With nothing but weeks of time to fill between Maine's Caucuses and this week's primaries, we heard unending talk about the importance of the Michigan Primary: It was going to be a pivotal contest. A proving ground. A test that might be make-or-break for both the presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney, and his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants challenger Rick Santorum.

Let's just tell the truth about it: It was a complete and embarassing flop for just about everyone involved.

Santorum and Romney really proved to be a pair of ridiculous bumblers. For Santorum, who's been making his case in terms of the economy and the need to revive America's manufacturing sector, Michigan should have been a wonderful opportunity to lay the wood to Mitt Romney, whose stance on the auto industry bailouts were criticized by even his key in-state endorsers.

But rather than stick to his guns, Santorum went wildly off-message, allowing his campaign -- through the cro-magnon throwback commentary of his super PAC sugar daddy Foster Friess -- to get stuck on the crank side of the contraception debate. And in his own words, Santorum offered up a silly critique of higher education and an ill-considered slagging of John F. Kennedy that had even his ideological allies' mouths agape. Those big leads he had in Michigan went away, and the fact that he stopped speaking the language of Michiganders was a big reason why.

But Mitt Romney did nothing with the opportunity either. Instead, he picked this week to stage a lengthy demonstration of how out of touch he is with ordinary people. He had Donald Trump interrupt Michgan voters' lives with robocalls. He talked about his wife's prized pair of Cadillacs. He strained to find fellowship with NASCAR fans, telling them that, while he didn't follow the sport closely, he counted many rich team owners among his friends donors. And then he topped that off by ridiculing some of their rain ponchos.

And there was that constant robotic pronouncement that the trees in Michigan were the right height. Because what America needs now is a president who is closely attuned to arboreal standards.

So instead of a quality contest that pitted two candidates at their best, we got a joke of a race that ended with two frontrunners collapsed and gasping at the finish line, lucky that they didn't have any serious competition from a third party.

Romney managed to win his home state by a handful of percentage points and, like we suspected, was crowned the winner by the media, who immediately set about crafting the "Romney's back" narrative as if they were in thrall to the big red checkmark they'd put by his name after the final projection was made. It was left to Santorum surrogate John Brabender to point out that winning the popular vote only got Romney one delegate, and that everyone should pay attention to the action in the congressional districts, where Santorum was faring well.

At the time Brabender started trying to get giddy reporters to start paying attention to reality, it looked like Santorum might even prevail in the delegate count -- which would have put a real kink in everyone's story about Romney's triumph. Ultimately, the result ended up being exactly what everyone deserved -- a 15-15 tie in delegate allocation. That is, until the state party interceded and gave Romney a second delegate for winning the statewide vote, which Santorum had actually earned by getting more than 15 percent of that vote.

In short, everyone involved in the Michigan Primary -- from the candidates to the people who ran the show to the media that covered it -- found some way to avoid covering themselves in glory. And instead of being a pivotal contest (with only 30 delegates at stake, it was ridiculous to sell the primary as any such thing in the first place), it only re-inflamed all of the panicky uncertainty that preceded it. Is Romney going to close the deal? Is there going to be a deadlocked convention? Should somebody beg, threaten or blackmail some new candidate to jump into the race?

This all resets the stakes for Super Tuesday and once again, all of the expectations seem to be completely, willfully out of whack. According to Andy Kroll, New York Representative Peter King is hearing "whispering and mumbling ... among top Republicans" that if Romney doesn't break loose next Tuesday, there's going to be "more of an emphasis on having someone ready" to jump into the race. Meanwhile, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is totally certain that Romney is going to end the nomination process next week. But there are only 437 delegates at stake Tuesday, all the contests distribute them proportionally, and various candidates are projected to do better than others in certain states. So that won't happen.

But the fact that everyone is either unreasonably confident or unreasonably uncertain about a contest that's designed to be a prolonged battle between the top candidates speaks volumes about the state of the race, the height of the frenzy and the widespread dissatisfaction over the candidates who make up the field. And adding to the hilarity is the fact that at some point in the future, we might look back on all the delirium, dislocation and discontent and wonder why it even happened. The economy is still quite fragile, and if anyone thinks that Obama is a shoo-in at this point, consider this: He hasn't had a hundred fundraisers because they're fun.

Elsewhere this week, Newt Gingrich has made the price of gas his key issue, Ron Paul had new conspiracies to answer for, a Romney mistake gave Santorum an opening, and third-party contenders have started to plot their hopeful path to the fall debates. For all of this and more, please feel free to enter the Speculatron for the week of March 2, 2012.

