Groups opposing and supporting President Barack Obama’s re-election are making high gas prices the focal point of new television commercials in Iowa and other swing states. Videos and transcripts of the latest ads by the American Energy Alliance and Priorities USA are after the jump.

Last week Obama urged Congress to end tax breaks for oil companies, citing the industry’s high profits. U.S. Senate Republicans filibustered a bill that would have ended several deductions for five major oil companies and extended various renewable energy tax incentives. Senator Tom Harkin voted to move forward with that bill, but Senator Chuck Grassley voted to block it, as he did with similar legislation in May 2011.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’m catching up on two stories I didn’t have time to write about during the past week: President Barack Obama’s choice of Jim Yong Kim to be next president of the World Bank, and Vice President Joe Biden’s March 28 visits to Davenport and Sioux City. Kim was born in South Korea but grew up in Muscatine, where his family moved when he was five years old. More clips about Kim and Biden’s latest Iowa trip are after the jump.

Sad news from the south side of Des Moines: Cha Cha, the male lion at the Blank Park Zoo, was euthanized this week after being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. He was 16 years old.

This is an open thread; all topics welcome.  

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Hope you are enjoying the unseasonably warm spring weather.

Mitt Romney may be the least-liked presidential front-runner ever among the Republican base, but he seems to have a lock on the GOP nomination. Despite losing the Louisiana primary convincingly to Rick Santorum yesterday, Romney has nearly half of the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Santorum has fewer than half as many delegates, and only 21 states plus Washington, DC have yet to vote.

Competition for the “not Romney” niche may allow Mitt Romney to emerge from today’s Deep South primaries as a close second or third, rather than as a front-runner hated by the conservative base. With about a third of the votes counted in Alabama as of 9 pm, Rick Santorum has 35 percent of the vote, Newt Gingrich has 30 percent, Romney has 28 percent, and Ron Paul has 5 percent. Nearly 80 percent of the votes have been counted in Mississippi, where Santorum has 33 percent, Gingrich 32 percent, Romney 30 percent, and Paul 4 percent. Polls are still open in Hawaii, where I assume Romney will win easily. None of the candidates spent much time campaigning there.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: The streak continues: Romney has not won any Republican primary or caucus “where the evangelical portion of the vote has been over 50 percent.” Final unofficial results from Mississippi: Santorum 33 percent, Gingrich 31 percent, Romney 30 percent, Paul 4 percent. From Alabama: Santorum 35 percent, Gingrich 29 percent, Romney 29 percent, Paul 5 percent.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: 45 percent of Hawaii primary voters went for Romney; Santorum had 25 percent, Paul 18 percent, Gingrich 11 percent.

Tonight may be the last chance for Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich to stop Mitt Romney from becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Senator Chuck Grassley hinted to The Hill today that he may endorse Romney if Romney wins the Ohio primary. I’m guessing that Newt will pull enough votes in Ohio to keep Santorum from beating Romney. I also suspect that Santorum will lose the Catholic vote in Ohio, like he did in Michigan. He and Gingrich have to hope that convincing victories in southern states give them an excuse to stay in the race.

I’ll post results from all the Super Tuesday states after the jump. Any comments about the presidential campaign are welcome in this thread.

Polls just closed in Michigan and will close in an hour in Arizona. Mitt Romney’s fighting for his political life in the state where his father used to be governor. I cannot believe that someone who’s been in politics as long as Romney says things like my wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs” and “I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”

I love how Rick Santorum’s campaign robocalled Michigan Democrats seeking their votes in the primary because Romney opposed the bailout of U.S. automakers. The call didn’t mention that Santorum also has spoken out against that bailout.

I’ll update this post later with results. Meanwhile, any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Romney is easily winning Arizona with 49 percent of the votes to 25 percent for Santorum, 16 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 9 percent for Ron Paul. LATER UPDATE: Final Arizona results: Romney 47, Santorum 27, Gingrich 16, Paul 8. Romney gets all 29 delegates from the state.

