Visual source:
Newseum
Politics:
Roll Call on Mean Jean Schmidt's losing:
Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt had tough primaries before, but it’s obvious she didn’t see this one coming.
Podiatrist Brad Wenstrup defeated Schmidt by 6 points in Tuesday’s GOP primary, likely ending the controversial Congresswoman’s career.
Her unexpected loss serves as a warning for many Members seeking re-election on new turf after redistricting or facing even the smallest political challenge. More importantly, Schmidt’s loss signals a still-unsettled electorate looking for a reason — any reason — to boot an incumbent from office...
Meanwhile, Schmidt’s antagonists in the district beat the drum for her defeat, including the tea party group COAST. Schmidt’s recent run-in with the House Ethics Committee played a primary role in the tea party group’s argument to voters.
Matt Miller:
What a coincidence that President Obama’s first news conference in nearly six months just happened to fall on Super Tuesday! And what a twist of fate that the president found himself addressing the United Auto Workers conference last week on the very day of the Michigan primary, where he had the chance to blast an unnamed GOP candidate for saying we should have “let Detroit go bankrupt.”
Barack Obama is the new master of the “split screen.” The White House is managing the president’s schedule and activities so that major events on the GOP campaign calendar become chances to contrast the president in the news cycle with the frivolous, shrill and increasingly surreal Republican race. The targets of this campaign are the independent voters who will decide the November election.
The “split-screen” strategy is looking very effective so far.
Gail Collins:
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Mitt Romney once drove to Canada with the family Irish setter on the roof of the car.
Ha ha. Every column, Gail. And we are loving it.
Delegate Math:
Harold Meyerson/WaPo:
For Republicans, the presidential primary contest has become a nightmare from which they can’t wake up. Their front-running candidate cannot close the deal; their runners-up cannot surge sufficiently to displace the front-runner. Each candidate’s favorability rating has drooped as the campaign rolls on. None has been able to broaden his support beyond a relatively narrow base. The prospect that no candidate will amass a decisive majority of delegates well before the party’s August convention looks increasingly plausible.
USA Today:
With none of the candidates giving any indication of dropping out, Super Tuesday's results may only prolong the nomination battle into June or beyond.
That's because even if Romney runs the table of remaining contests — highly unlikely, given that proportional delegate allocation rules often give some of the delegates to second- or third-place finishers — it would be mid-May before Romney has even a mathematical chance of clinching the nomination.
But the math is one thing. Reality is another.
"You often have a tipping point that's short of that," said Rhodes Cook, a political analyst and editor of the Rhodes Cook letter. "If that guy gets up to a certain percentage, say two-thirds of the delegates, and they have a clear lead of a couple hundred delegates, he reaches a point where people perceive it as inevitable." For Romney, he said that tipping point may be about 800 delegates.
And policy:
Gail Wilensky/New England Journal of Medicine:
Directions for Bipartisan Medicare Reform
Various experts and policymakers have been converging around a targeted growth rate for Medicare spending of growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) plus 1%. The proposal from the Obama administration, the proposal from former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), and now Wyden–Ryan all reference GDP plus 1% as their target growth rate.5 The question of how to achieve that rate is another story, but the occurrence of discussions among both Democrats and Republicans about strategies for ensuring a specified spending growth rate represents a fundamental move away from Medicare as an open-ended entitlement.