopes to claim, having served as the state’s Congressman for 20 years.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

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With 70 percent of the vote counted, Romney was ahead with 42 percent compared to 37 for Santorum.

Romney easily won the day’s other primary in Arizona.

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What a world of difference a week and a half can make!

Well, the whole narrative may — but most probably won’t — change today when with any luck the winner(s) of yesterday’s two qualifying contests, in Michigan and Arizona, are announced. The results are expected to arrive too late for us to do any substantial analysis today; we’ll save that for tomorrow, and leave the guesswork to the experts.?

Experts such as poll analyst Nate Silver, who thinks Michigan — Romney’s home state, though one he’s antagonized by strongly opposing Obama-led auto bailouts that seem to have led to a strengthened local industry and the saving of millions of jobs — could go either way. Most polls, meanwhile, show Arizona leaning strongly in Romney’s favor.

Regardless of who wins, though, the campaign environment isn’t likely to undergo a drastic change. Will an unrealistic double-rout by Santorum compel Romney to cede the race to his rival? Not likely.
Nor will the more plausible double Romney win convince Santorum et al that they’ve missed their chance. Ron Paul is still playing the long game, hoping to pick up enough consolation delegates to buy some more establishment support for his libertarian ideas. And then there’s Gingrich: Educated guessing on the future intentions of that guy likely eludes even experts like Silver.

With Super Tuesday a week away, we may yet be on the cusp of some serious political momentum; if, that is, voters agree enough to elevate a single candidate. If not, a brokered convention may be on the horizon — a looming possibility that could, perhaps, be one GOP mystery more unfathomable than even Gingrich himself.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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This turn was affected by a pair of timely circumstances. First:?During a discussion this week about the upcoming November presidential election, a pal made it clear that he wasn’t particularly enamored with President Obama; that he hoped for a change of leadership; and that he was unequivocally going to vote for a second Obama term.

This logical leap is a quirk of U.S. politics, where the two-party system ensures most people vote within the presumed cone of electability. If, as occurred most damagingly in 2000, a third-party vote ends up working in favor of the candidate one deems the less-acceptable of our two establishment evils, it is judged as having been wasted. Why, this dear friend asked, risk the election of a Romney or a Gingrich when we can rest safely in the dissatisfaction of another relatively-less-awful Obama term?

Which brings us to circumstance No. 2: The American Civil Liberties Union? this week filed a lawsuit against Obama administration agencies in an effort to learn the legal justification for the government’s policy of targeted assassinations of American citizens — including al Qaeda terrorist Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, in Yemen.

(Note that the ACLU has not attempted to subvert this sort of killing, but merely to discover the legal basis for its use, including, according to an ACLU blog post, “the process by which the administration adds Americans to secret government ‘kill lists.’”) 

Following drone strikes in fall 2011, the ACLU and others including The New York Times filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with the government, but to no avail. The Obama
administration, once hailed by the president’s press secretary as being “the most transparent … ever,” is, in the ACLU’s words, treating the “targeted killing program [as] so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists.”

To many, this will all seem quite acceptable. Mercilessly attacking and killing our sworn enemies is nothing but the mission statement of America in a post-9/11 world.

B ut a difficulty arises when the enemies we’re clandestinely killing happen to be U.S. citizens. There may be no more distressing executive overreach than the power of the president to secretly select and execute Americans with absolutely no judicial oversight. Couple this with the fact that the president routinely trots these killings out as evidence of his leadership in the war on terror and you’ve got a contradiction more stark than Romney following up his “I’m not concerned about the very poor”?gaffe with an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Sure, these issues could actually get worse under Republican leadership, but honestly how much worse could it get? Obama wants to have his cake and kill it, too: to campaign as a liberal, lead as a moderate and reign as a tyrant.

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One of the big stories this campaign season has been the monumental effect of super PACs on electoral outcomes. These organizations have in recent months taken a firm grip of the national narrative, utilizing their supposed disconnect from campaigns to push an increasingly negative tilt. In honor of last night’s filing deadline for year-end campaign reports, we present some of the more interesting super PAC facts.

