Santorum first addressed the health of his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, who, suffers from a serious genetic disorder. The Santorum family spent the entire weekend will her in the hospital.

“She is a fighter and she is doing exceptionally well and is back with us and the family,” Santorum said. “It did cause us to think… this was a time for prayer and thought.”

After spending several minutes recalling memorable moments from the campaign trail, including the buzz about his tendency to wear sweater vests, Santorum officially announced that he is suspending his campaign,

“We made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race is over for me and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting,” Santorum said.

Speculation that Santorum could be headed for the exit increased last Thursday when he held a strategy meeting with conservative leaders.

Then his daughter, Bella, was hospitalized on the weekend. She was likely to be released on Monday.

A loss in Pennsylvania in the April 24 primary would be seen as hammering the final nail into the coffin of Santorum’s campaign and unofficially crown Romney as the Republican who will face President Barack Obama in November’s election.

While Romney’s campaign suspended advertising on Monday out of deference to Santorum’s ill daughter, the front-runner’s Super PAC, Restore Our Future, made no such gesture, staying on the air with $480,000 in time already bought.

Neither Santorum nor the Super PAC that supports him has started spending money on advertising in Pennsylvania, but spokeswoman Stewart insisted the campaign had the money to spend time on the air.

Related:

Metropolitik: Rick Santorum chose the easy way out

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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.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

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Observe.
 
The music video, titled “Game On” has a lot of shiny happy people holding signs, with sisters Camille and Haley Harris front and center with a catchy tune. Among the heartfelt lyrics in the ditty are lines like:

• “We’ve got a man that understands that God gave the Bill of Rights.”
• “There is hope for our nation again… maybe the first time since we had Ronald Reagan.” (Yes, “again” and “Reagan” can rhyme, as demonstrated by the Harris sisters)
• “Faithful to his wife and seven kids, will be loyal to our land.”
• “Yes, we believe Rick Santoooruuuuuuum is our man….. Game on!”

This. Just. Happened.

Among shots of the sisters and their family members ecstatically playing instruments, there are also artistic close-ups of fingers switching chords and playful hair scrunching above wayfarer sunglasses.

The eight-kid Harris family, a.k.a musical group First Love, said it felt compelled to write this song after meeting Rick Santorum and his wife, both outspoken Christians, in Tulsa.

“We feel privileged and honored to write this song for them. It was 100% our idea to write this for them – he deserves it,” they commented below their video.

The Harris family is likely a kindhearted bunch, and, hey, everyone knows a family that sings together, stays together. You can’t fault them for having the courage to state their political views in a creative, public way, BUT — do they really think God gave us the Bill of Rights?!

The post VIDEO: ‘First Love’ song about Rick Santorum sparks nationwide cringe appeared first on Metro.us.

Romney won the most obvious contests: in Massachusetts, where he served as a moderate governor, for example, and in Virginia, where only he and Ron Paul were on ballots due to the other candidates’ organizational failures. But a closer-than-expected win in the Old Dominion and a too-close-to-call race with Rick Santorum in Ohio underscored the difficulty the Romney camp has had in definitively ending the damaging competition. 

In Ohio, a key battleground state and one of the most closely watched contests yesterday, Romney picked up delegates but lost the intangible sense of his inevitability. The results were unclear as of press time, but a strong victory would have sent a message that conservatives were ready to board the battered bandwagon. What he got instead says that Republican voters remain unwilling to commit to the candidate seen by many as the most likely to best President Obama in
November — but one who is
also seen as the most moderate of the four GOP candidates.

None of which deterred Romney’s characteristic enthusiasm, however. “This is a process of gathering enough delegates to become the nominee,” he said blandly yesterday, “and I think we’re on track to have that happen.”

Voters, on the other hand, were not all quite as certain. “I’m not really thrilled with any of them, so I just figured I’d vote for Ron Paul,” said Ohio voter Tim Kell, 50. “I just think with everything — with all the TV commercials and all the phone calls and everything … I think it’s crazy. Nobody seems to run on their own merit.”

(Ad spending has been a major component of the 2012 race, with candidates and associated groups spending nearly $10 million on TV and radio ads for Super Tuesday alone.)

For his part, Newt Gingrich won his adopted state of Georgia, a widely predicted outcome but one that makes things more difficult for his fellow not-Romney candidate, Santorum. In this way, Romney gets a small win despite losing — the promise of continued vote-splitting among the two candidates billed as being more conservative benefits the current delegate leader.
Rep. Ron Paul claimed no victories.