With about three-quarters of the Michigan votes counted, Romney’s the projected winner with 41 percent to 37 percent for Santorum, 12 percent for Paul, and 7 percent for Gingrich. LATER UPDATE: With almost all the votes in, Romney’s at 41, Santorum 38, Paul 12, Gingrich 7. It’s not clear yet whether Romney or Santorum will win more delegates, which are assigned by Congressional district in Michigan. Exit polls suggest that Romney carried the Catholic vote in Michigan, which means it wasn’t too smart for Santorum to attack JFK during the final week of the campaign.

In a CNN interview, Paul denied that he is “in cahoots” with Romney.  

Tonight the four remaining Republican candidates for president take the stage in Mesa, Arizona, for the final debate before super Tuesday. CNN will broadcast the debate starting at 7 pm central time. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are under the most pressure to dent Rick Santorum’s momentum. Based on the last few debates, I expect Ron Paul to take more shots at Gingrich and Santorum than at Romney.

Any comments about the GOP presidential race are welcome in this thread. I’ll update the post later.

UPDATE: That debate wasn’t very interesting. Romney seemed to do a little better than Santorum, but I didn’t think anyone was on top form. Paul went after Santorum and mostly left Romney alone. Gingrich absurdly promised $2.50/gallon gasoline. I posted some excerpts from the CNN transcript after the jump.

Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum all lead President Barack Obama in the latest Iowa poll that Selzer & Co conducted for the Des Moines Register. The Register posted the toplines on its website Saturday evening. Paul leads Obama by 49 percent to 42 percent, Santorum leads by 48 percent to 44 percent, and Romney leads by 46 percent to 44 percent. Obama crushes Newt Gingrich by 51 percent to 37 percent.

I’ll update this post tomorrow with additional details, to be published in the Sunday Des Moines Register. If Selzer’s poll of 611 likely voters (drawn from a sample of 800 Iowa adults) is accurate, Obama’s campaign has a lot of work to do here. Reaching 270 electoral votes without winning Iowa would be difficult for the president.

UPDATE: The exact wording of the election questions and results are here (pdf).

Colorado and Minnesota held caucuses today, while Missouri held a “beauty contest” primary (that state’s delegates will be determined by caucuses set for March 17). A few links on the Republican presidential race are after the jump, and I’ll be adding results as they come in. Tonight may be Rick Santorum’s best shot at becoming the “not Romney” flavor of the month.

Anyone else in the Bleeding Heartland community not planning to watch the Superbowl tonight?

Jobs are on my mind this weekend. On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released some encouraging employment numbers. On the same day, news broke about proposed Air Force cuts that could eliminate around 500 jobs in the Des Moines area.  

With about 80 percent of the votes counted in the Florida GOP primary, Mitt Romney is beating Newt Gingrich by 47 percent to 32 percent, a wider margin than most of the last week’s polls had indicated. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are well back with 13 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread. It’s hard for me to see a path for Gingrich or anyone besides Romney winning the nomination. Even though 39 percent of exit poll respondents in Florida “said they were not satisfied” with the candidates on the ballot, a doubt a new conservative “not Romney” savior could seize the crown.

Mitt Romney is offering Florida voters a “history lesson” about Newt Gingrich this weekend.

Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul spar tonight in Jacksonville, their last debate before next Tuesday’s Florida primary. Several polls released this week have shown slight leads for Romney, but Gingrich is still in contention. It helps that a couple of wealthy supporters have given a pro-Gingrich super-PAC $10 million. A large chunk of that money is funding anti-Romney television commercials in Florida.

CNN is broadcasting tonight’s debate, with Wolf Blitzer moderating. I’ll update this post later with highlights. Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: I’ve added an anti-Romney and an anti-Gingrich ad after the jump.

SECOND UPDATE: Post-debate thoughts are now below.

This morning former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign released Romney’s 2010 tax return and some details on the “unemployed” candidate’s 2011 income. Some links and analysis are after the jump.

The final four Republican presidential candidates debate tonight in Tampa, starting at 8 pm central time on NBC. Mitt Romney will try to keep the focus off his own finances, having promised to release two years of tax returns tomorrow. Romney may also be more aggressive about drawing contrasts with Newt Gingrich, judging from a new Romney tv ad I’ve posted after the jump.