Follow the money

$1,142
Texas governor and former presidential candidate Rick Perry spent more than $1,000 per vote.

71%
Nearly three-fourths of all political contributions to Our Destiny PAC, the super PAC backing failed candidate Jon Huntsman, came from Huntsman’s billionaire father. For those doing the math, that’s $1.9 million of fatherly love.

$10M
Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, has something even better than a filthy rich father:?A filthy rich casino mogul! The Newt-backing Winning Our Future PAC has so far received $10 million from Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, which stands among the largest-ever campaign donations.

$1M+
The super PAC of TV satirist Stephen Colbert has raised more than $1 million from a range of donors including Pat Magroin, Ibin Yerkinoff and Frumunda Mabalz.

$15.3M
Romney and his Restore Our Future super PAC have spent vast sums in Florida in the past month. As a point of comparison, John McCain spent $11 million on ads in the entire 2008 Republican primary race.

92%
Super PAC funds tainted the airwaves in Florida:?Nearly all of this year’s primary ads in the state were negative.

$51M
American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-led super PAC, raised $51 million in 2011 to be put toward defeating Obama in November.

GET FED

Because sometimes you only need to skim the headlines:
   
“Bachmann raised little in campaign” Politico

“Romney: We Played Fair in Florida!” Daily Beast
   
“Newt Gingrich Robocall: Mitt Romney Forced Holocaust Survivors To Eat Non-Kosher Food”
The Huffington Post
   
“The Caucus: Gingrich Sued Over Use of ‘Eye of the Tiger’” NYTimes
   
Super PACs Now Dominate GOP Primary Campaign Spending” Mother Jones
   
“How Mitt Romney stole Newt Gingrich’s voice” Slate Magazine
   
“Sarah Palin PAC fundraising craters” POLITICO.com
   
“Why Newt Will Have A Hard Time Being 2012’s Hillary” TPM2012
   
“PayPal co-founders fund pro-Paul Super PAC” Reuters

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Nobody seems to like him much (aside from primary voters, clearly), but it’s become more and more apparent that Mitt Romney will likely be the Republican nominee for the 2012 presidency.

We know what you’re thinking: “But Ron Paul!”?And: “Shut up and let the voters decide!” And, if my gut is right on this, probably even:?“Nice glasses, hipster doofus.”

All reasonable points. But we’re not here to advocate for a particular candidate, or to sit back and allow the primary process to unfold naturally. Our job is to analyze goofs, gaffes and national trends; and, from where we’re sitting, there’s no goofier trend than America’s mysterious penchant for Mitt Romney.

So like him or not — and we do understand that it’s probably “not” — we’re going to be paying particularly close attention to the affable Mittens. Get excited.

15%
Multimillionaire Romney admitted at a campaign stop yesterday that his tax rate is somewhere around 15 percent — lower than most middle-class households. This is because a majority of Mitt’s income, like most rich folk, comes in the form of investments, which are taxed at lower rates than traditional income gained from actually, you know, going to work. At the debate Monday night, Romney also explained that “not very much”?of his annual income comes in the form of speaking fees. That “not very much” for 2011? Oh, just $374,000.

GET FED

Because sometimes you’ve only got time to skim the headlines:
   
“Mitt Romney is rich. So what?” Washington Post
   
“Why Mitt Romney’s Tax Rate Matters” Time
   
“The Last Clear Shot at Romney” nymag.com
  
 “On policy, Romney is far to Bush’s right” The Washington Post
  
 “Gingrich: I ‘Don’t See’ Why Calling ‘Food Stamps’ An African-American Issue Is Insulting” thinkprogress
  
 “Obama going to Disney World” Orlando Sentinel
   
“Santorum Says He May Have Won in Iowa” NYTimes.com

First time for everything, we suppose

“It’s dirty politics, and I?expect that from Barack Obama. I?don’t ever expect it from a Republican.”

Republican candidate Rick Santorum yesterday accused Romney of playing dirty over Mitt’s use of a 5-year-old Santorum recording in which the former Pa. Sen. had endorsed Romney for 2008 president.

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And then there were five.