So this week, if you spent any time reading about the primary election process that will eventually (we think!) yield a Republican nominee for president, you probably encountered some concern about how the season has descended into a trench of negative campaigning. There are concerns that all the negative attacks will deflate GOP morale, and reporters are spending more and more time asking voters if all the mud being thrown is keeping them from the polls. John McCain, the Arizona senator and Mitt Romney surrogate, decried the vicious turn, lamenting to the Boston Herald thusly:

“It’s the negative campaigning and the increasingly personal attacks ... it should have stopped long ago. Any utility from the debates has been exhausted, and now it’s just exchanging cheap shots and personal shots followed by super PAC attacks.”

McCain said that bearing witness to all of this was like "watching a Greek tragedy," referencing all of Sophocles' important plays about super PACs. But what is McCain talking about? I have it on good authority -- the candidates' own words -- that they would never even dream of going negative! I am quite sure of this. Rick Santorum said he was not going to engage in "mudslinging." Gingrich encouraged voters to "send a signal they were sick of negative politics." Mitt Romney said that he was "not a bomb-thrower." And Ron Paul, I distinctly recall, said that he didn't like "the demagoging or the distortion."

So it's hard to believe that after saying all of that, that these fine gentlemen would just go back on their word and start -- hold on ... What's that Huffington Post Video Editor Hunter Stuart? You say that you've got one of your patented video mashups that I should take a look at that might change my mind? Well then!

Video produced by Hunter Stuart

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Even before the first votes of the Michigan Primary were cast, it was becoming clear that Romney winning the contest wasn't going to cut it, in terms of silencing the panicked voices insisting that if things took a turn for the muddled, some dark horse candidate could be injected into the race at some late stage to become some sort of frontrunner. Let's recall Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who described a "whisper campaign" among "top Republicans" that bespoke "an emphasis on having someone ready if on Super Tuesday ... Mitt Romney does not manage to break loose, and to have that candidate ready to come in." The standard had clearly shifted -- now Mitt Romney had to "break loose" on Super Tuesday to settle everyone's panicky nerves.

Of course, the problem there was that with few delegates on offer on Super Tuesday, and an array of contests in which different candidates were expected to perform well, the chances that Romney will "break loose" are very remote. But his inability to do so has some in the Republican party blaming the primary process itself for preventing a quick end to the nomination season. As Alicia Cohn reported, John McCain is just one "high profile Republican" who's "raised concern that the lack of unity around one nominee is strengthening President Obama's reelection chances." All of which has forced RNC Chair Reince Priebus to push back and insist that the drawn-out process is good for the party.

But it's actually Priebus' predecessor who's been providing the Real Talk on this issue. As Benjy Sarlin reported yesterday:

While top Republicans are tearing their hair out watching the Republican primaries slowly grind their way to a relatively small Super Tuesday, the RNC chair who designed this year's calendar, Michael Steele, says the process is working exactly as planned. It's the candidates who are the problem.

[...]

"The problem is that ... the Romney campaign thought this would be the short, quick battle, and they're not necessarily ready for a campaign that's longer so the negative campaigning hits and hits hard," Steele said. "The Death Star imagery I think is very appropriate here since it is sort of taking out that moon and then that planet to clear a pathway to the nomination."

Over at The Hill's Pundit Blog, Democratic strategist Peter Fenn makes a similar point:

First, there was Bachmann: a walking disaster as a possible candidate. Then there was Perry -- boy, that shooting star burned out fast. Of course, Herman Cain, the non-traditional candidate, was non-traditional for a reason. And Newt Gingrich was electrifying in the sense that he would fry the Republicans. So we are left with Santorum as the alternative to Romney. Even though he wants to have his cake and eat it too on social issues as well as on religion and the culture wars, Republicans know that women and the suburbs would run from him in droves in a general election.

So the panic that all these candidates caused among establishment Republicans is coupled with the dislike that rank-and-file voters have of Romney. This is the "none of the above" factor we are seeing increasingly in polls as Republicans express their unhappiness with the entire field.

I think this is important to note -- the discontent here is over the candidates in the process, not the process itself. Imagine, if you will, a 2012 primary season in which the GOP elites got all the candidates they really wanted: Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, maybe a John Thune or a Paul Ryan.

With that field, who agonizes over the process? A lengthy period of time in which this collection of candidates gradually trades delegates would be something that all of those currently panicking would actually cherish. Mitt Romney would likely be fighting to stay in the top tier. Santorum and Gingrich would have remained mired in the low single digits. Bill Kristol wouldn't be so emo.