The day’s results hold significance, with nearly 20 percent of Republican convention delegates at stake. A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to win the nomination; some 419 were up for grabs yesterday.

Get smitten for Mittens

Mitt Romney is the one you’ve always had around, your Plan B, the one you fear to settle on; but not “the one.” That is, unless the others break your heart, or maybe you’ve just run out of time.       
         
For eight months, fickle GOP voters speed-dated six candidates. Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum charmed and crashed faster than a Kim Kardashian marriage. For some strange reason, lunar colonies and banning contraception got no love from voters. And now, after Super Tuesday’s results, the party seems settled on taking Mr. Romney to the ball, but with flip-flops rather than glass slippers.  

Everyone wants to be smitten, no one likes to settle. But voters wisely showed yesterday that they are tired of the drama in the dating game. Few would dispute that this drawn-out primary process has at least temporarily hurt the Republican brand. No current GOP candidate garners a favorability rating above 40 percent in any recent poll, while President Obama’s job approval stands at 48 percent in the Real Clear Politics average.  Even if it means settling on an imperfect candidate in Gov. Romney, it is imperative that our attention now be focused squarely on Obama.

Republicans should begin crafting a narrative that concentrates on the president’s economic failures. If the unemployment rate continues its downward trend, Romney will need more to win than just being America’s job-creating CEO. For all his policy failings, Obama is still likeable, serenading us with Al Green while Romney was screeching “America the Beautiful.”

Romney should turn off the karaoke mic and focus on two issues: the $15.5 trillion debt and inflation — at the gas pump and the grocery store, where Americans feel rising prices the most.

With his stiff personality, Romney will never win over the majority of Americans, but he can win on competence, having balanced budgets his entire career. Maybe “settling” isn’t such a bad word?

– Michael Kan is currently a second-year law student at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Contact him for comments, criticisms and Groupon deals.

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

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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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If you’ve always wanted your own action figure of your favorite GOP presidential candidate, your wish has been granted!

HeroBuilders, dubbed “The Last American Toy Company,” has launched a line of oddly dressed and disproportionate action figures for each Republican hopeful including Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. Herman Cain’s doll comes with an optional “Playmate.” There are two versions of Rick Perry: Regular man or Executive man — the choice is yours.

Also, for some reason, a Hilary Clinton doll is included in the line up.

But wait, that’s not all — you can also choose to buy the talking version of your favorite candidate. That’s right, press a button and hear your action figure say something totally adorable in GOP speak!

Rick Santorum, in a mini-sized version of his famous sweater vest, says, “It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology — no less a theology.”

Rick Perry’s doll stumbles through his infamous gaffe when trying to recall the three agencies he plans to do away with as president. His action figure says, “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the ummm… uhhh… what’s the third one there? Let’s see…. education.. the uhhh… commerce… and let’s see, I can’t… the third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”

Prices for the action figures range from $39.95 to $65.95. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

The post Get your 2012 GOP candidate action figure appeared first on Metro.us.

Santorum believes that climate change science is a hoax, and this week he offered some of his reasoning. He explained that “man has dominion over the Earth” and “unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent and we can actually manage things.” But environmentalists, Santorum says, view man “just like any other species out there.” They spend too much time “worshiping the Earth” and not enough time worrying about “man and his light.” 

So, Rick Santorum rides in cars, flies in airplanes, protects his family’s health with modern medicine, receives his campaign funding through a worldwide electronic banking system and communicates with voters via TV and the Internet — while simultaneously believing that his incoherent extrapolations from the book of Genesis are an admissible argument against science?

These wonders of modernity would be impossible if millions of scientists, each devoting their lives to the discovery of counterintuitive truths, had not persevered in convincing a skeptical world that its traditional understandings of how things worked — reeking of superstition and religious dogma — were bitterly mistaken.

What Santorum fails to understand is that climate science is no different than the rest of science — it is produced by the very same research methods and rigorous evaluative standards as all other science. In fact, this is precisely what makes something “science,” and not speculation, religion or, dare I say, politics — it’s called the scientific method.

When a scientist claims to have used the scientific method, the other scientists make no leaps of faith. Instead, they scrutinize every aspect of the research and hunt relentlessly for the smallest mistake, for any remotely questionable data. Only after the vast majority of a researcher’s peers, each poring over not only the research itself but every criticism of it, can find no flaw in the researcher’s adherence to the scientific method — only then — can the findings be cautiously said to have produced a scientific fact.

