Open Thread

Happy Sunday.

"Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney all said that if elected president they would eliminate porn. In a related story, President Obama has already been re-elected."---Conan O'Brien

The unpredictable Republican presidential race has taken another surprising turn as recent numbers show Mongol warlord Genghis Khan seizing the lead in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. Benefiting from widespread doubts about Mitt Romney’s authenticity and ideological commitment, Genghis has changed the shape of the race by sounding sharp populist themes that resonate with supporters of the tea party. “Mitt Romney wants to manage Washington, D.C.,” he told an enthusiastic crowd in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I want to burn it to the ground, slay its inhabitants, and stack their skulls in pyramids reaching to the sky.”

Nate Silver gives Santorum a 77% chance of winning the Michigan primary. He also now says the fundamentals favor an Obama victory in the fall.

"If Romney were to lose Michigan, it is very difficult to see how he can accumulate a majority of delegates ... And if Santorum does well in [poorer Michigan] districts, he could transfer that support to the other rust belt states that look a lot like them. The most important of these rust belt states is Ohio, which votes on 7 March. Michigan has somewhat fewer born-again Christians and evangelicals than Ohio (46%) did in the 2008 Republican primary. It had a nearly equal percentage of those making greater than $200,000 to Ohio's (5%). If Rick Santorum can win in both Michigan and Ohio, I can begin to see how he could conceivably put together enough delegates to reach a majority. He seems to be polling well enough in the south (leading in Tennessee, for example) to win the nomination – even if he loses in states like New York, New Jersey and California (though a recent poll there put him in a close second)."

Polling-polooza today. Newt Gingrich has promised to stay in the race for the duration, and he is even predicting that he will experience a third surge. Hey, its possible.

Mitt Romney under-whelmingly won the Maine Caucuses on Saturday, but that news was overshadowed by Whitney Houston's death. Although now it seems that Ron Paul could pull a Rick Santorum and win Maine after all. Here are the polls that came out during the weekend. Santorum has stormed into the lead in one recent national poll.

The next Republican primary contest is in Arizona on February 28th. And there is no new polling on that. So here is some Virginia polling, showing President Obama doing very well there. Meanwhile, Nate Silver thinks this primary race will now be prolonged, and Chuck Todd says we know that the economy is improving because the Republicans are reverting back to their culture war playbook.