The bottom line is that the establishment's dislike of Mitt Romney is only rivaled by its dislike of his rivals. What you see in this need for Romney to "break loose" is a demand for him to provide some "sign" to restore their faith in the frontrunner with whom Republicans are stuck. If Romney could only take this race by the balls and end it quickly, the logic seems to go, his critics would be able to make peace with him as their candidate. But the process was designed to provide a means to put the GOP's top brands on a lengthy display, to drive up enthusiasm. The right candidates didn't run. None of this is Reince Priebus' fault.

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Rick Santorum may not have done well enough in Michigan to necessarily forestall some sort of "Romney bounce" between now and Super Tuesday, but did you know that, in many ways, Rick Santorum has already won? Well, in one way, anyway.

Seems that Santorum's long-standing "Google problem" is now but a mere "Google inconvenience." As Amy Bingham of ABC News reports, "After years during which people got a vulgar term for anal sex as their first result when they searched the word 'Santorum,' the site responsible for the prank has been bumped out of Google's top five results." And all he had to do is run for president and get his name mentioned in the 24-hours hype-cycle for a year.

Santorum's problem vis-à-vis; Google began in 2003, when one particular set of his anti-gay comments earned the ire of syndicated sex columnist and LGBT activist Dan Savage. Savage mounted a campaign to associate Santorum's name with "a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head." Eventually, Savage settled on naming the by-product of a sex act after Santorum, established a website called "Spreading Santorum" that carried the definition, and let thousands of links to the site -- and Google's search algorithm -- do the rest of the work.

The result? For years, Savage's site has been the first result returned in a search for the word "santorum."

For quite some time thereafter, Santorum pleaded with Google to do something about this, but Google repeatedly explained that the company did not make a practice of "remov[ing] content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines." And every time Santorum brought up his "Google problem," he only made it worse.

At this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Santorum seemed to get along with the folks from Google just fine, perhaps because he was confident that his presidential campaign might solve this problem -- it was, after all, one of the things he'd hoped would happen when he ran for president. It would seem that he was more or less right. Today, if you Google "santorum," the results that come back are topped by his campaign website, followed by his Wikipedia entry.

The stickiness of Wikipedia remains a problem: "campaign for 'Santorum' neologism" is the third result on the page. And the Urban Dictionary's entry on the matter appears fifth. The original Dan Savage site is now found on the second page of results (though a different website that references Savage's site in its name remains on the top page of search results).

Of course, while Santorum's victory over Google is plainly evident, the degree to which Savage's bit of creative agitprop penetrated popular and political culture remains. On "The Daily Show," this campaign season's running joke has been Jon Stewart forswearing of "Santorum jokes" out of respect for the candidate's wishes, only to have to hold himself back every time news coverage of the campaign manages to call the Santorum neologism to mind accidentally. And you can find such cases everywhere. As long as newspapers are printing headlines like "Santorum comes from behind in Alabama three-way," a certain amount of tittering shall remain.

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Yesterday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) did something she rarely does -- shock people -- when she announced that she would not be seeking a fourth term in office. The news seemed to come from out of the blue -- her colleague, and traditional partner in legislative dithering Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was said to be "devastated" by the news. And the announcement could not have been greeted fondly by the GOP, who will struggle to retain her seat. It was good news, however, for everyone who likes making "Snowe" puns on Twitter.

In her parting remarks, Snowe alluded to a "new chapter" in her career, in which she saw the need to advocate for a "political center" that, to her mind, was needed for "our democracy to flourish and to find solutions that unite rather than divide us." To that end, Snowe averred that she was resolved to "give voice to my fellow citizens who believe, as I do, that we must return to an era of civility in government driven by a common purpose to fulfill the promise that is unique to America."

But were these the generic sentiments of a politician departing the Beltway for a different sort of public life? Or was this a hint that Snowe has bigger plans in store for us? Like, say ... I don't know ... maybe for her next chapter she will do something crazy, like mount a losing campaign for the presidency in 2012? Jonathan Chait speculates that something along these lines might be brewing:

This sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric emanating from Americans Elect, the third-party group that believes that both parties should put aside partisanship and come together to enact an ever-so-slightly more conservative version of Barack Obama's agenda. Moderate retiring senators often deliver lofty, vacuous paeans to bipartisanship on their way to a lucrative lobbying career. But Snowe's statement seems unusually specific ("unique opportunities to build support for that change from outside the United States Senate") about her intent to do something.