C­limate change research has undergone the same rigorous review process as research that has led to the space program, the prevention of polio, the Internet and even the carbon fuel extraction and consumption techniques that scientists now identify as a primary cause of climate change.

The fact that “97.5 percent of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change” have reviewed such research without objection should motivate even someone as ignorant as Rick Santorum to pause, if only momentarily, to consider whether he is truly willing to gamble the fate of the world and all of God’s creatures on his unsubstantiated gut feeling that either (1) all of these scientists are, on just this one topic, somehow mistaken, or (2) Jesus will arrive in the nick of time and, sailing across the bubbling oceans atop the last dwindling slab of glacial ice, whisk the righteous away to a better place where there aren’t any consequences for one’s actions — or for one’s beliefs.

Follow Michael J. Frosch on Twitter @michaeljfrosch & @metropolitik.

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You’re trying to tell us that this is the panel, pictured below, assembled to discuss the
birth control mandate in President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act?

The lack of estrogen in this group makes is almost comical, if, you
know, it didn’t directly affect female health, in which case, it’s
depressing.

Here is what this group of men is discussion, via Metro’s Metropolitik columnist, Brayden Simms:

Republican politicians are making big noise about a mandate, connected
to Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, requiring employers to provide
preventative care for women. Because the Catholic Church has taken a
strong stance against this rule — claiming that their hospitals and
universities ought to be uniquely free of the employer requirement —
House Speaker John Boehner has promised to kill the “unambiguous attack
on religious freedom.

The Obama Administration later compromised with religious groups who
opposed the Act. Now, insurance companies will be required to provide
birth control coverage when an employer refused to include it on
religious grounds.

We’d like to point out that birth control is prescribed for medical
reasons other than preventing pregnancies. We know people who take it to
cure ovarian cysts and to regulate their menstrual cycles. We’re
willing to bet that a majority of women on birth control take it to ease
the pain caused by their periods.

Since none of these men in this photo has ever curled up at their desks
at work suffering from what feels like someone punching them in the
stomach with a hammer, all while trying to brush it off to their boss as just feeling “under the weather,” we cannot help but be upset.

2. Sex is as addictive as drugs

A video that the American Life League released tries to convince parents that Planned Parenthood is out to maliciously hook kids on sex, the same way a drug dealer hooks a junkie on drugs. We didn’t make up the analogy, they did. (The video was taken down from You Tube, but click here to read more about it.)

The gist of the video is that Planned Parenthood hooks kids on sex, so kids will have to buy birth control, then pay for an STD testing and of course, then pay for abortions. The reason? Cha-ching! This vicious cycle allegedly brings in big bucks for Planned Parenthood.

This video, which insultingly paints all girls as sluts, fails to make any sense whatsoever.

Excuse us, but even though these girls are on birth control, they’re all somehow getting pregnant. How does that work?

Also, the video attacks Planned Parenthood for providing information on its website about condoms, masturbation and all forms of sex.

Right, because everyone who wants to have safe sex, or (gasp!) explore their own bodies is clearly waving their freak flag.

3. Foster Friess, big-time funder to Rick Santorum, said the stupidest thing we’ve heard all week.

“Back in my day, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he said Thursday on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports.

Again folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

The conversation was about Santorum’s past statements about contraception.

Friess argues that the contraception is inexpensive. Since he’s not the one taking a birth control pill every day, let us do the math.

With insurance, a generic birth control prescription can cost $15 per month. That’s $180 per year. Without health insurance, a generic birth control costs $50 (folks, we are rounding down, because birth control can cost much, much more). $50 per month equals $600 per year.

Here are a few things I could do with an extra $600 per year.

1. Pay my rent
2. Take a vacation
3. Pay off my student loans

So how can you say contraception is ‘inexpensive,’ Mr. Friess?

At one point, Friess says, “We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are.”

That’s one thing we can all agree on. After such an ignorant comment, excuse us while we call our therapists.

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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Former Sen. Rick Santorum was the decisive winner on Tuesday night, coming from a widely presumed third place to sweep all three Republican contests — in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado — as he took advantage of presumptive front-runner Mitt Romney’s complacency and “I’m-not-Romney” rival Newt Gingrich’s Gingrichness to whip his base into a vote-crushing froth.

Or was he?

One might expect a parade of positive headlines for Santorum the day following such an overwhelming rout, and indeed there were some such. Many campaign reports, however, painted the Santorum wins as further cementing Romney’s chances of scoring the nomination even as they do damage to his sense of inevMittability. (Yeah, we went there.)
Confused? Read on.

