National Journal:
Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney sought to tamp down expectations on Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in three primary states, a sign that he is unsure of sweeping all three, especially considering a late surge in the polls by rival Rick Santorum in Missouri and Minnesota.
And what happened? The activists show up and reject Romney. Again. Still. Good luck in November, Mitt.
Ah, yet another surge of Santorum Google list.
Dana Milbank:
Obama suddenly seems to be enjoying himself quite a bit, and no wonder: He just might be the luckiest man alive.
USA Today:
"Komen needs to do everything they can for damage control," says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University in San Francisco who has written about Komen's use of "cause marketing." She notes that people buy products with pink ribbons because it make them feel good to help women with cancer. Komen needs to work hard to rekindle that warm feeling and erase any negative associations with its brand, she says.
"There has always been a sense that Komen is a little too corporate, a little more plastic than the other charities," Strahilevitz says. "They will need to increase and really talk about their efforts to serve underserved women."
Women's health is the issue and the only issue. They need to actually serve underserved women. Then and only then can they talk about it.
AP:
[Karen Handel's] resignation could burnish her anti-abortion credentials with conservative activists should she again seek elective office.
Because nothing burnishes your conservative credentials like a major screw-up that takes down a national brand and gets you fired.
AP:
Republican presidential candidates pounced on what they considered a blunder by President Barack Obama. They believe his administration’s ruling will alienate moderate Catholic voters who could prove crucial in November in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
So Republican candidates don't know how to read polls (see
Sorry, GOP: Poll of Catholics finds majority supports birth-control coverage.) So what else is new? But hey, since you are losing on the improving economy, why not dump Romney and try the Santorum approach?
Oops, I guess you lose there, too.
WaPo:
A key White House adviser on faith issues said Tuesday that several organizations with ties to the administration have approached President Obama’s aides about finding a resolution to fast-growing controversy over a new rule requiring many Catholic institutions to offer birth control and other contraception services as part of employees’ health care coverage...
One possible compromise was introduced as early as last October, long before the issue hit the national headlines, when one of Obama’s outside advisers drafted a plan that would have allowed women working for Catholic institutions to receive coverage directly from insurers rather than from the objecting institutions themselves.
NY Times:
Geoff Garin, a pollster who has worked for decades with Planned Parenthood and other women’s groups, predicted that the attacks from Mr. Romney and other Republicans would only work with voters who are hard-core Republicans anyway — not with people inclined to support the president.
The Hill:
GOP field, Obama campaign say Romney hypocritical in contraception attacks
Romney has been hammering Obama's mandate, believing the issue can help him to appeal both to the religious right and centrist Catholic voters who supported the president in the last election.
But both his Democratic and Republican opponents on Tuesday pointed out that as governor of Massachusetts, he required all hospitals — including Catholic institutions — to provide the morning-after pill.
Bill Frezza, writing at
Forbes, tries, with varying degrees of success, to make sense of the abortion dilemma from a libertarian perspective.