Ahh, yes! Americans Elect, our favorite collection of hedge fund managers and other assorted toffs that no one would object to Rick Santorum calling snobs, want to get some sort of President-type thing on the ballot in 2012. Ideally, they'd like a candidate who'd carry the banner of the mushy center -- a pal of corporate America who'd advocate against taxing carried interest and onerous financial sector regulation, but would do so without a lot of fringey right-wing baggage or lefty concerns for "the 99%."

Snowe definitely fits the Americans Elect profile. She's basically the avatar of centrist behavior. She's civil in tone and moderate in voting record. She's obsessive/compulsive with the legislative process -- things have to be arranged and adjudicated just so, or she won't participate. And if a piece of legislation comes down the pike that might be too effective in transforming an already set policy, you can count on Snowe to get skittish and look for the brakes.

In addition, Americans Elect likely sees Snowe as one of them. She's well known at the Charlie Palmer Steakhouse, Washington's premier destination for Beltway insiders and political elites whose itchy palms can only be soothed by the soft massage of sweet, sweet campaign cash. And over the years, Snowe's been someone that the Americans Elect set have happily supported -- her top contributors have been from the securities and investment sector.

Chait goes on to observe the coincidence that "David Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and oil industry lickspittle, came out for Americans Elect" on the same day Snowe announced her retirement. A Snowe/Boren ticket would fit the definition of what Americans Elect calls "balance," which they require for their proposed presidential ticket -- by which they mean the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate should be from different parties, yet also be reliable corporate-friendly centrists.

But is this what Snowe actually wants to do? Her first post-announcement interview was with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC this afternoon, and the way she talked about her decision left it hard to discern if some sort of presidential run is in the offing. (Of course, it would have been useful for Mitchell to just ask her point-blank if she intends to seek the presidency.)

She told Andrea Mitchell it was a "difficult decision" but she determined that "in the context of the time we are in in the Senate, it's very difficult to resolve major issues." To Snowe's mind, both parties contributed to the overall dysfunction, and she reiterated that she wanted to "pursue other opportunities outside the Senate that perhaps I can give voice to the frustrations that you know, exist with the political system here in Washington, where it's dysfunctional, and the political paralysis has over taken the environment to the damaging of the good of the country."

But that was mostly a rehash of yesterday. When Mitchell brought up the 2012 race, it was to inquire if Snowe was prepared to endorse one of the GOP candidates. Snowe begged off:

SNOWE: I'm not going to make endorsement right here. Let me say that. I think ultimately, whether it's within our party, or across the aisle, ultimately, here in this senate, we have to work together, hopefully we can move forward in a united fashion. We are stronger united than we are divided.

She added that this was "important for us in supporting a presidential candidate, if we want to win the election." Which sounds like she was imagining the 2012 race as one in which she'd play the role of encouraging unifier behind a Republican nominee. But I suppose that Snowe "left the door open" when she made it clear that she decided that "if [she] was going to do something different, it had to be at this moment in time."

If it seems odd that anyone would seriously expect an Olympia Snowe candidacy to set the world on fire, well ... you haven't met Americans Elect yet. This is one of their great ironies: their whole organizing philosophy is premised on the notion that voters can be whipped into an excited frenzy behind the sorts of candidates who don't exactly exude personality or personal charisma, and whose ideas primarily revolve around being civil and careful and not making any big promises or having much in the way of big ambitions.

It couldn't be clearer that Americans Elect envisions some sort of heretofore unseen political marketplace for someone like former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) or former presidential candidate and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), but this odd supposition collides with reality in all sorts of unintended ways. For example, the "most tracked" and "most supported" candidate on Americans Elect -- by a wide margin -- is Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) , for whom geniune excitement does exist.

But it's hard to imagine that Americans Elect would allow Paul to be their candidate, even if it was something that Paul wanted (which I suspect he doesn't). My read of their bylaws, and the organization's unwillingness to come clean about the money that funds this goofy little project of theirs, leads me to suspect that in the end, the people behind the curtain will choose whatever candidate they like. Americans Elect doesn't much care for me saying this (by the time you read this they'll have sent me another one of their gently chiding email complaints), but I remain pretty confident in suggesting that if Americans Elect's backers get saddled with a nominee that does not comport to their worldview (like, say, Buddy "Get The Secret Money Out Of Politics" Roemer, who will take Americans Elect's ballot access if he can get it), they'll just game the system and put up a candidate that's more to their liking.