For one, Romney backers point out that all three of Tuesday’s contests were nonbinding. What this means practically is that delegates — whose votes the candidates need to secure in order to become their party’s nominee — will not necessarily be awarded along voting lines. Though it can be expected that delegates will be roughly similar to vote tallies, no one knows for sure.

Perhaps more important, though, is how the Santorum sweeps throw a fat wrench in Gingrich’s Anyone But Romney momentum. The former House speaker, who has been pushing hard to force this mantle upon himself, performed even worse than Romney on Tuesday, and that’s saying a lot. Gingrich has now won one contest to Romney’s three and Santorum’s four. Romney wins so long as the not-Romney crowd continues to split that base.

Of course, it would be a huge miscalculation  to write off the message sent by these voters, that being a reaffirmation of one of the 2012 campaign’s most puzzling truths: Despite his presumed victory, massive organization and perfect hair, many voters seem to really dislike Mitt Romney. A recent poll actually shows many voters saying they like him less the more they know him. And they’ll
only come to know him more in the coming months.

The challenge for conservatives will be to coalesce around a single opposition candidate before they end up knowing more than they can stomach.

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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Aside from hitting the Ronald Reagan trifecta — Romney, Gingrich and Santorum name-dropped the right-wing icon all in their first at-bat to speak — what did the candidates focus on at Monday night’s debate? Well, they lied — not just through their teeth, but via their lips and tongues as well. 

“We’re headed to a Greece-type collapse, and [Obama] adds another trillion on top for Obamacare and for his stimulus plan that didn’t create private-sector jobs.” Mitt Romney

This one quote from Romney, as NYMag points out, “fits three lies into a single sentence,” which is impressive for any politician and surely deserves accolades from both sides of the aisle for its contribution to the art of politicking.

“The Iranians are …. actively taunting us … so [Obama] cancels a military exercise with the Israelis so as not to be provocative?” Newt Gingrich

The former Speaker incorrectly sums up the president’s relationship with Iran. Aside from the fact that, according to reports, it was actually Israel who delayed this exercise, Gingrich downplays the president’s toughest-ever sanctions against Iran.

“The biggest issue that … we have to deal with … that’s crushing the economy, will crush it even further and crush freedom … that’s Obamacare.” Rick Santorum

We know that vocal conservatives oppose the Affordable Care Act — and will do and say anything to kill it — but the idea that mandated insurance is bad for the economy is just wrong. A mandate, in this case, benefits insurance companies.

“He keeps hinting about attacking the Fed, and he talks about gold.” Ron Paul

It was difficult to find untruthful remarks from Rep. Ron Paul, who spent much of the debate railing against U.S. military adventurism and our banking system. On that latter point, Paul seems overly optimistic on returning the dollar to the gold standard, about which he lauds Gingrich in the above quote. Economists surveyed by the University of Chicago, however, unanimously oppose the move.

The post Metropolitik: Fact-checking America’s fact creators appeared first on Metro.us.

Partial returns from the state Republican Party showed the three candidates winning roughly 23 percent of the vote each with about 22 percent of precincts reporting.

The months-long campaign has been marked by volatility. Romney is a favorite of the party’s business wing, while Santorum appeared to be consolidating the state’s large bloc of Christian conservatives.
Paul has drawn a passionate following among libertarians and younger voters.

Iowa’s caucuses are known more for weeding out candidates than picking the future president but a strong finish here could provide a big boost in the state-by-state battle to choose the Republican to stand against Obama in the November 6 election.

Most of the candidates have topped opinion polls at one point in a race that until recently centered on televised debates rather than on-the-ground campaigning.

Many voters remain undecided and the unusual caucus process adds an element of unpredictability.
Voters gathered in public meetings at hundreds of sites around the state such as schools, libraries and churches, listening to speeches touting the various candidates before casting their ballots. Democrats and independents are allowed to participate as long as they re-register as Republicans at the site.

“I’m paying great attention, I just can’t decide,” said Judy Peters, the owner of an events center where roughly 1,000 voters were to meet. “There’s bits and pieces of each candidate that I like and bits and pieces that I don’t.”
Outside groups associated with candidates, known as “Super PACs,” have taken advantage of loosened campaign-finance rules to flood the Iowa airwaves with negative advertising.