In the latest Republican debates, Ron Paul criticized Gingrich and Rick Santorum repeatedly, while mostly ignoring Romney’s record. I expect him to stick to that plan, which has a double benefit: it keeps Paul on good terms with the most likely GOP nominee while undermining his rivals for the “not Romney” vote.

I assume abortion will be a significant topic tonight, in light of the 39th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision. I don’t know what more the candidates can say on the subject, which has been explored in several previous debates.

Any comments about the debate or the GOP campaign generally are welcome in this thread.  

Polls close in South Carolina at 7 pm eastern time, and most observers now expect Newt Gingrich to beat Mitt Romney. Gingrich led the last several polls to come out of the state, and an unnamed Romney aide is spinning a tale about a Newt win being good for the GOP front-runner going forward.

Any comments about the Republican presidential primaries are welcome in this thread. I don’t think Rick Santorum will drop out at this stage, even if he finishes a distant third or fourth place tonight. He may as well stick it out until the Florida primary on January 31, to see whether Gingrich fades again as the preferred “not Romney.” Whether Santorum has the money to compete is another question. Romney has been up on Florida tv and radio for a while. Gingrich is running what sounds like a devastating Spanish-language radio ad against Romney, although Cuban-American GOP members of Congress from South Florida have endorsed Romney.

UPDATE: It’s Newt by a mile. With about 88 percent of the votes counted, Gingrich has 40.5 percent of the vote, Romney 27.0 percent, Santorum 17.4 percent and Ron Paul 13.4 percent. Excerpts from the candidates’ speeches tonight are after the jump.

LATER UPDATE: With 100 percent reporting, Gingrich received 40.4 percent of the vote, Romney 27.9 percent, Santorum 17.0 percent and Paul 13.0 percent. Gingrich won 23 of South Carolina’s delegates, while Romney won the other two. Romney carried only three counties.  

With Rick Perry dropping out of the race to endorse Newt Gingrich this morning, four Republican presidential candidates remained for tonight’s CNN debate in South Carolina. Any comments about the debate or about Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul or Rick Santorum are welcome in this thread. I’ll update with my thoughts later–so far I’m most encouraged to hear some statements by the candidates against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

UPDATE: Missed the first part of the live broadcast, but finished watching the replay on CNN and added some comments after the jump.

The Republican Party of Iowa will not declare Rick Santorum the winner of the Iowa caucuses, even though he leads Mitt Romney by a few dozen votes according to the certified results, and led Romney unofficially in the eight precincts where results could not be certified. A narrow margin of victory with a clear winner would have been great for the Iowa GOP, as it would show multiple paths to winning the caucuses. A disputed result that produces no official winner is a public relations nightmare.

UPDATE: Iowa GOP Chair Matt Strawn now admits Santorum won the caucuses. The episode still makes the party look bad, for reasons I discuss below.

Jon Huntsman’s exit from the presidential race leaves five Republican candidates taking the stage tonight for a Fox News debate, co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and the South Carolina GOP.

I will update this post later with highlights. I don’t expect Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum to do any real damage to Mitt Romney. Any comments about this debate or the GOP primary campaign are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: I missed part of the debate, but some thoughts are after the jump.

Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is under increasing scrutiny as opponents try desperately to stop him from winning next Saturday’s GOP primary in South Carolina. Some of the anti-Romney narratives can’t stand up to the same level of scrutiny. I’ve posted some links on the “Bain way” and other factors in the Republican presidential race after the jump.  

Polls just closed in New Hampshire, so here’s a thread for talking about the results as they come in. PBS will be updating vote totals here.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. It’s hard for me to see any of the other Republicans stopping Mitt Romney, especially with Rick Perry helping to splinter the conservative vote ahead of the South Carolina primary on January 21. Nor can I see any path for Jon Huntsman, even if he finishes a strong second or third tonight. I’m highly amused by Newt Gingrich’s strident rhetoric against Bain-style vulture capitalism.

UPDATE: With two-thirds of the vote in, Romney is the clear winner by a double-digit margin (38 percent to 24 percent for Ron Paul and 17 percent for Huntsman, with Gingrich and Santorum at 10 percent). Right now Perry trails “other.”