Former ambassador to China and Mitt Romney understudy Jon Huntsman has withdrawn his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, teaching us that it takes more than a nice face and Chinese as a second language to impress the American right.

Fresh off the campaign trail where he regularly languished in the bottom 2 percent in national polls, Huntsman is now perfecting his role as dutiful understudy, borrowing a move from the Mitt flip-flop playbook and promptly reversing course on his Mormon brother. Having just a week ago denounced Romney as  “completely unelectable”, hunter Jon has now turned around and endorsed him, describing Romney as the candidate “best equipped to defeat Barack Obama.”

Curious. Does Huntsman mean “defeat” as in “on the field of battle?” How else to explain how he so positively describes the electoral prospects of someone he finds totally unequipped for victory?

No matter, it’s all water under the bridge now, as the Huntsman campaign has backtracked on months of negativity, rewriting attack rhetoric and removing the scathing anti-Romney Web videos it had put together. (“When there’s a question about whether you’re running for the White House or running for the Waffle House, then you’ve got a big problem with the American people,” Huntsman had said of Romney in late 2011.)

Romney is now probably hoping the Huntsman bump is somewhat more effective for him than it was for Huntsman.

Get Fed

Because sometimes you’ve only got time to skim the headlines:
   
“Snooki endorses Trump for president” huffingtonpost.com
   
“Santorum Accuses    Rival’s Group Of ‘Smear Campaign’” huffingtonpost.com
   
“Fox News: ‘You Can Pee on Me All You Want, Don’t Shoot Me’” politicususa.com
  
“Perry on Huntsman dropout: I’ll miss the Jon girls” POLITICO.com
   
“Jon Huntsman’s Campaign Killed By Terminal Dullness”  The Daily Beast
   
“Scott Brown And Elizabeth Warren To Talk Third-Party Ad Detente” tpm.com
   
“White House blasts Internet piracy bills” CNN.com

He said, we said

“If Mitt Romney really believes ‘corporations are people, my friend’, then Mitt Romney is
a serial killer.”
-Attack ad by Citizens for a better tomorrow tomorrow, the super pac formerly controlled by Stephen Colbert.

The satirist, who has used his popular TV?show to plumb the depths of campaign finance, handed his money-baby over to fellow host Jon Stewart in order to take his message to South Carolina after news he had outpolled Jon Huntsman.

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Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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If you buy that, I suppose you also believe Springsteen is just a struggling young rocker from Jersey, Congress is hard at work and I’m this year’s Nebraska Corn Queen. Come on. No sitting president, Democratic or Republican, is ever the underdog in a race for re-election. He may be challenged, troubled, befuddled, on the ropes or in a fix, but I repeat: He is never the underdog.

Consider these very un-underdogish facts: In 2008, Barack Obama beat the beagles out of John McCain in terms of fundraising, raking in and spending so much green that he was able to turn formerly critical red states like Indiana and North Carolina blue. This time around, he and the Democratic Party are once again racing into the cash dash like greyhounds, and breaking records along the way. Any real underdog would be sitting at a Sonic Drive-In right now, eating Tater Tots with his campaign director wondering if they had enough gas in the Prius to reach Ames.

This president, like any other, enjoys more free coverage on the Internet, radio, TV, in magazines and newspapers than any contender can ever hope for, no matter how much money he’s made from his pizza empire. And Barack Obama, like his predecessors, is shrewd about conducting the public’s business in a way that steals the limelight from his foes during their big campaign moments.

And there is this: Incumbents tend to win. Especially since 1900, the odds have said once a person settles into the Oval Office he is there to stay for two terms. Re-election is the rule; being kicked out is the exception.

To his credit, President Obama did not raise this notion of being the underdog on his own. It was tossed his way like a tennis ball for a golden retriever. He simply dashed out to snatch it up. But the political facts say presidents just can’t wear that collar; no more than a Doberman can claim to be a Chihuahua. For all his problems in the polls, Barack Obama remains the single most potent political player in America today — and he’s undeniably the big dog in this fight.

– CNN’s Tom Foreman is a regular on “AC360°”/www.ac360.com and “The Situation Room.”

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