Former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has seen his support erode under a barrage of such attack advertisements. Early returns showed him in fourth place ahead of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

“Poor Newt. I kind of feel sorry for him. He’s just been savaged,” said voter James Patterson, who said he plans to vote for Romney. “Somebody’s really, really mad at Newt.”

Gingrich said he would keep his campaign positive.

“You have a chance tonight to send a signal to America,” he told voters in Cedar Falls. “You can do that by refusing to vote for anyone who has run negative ads.”

Sparsely populated Iowa only yields 28 delegates of the 1,143 needed to lock up the Republican presidential nomination, and those delegates aren’t actually awarded for months after Tuesday’s caucuses.

Still, the stakes are high.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is aiming for a win that could ease persistent doubts among conservatives about his moderate past and propel him toward clinching the nomination early.
He is heavily favored to win next week’s New Hampshire primary.

Surveys show Romney performs best among Republicans in head-to-head matchups with Obama in a campaign certain to focus on the economy and high unemployment.

Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, hopes to emerge as the latest conservative alternative to Romney.

“I was really not interested in any of the candidates at all and I didn’t notice Santorum because he was so low in the polls,” said Rachel Wright, an artist who spoke on behalf of Santorum at a caucus in Ames. She approved his anti-abortion stand. “He is really strong pro-lifer. I admire his faith, and I almost admire that he isn’t in our face about it.”

Largely consigned to the margins for most of the race, Santorum is now fending off attacks from his rivals who see him as a new threat. On Tuesday, he accused Paul of launching a wave of automated phone calls that questioned Santorum’s anti-abortion and pro-gun credentials.

A win by Paul, a congressman from Texas, would help him extend his minimal-government stance and broaden the appeal of his campaign outside his zealous base, many of them independents, disaffected Democrats and younger voters.

Flickering Hopes

Struggling rivals like Texas Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann are fighting for at least a fourth-place finish that could preserve their flickering hopes.

“People are looking for the one true core conservative that can take on Barack Obama and win. That’s what I’ve demonstrated throughout the campaign,” Bachmann told CNN.

The caucuses start a frenzied month for the Republican presidential hopefuls that will include a half-dozen debates in January and three more state votes — on January 10 in New Hampshire, January 21 in South Carolina and January 31 in Florida.

Iowa’s nominating contest has traditionally cleared the field of losers and elevated surprise contenders. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee won the 2008 Republican caucuses, but fell short of the nomination. The eventual nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, finished a distant fourth.

Obama launched his White House run with an Iowa win four years ago. This time, Obama is the only Democrat running, but the party is holding caucuses anyway and he will address caucus-goers by video on Tuesday night.

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Even if Rick Santorum succeeds in his increasingly-less-impossible mission of winning the Iowa Caucuses, he will likely end up as the second type of caucus winner. But that doesn’t mean that his candidacy will have been a waste. Rather than focusing on his political defeats, Santorum would be wise to take solace in his sartorial victories. For if there’s one lasting legacy the former Pennsylvania senator leaves behind, it’s his unwavering determination that a sweater vest is an acceptable thing for an adult man to wear in public. (That, and his conviction that states should have a right to ban birth control.)

Below, a brief look at the way Santorum is revitalizing the sweater vest, with a variety of diverse looks and styles.

The somber gray vest, which adds a touch of monochrome class to the Iowa stump:

The classic blue vest, an America tradition — reinvented:

The drab olive vest, a nod to the retro military-inspired stylings of designer Alexander McQueen:

Finally, the striking crimson vest, incorporating the aesthetics of college football into a political context:

Which look is your favorite?

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and libertarian Congressman Ron Paul are neck and neck in the lead in Iowa polls.

But Santorum, uniting voters on the Christian right who have been divided for months, is making a late move and could pull off a victory.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who could suffer with a good Santorum showing, tried to slow the momentum of the former Pennsylvania senator, who lost his re-election bid in 2006.

Romney eyes Iowa advantage

With the Iowa caucuses looming today, it seems inevitable that the former Massachusetts governor will do well in, if not win, the first contest in the race for the Republican nomination for president.

But even as Romney appears positioned to take control of the Republican race, a question hangs over his campaign: Can he connect with voters on a personal level any better than he did during his losing campaign in 2008 — or even inspire them?

Nearly three days of traveling with Romney in Iowa revealed a candidate who has improved significantly in face-to-face encounters with voters, but who still has difficulty inspiring them.

Romney’s crowds are respectful, but not the boisterous groups one might associate with a front-runner. 

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