SECOND UPDATE: With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Romney has 39 percent, Paul 23 percent, Huntsman 17 percent, Gingrich and Santorum 9 percent each, and Perry 1 percent.

As Bleeding Heartland user albert pointed out in the comments, President Barack Obama received only about 82 percent of more than 50,000 votes cast in the Democratic primary. Nearly 10 percent of Democratic primary voters wrote in candidates. Of the 13 other named candidates on the Democratic ballot, two received more than 1 percent of the vote: Ed Cowan, who ran on a platform of “major change,”, and Vermin Supreme, a performance artist running on a joke platform.

Six Republican candidates are debating twice in 15 hours this weekend ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney, who’s way ahead of the field, will be playing not to lose. Everyone else will be under pressure to trip him up.

Any comments about the ABC debate on Saturday night or Sunday morning’s encounter on “Meet the Press” are welcome in this thread. I’ll liveblog the ABC debate after the jump.

Moderate Republican Fred Karger was excluded from these and all previous televised debates, but he has been campaigning in New Hampshire and has a tv ad on the air. Transcript: “Fed up with the Republican Party? Well, there’s one candidate you just might like. Fred Karger is the only moderate Republican running for president. He’s pro-choice, supports gay marriage, and wants us out of Afghanistan now. Send the Republican Party a message: vote for Fred Karger for president.”

UPDATE: Added excerpts from the Meet the Press debate transcript at the end of this post.

Mitt Romney may have wrongly been declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses due to a tabulation error, according to an exclusive KCCI-TV report today.

Representative Michele Bachmann is suspending her presidential campaign this morning after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucuses. In the summer, she briefly became the first female GOP presidential candidate to be a major contender in key early states. What happened to her afterwards won’t encourage other women to seek higher office.

This thread is for sharing stories from your precinct caucus meetings as well as for discussing the results once they have been reported.

Iowa Republicans and Democrats, I’m particularly interested to know how many candidates for Congress or the state legislature addressed your caucus, or had a campaign representative greet caucus-goers and speak on their behalf. GOP Congressional challenger Rod Blum is planning to meet Republicans in two IA-01 counties instead of caucusing in his home town of Dubuque. GOP Representative Tom Latham, who is running against Leonard Boswell next year in IA-03, claims to have lined up leaders in all 384 precincts across the district. Steve King’s challenger, Christie Vilsack, is speaking to all Democratic caucus-goers in Story County’s sole caucus location, Ames High School.

UPDATE: Adding results after the jump.

I didn’t expect this year’s Republican caucuses to be as much of a nail-biter as the 2008 Democratic competition in Iowa, but here we are on game day, and the top three GOP candidates could plausibly finish in any order.

Is Rick Santorum rising fast enough to finish in the top two on Tuesday? The Des Moines Register’s final Iowa poll before the caucuses is one of many to show Santorum gaining strength. Representative Steve King and Senator Chuck Grassley made positive comments about Santorum’s campaign over the weekend. Although Rick Perry is criticizing Santorum’s record in Congress, there’s not enough time left to make an effective case against the latest “not Romney” through paid media.

The new Iowa polling numbers are after the jump, along with news from the stump and some candidates’ closing Iowa television and radio ads.

Talk about your last-minute bombshells: Representative Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chair, State Senator Kent Sorenson, just endorsed Representative Ron Paul in Des Moines this evening. Background on Sorenson’s connections to prominent Paul supporters is after the jump.

Six days before the Iowa caucuses, no Republican candidate has a clear lead, social conservatives remain scattered among several contenders, and new television commercials are launched on almost a daily basis. Numbers from the two latest opinion polls and news from the campaign trail are after the jump, along with some commercials currently showing on Iowa tv screens.

UPDATE: Added numbers from a new CNN poll and the latest Ron Paul tv ad.

It’s Christmas Eve, the fifth night of Chanukah, and ten days before the Iowa caucuses. Not-too-cold weather and clear skies will create good conditions for stargazing. The only thing missing from an otherwise perfect weekend is enough snow for sledding.