They could do worse than the retiring Senator from Maine. So who knows? Maybe Americans Elect will turn out to be just the Snowe job I think it is. (See. I like Snowe puns too.)

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Mitt Romney may have won the Michigan primary -- er ... the statewide vote in the Michigan primary, anyway -- but he's not leaving the state on some sort of cloud of serenity and contentment. Far from it! Instead, Romney exits his "home state" and its trees of a certain height that's just right harboring a grudge over Rick Santorum seeking crossover votes from Michigan Democrats in the state's open primary. Santorum's decision to do so sort of dovetailed with a liberal activist movement dubbed "Operation Hilarity" whose mission was to drive up Santorum's vote count and make trouble for Romney. But it basically boils down to Romney being pissed that Santorum -- you know ... tried to win.

Now, that tiny ball of hate that burns in the pit of Romney's stomach is apparently going to be some sort of animating force in his campaign. As Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins reported last night:

Mitt Romney's campaign will spend the next two weeks reminding Republicans around the country of Rick Santorum's last-minute attempt to convince Democrats to vote for him her ein Michigan, a Romney aide said Tuesday night.

"It's a major issue. [Santorum is] trying to pass himself off as the true conservative in the race, but he's supporting the liberal Democrat line against Governor Romney," said Ryan Williams, a spokesman for the Romney campaign.

He added of Santorum's efforts to find Democratic help in the state's open primary: "This isn't going anywhere."

There's a lot that's absurd about this. In the first place, it's hard to see how Romney manages to make an issue out of some Michigan robo-calls for the next two weeks. The news cycle simply moves too fast, and the issue is of such momentary interest. Those two factors alone make the effort unsustainable.

But beyond that, the fact remains that all Romney is doing is opening himself up to charges of hypocrisy. As Jonathan Chait pointed out yesterday, Romney really can't escape the fact that he's talked about casting strategic votes as a crossover voter to hurt the chances of Democratic frontrunners at great length. He has explained these votes in onerous detail. His often tortured explanations of his strategic voting process were offered to answer charges that he was not a true conservative. And in order to paint those votes as the authentic actions of a bona fide conservative, he very clearly promoted the strategy as an eminently wise thing for a rational political actor to do.

And it surely doesn't help that "The Daily Show" very deftly filleted Romney on this matter, using his own words -- and his strange giddy enthusiasm -- to point out the hypocrisy:

What's interesting about Romney taking this circuitous, and risky, path to criticizing Santorum, is that Santorum left Michigan with a lot of weaknesses exposed. He spent the lead-up to the primary leaping into odd rabbit holes and making discomfiting remarks that blew back on him -- his super PAC sugar daddy Foster Friess' "aspirin" crack, his own "education is for snobs" remark -- these did him no end of harm. Prior to last night, Santorum admitted that he'd have liked to take back his remark that John F. Kennedy's speech on religious freedom made him want to vomit.

And it was pretty clear that Santorum was similarly rueful during his post-primary speech last night. He led off his remarks with a lengthy preamble about the educated women in his family and how remarkable they were, in a very transparent attempt to patch up the damage he'd done to his brand with voters near the center of the political spectrum. Of all the stemwinders we've heard from these candidates on these primary nights, none were as openly self-aware of the candidate's vulnerabilities as Santorum's was on Tuesday.

If it were any other election year, and any other candidate, the way you'd dispatch Santorum at this point would be to make a grand electability argument, and point out that his extreme positions are disqualifying in the general election. But this is not that year and Romney is not that candidate. Romney can only go so far in arguing over who is the "true conservative" in the race. While he's already admitted that he's not willing to "light his hair on fire" in order to rile up the GOP base, he can't afford to alienate them too much. And there are plenty of conservative voters who like Santorum's extreme positions -- an uncomfortable amount of them apparently live in Michigan, and may yet deliver the larger share of the delegate yield to Santorum. If Santorum knew how to dogwhistle at them, he wouldn't be having these problems. But as it is, Romney could really use their votes, so he's left to suggest that Santorum is taking "the liberal Democrat line" in the race. (It's hard to imagine that too many people would find this convincing, given the fact that Santorum is by no means a liberal.)

As Benjy Sarlin reports this morning, Romney -- who called Santorum's appeal to crossover voters the "dirty tricks of a desperate campaign" -- is already fundraising on the issue, having sent an email to supporters in which he tries to link Santorum to President Barack Obama's "billion-dollar machine" and decries Obama and Santorum's "pathetic tag team efforts." For his part, Santorum says that he'll continue trying to bring Democratic voters into his fold. And why not? If you're the Santorum campaign, you look at Romney having to make small-donor fundraising pitches after this thin win in Michigan, and it tells you all you need to know about which candidate is more "desperate."