I hope everyone in the Bleeding Heartland community is enjoying friends, family and your favorite foods of the season. I’m eating the traditional Jewish Christmas Eve meal. Tomorrow noodle kugel is on the menu.

This is an open thread: happy holidays to all, and all topics welcome. A few Republican presidential television commercials now airing in Iowa are below.

I don’t care what Bob Dole said when he was in the mood for flattery, I’m not going to waste Bleeding Heartland readers’ time discussing why Governor Terry Branstad won’t be on anyone’s short list for vice presidential candidates. But it’s never too early to do a little scenario spinning about running mates.

Maybe “Organize, organize, organize and then get hot at the end” isn’t outdated Iowa caucus wisdom after all. Public Policy Polling’s latest survey of Iowa Republicans finds Representative Ron Paul slightly ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dropped to third place.

UPDATE: The Republican polling firm Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research has also picked up on the Gingrich slide and Paul gain. Details are at the end of this post.

Seven Republican candidates take the stage tonight as Fox News and the Iowa GOP co-host a presidential debate in Sioux City. I’ll be live-blogging after the jump, where I’ve also posted some recent news about the race in Iowa.

UPDATE: Scroll down for the live-blog.

A year ago, former President George W. Bush’s income tax cuts for all brackets were due to expire on December 31. Republicans had President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats on the defensive, not wanting to be seen as raising taxes in a tough economy. Now the tables are turned as a payroll tax cut benefiting all wage earners will expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts otherwise. Democrats in Washington and around the country see this issue as a political winner.

Last week the U.S. Senate defeated two more proposals for extending the payroll tax cut. Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Iowa Democratic Party used the controversy to create bad publicity for Representative Tom Latham (IA-04) and Representative Steve King (IA-05).

Seven Six Republican presidential candidates debate tonight in Des Moines, the first time the group has debated since Herman Cain left the race and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the front-runner. I plan to live-blog tonight’s debate here, but I wanted to post this thread early to give Bleeding Heartland readers a chance to talk about the race. Links and recent news from the campaign are after the jump.

UPDATE: Scroll down for the live-blog.

Who would have believed it back when Greg Ganske seemed like Newt Gingrich’s last friend left in Iowa? Within the last ten days, five six separate pollsters have released surveys showing former the House speaker with a clear lead among likely Republican caucus-goers.

Iowa Republican caucus-goers have switched their allegiance from one joke candidate selling books to another. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leads the field in the latest poll by Selzer and Co for the Des Moines Register. Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney trails the latest “not Romney” contender by a larger margin than in the Register’s other polls this year.

While former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney campaigned in Des Moines last week, Representative Leonard Boswell publicly criticized the Republican presidential front-runner for the second time this month. The eight-term Democrat authored a guest column in the November 16 Des Moines Register criticizing Romney’s position on health care for veterans. His latest attack focused more broadly on Romney’s position on taxes and entitlement programs.

Yet another Republican presidential candidates’ debate takes place tonight in Washington. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer will moderate as eight candidates discuss foreign policy: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Senator Rick Santorum, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, and Representatives Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul.

A foreign policy debate should allow Paul to stand out from the crowd. My guess is that Santorum will take the lead in challenging his call to negotiate with potential enemies and end most U.S. military interventions.

The latest CNN/ORC International nationwide poll indicates that Newt Gingrich is indeed the new Republican flavor-of-the-week, leading Romney by 24 percent to 20 percent. I expect several rivals for the “not Romney” niche to take Gingrich on tonight. Romney will probably sail above the fray.

Share any thoughts about tonight’s debate or the Republican presidential race in this thread. UPDATE: I posted a few thoughts after the jump.

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain and Representative Ron Paul have pushed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney into third place in a new Iowa Republican poll for Iowa State University, the Cedar Rapids Gazette and KCRG TV. However, less than two months before the Iowa caucuses, the majority of likely participants are still not committed to any candidate.

UPDATE: Now Rasmussen has a new Iowa poll showing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich way ahead among likely caucus-goers, followed by Romney and Cain. Details are below.