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As I mentioned earlier, there is a dire worry hanging over tonight's primaries that if Mitt Romney does not perform to some set of specific expectations, the GOP establishment will have no choice but to find some new candidate to jump into the race and save the day. That's enough to make it likely that tonight's results will get sucked into some overhyped media narrative that will perpetuate talk of late-entering hero candidates and deadlocked conventions. As Jonathan Bernstein noted yesterday, InTrade is currently giving the "deadlocked convention" outcome somewhere in the area of a 20 percent likelihood, and that's been inflated by nothing but panic and hype.

It's crazy enough that this standard for outcomes and expectations was being applied to tonight's primaries. Oh! And I say "was" in this instance because apparently, this craziness has already moved past tonight's Michigan primary, and the panic window has now widened to include Super Tuesday. As Andy Kroll reports (emphasis mine):

On CNN Tuesday morning, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, hinted at a whisper campaign among "top Republicans" who want a GOP favorite such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to enter the race if Romney loses the Michigan or Arizona primaries or struggles on Super Tuesday, when 10 states controlling 437 delegates hold GOP primaries on March 6. "I think there’s going to be more of an interest, more of an emphasis on having someone ready if on Super Tuesday ... Mitt Romney does not manage to break loose, and to have that candidate ready to come in," King said. He added, "Again, I have no inside knowledge. Just whispering and mumbling here among top Republicans who are concerned that Governor Romney has not been able to break loose."

Look, I can't stress this enough. There are 59 total delegates at stake tonight, and Romney has won 29 of them (all of Arizona's) right at this very moment in time. The very moment he wins a single congressional district in Michigan, Romney "wins" the night. He moves closer to the goal of 1,144 than anyone else in the field. He widens his lead on the way to 1,144 delegates over the rest of the field. There is no conceivable scenario, short of an unforeseen and epic disaster, where Romney doesn't end up tonight in a better position than where he began.

But, if we can believe all of the whispers and mumbles that Peter King is hearing (and, mind you there's no compelling reason to do so, but let's just go with it here), then we're already way past Michigan being the contest that gets everyone in a panic attack over an unnamed entrant into the primary process.

There's no other way to read this other than to say that Rick Santorum's spin machine has already won, and that the firm and planted narrative is that he deserves credit for having pushed Romney to exert a significant amount of effort just to win his home state. Which, in the end, he might not "win." In fact, it seems clear now that if Santorum wins the largest share of Michigan's statewide vote, Romney -- at a minimum -- will have to make some show of "shaking up his campaign staff." That's all bad enough. But now, a Romney win in Michigan isn't enough to settle the nerves of the GOP establishment. Rather, Mitt Romney is required to "break loose" on Super Tuesday in order to quell the talk of a new nominee parachuting into the campaign.

The problem, of course, is that Mitt Romney is not going to "break loose" on Super Tuesday. He'll likely do very, very well. (Here's a magic trick for you: snap your fingers. Boom! Romney just won Virginia! It was as easy as that!) But he's not going to achieve this new standard by which the talk of adding to the GOP field gets quieted. As Josh Putnam at Frontloading HQ (FHQ) points out, "The simple truth of the matter is that it is a foregone conclusion that Romney will underperform on some level next week."

I don't think we have enough total data on this yet, but FHQ is still fairly confident in saying that the South is a problem area for Romney (see South Carolina), but that the Northeast is comparatively stronger for the former Massachusetts governor. Will Romney have some setbacks in the South next week? Yes, I would say that he will in the wins and losses columns. However, the fact that only Paul and Romney are on the ballot in Virginia means that Romney is well-positioned to use the Old Dominion as a delegate cache to neutralize any delegate losses suffered in Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The big question mark at this time is the Midwest. There has yet to be a midwestern primary -- until Michigan -- from which we will have the ability to project onto subsequent midwestern primaries like Ohio on Super Tuesday. From the look of it, Michigan -- and perhaps the rest of the Midwest -- will be competitive.

[...]

Romney does well in primaries. Romney does better in primaries in which he can bank early votes (see Florida and Arizona). Romney does well in caucus states in which he has organized (see Iowa and Nevada). Romney does poorly in caucuses in which he has not organized or not organized as much relative to those early caucuses.

Putnam's "bottom line," spoken with his perennially calming voice, is that no matter what happens in Michigan tonight, Romney "will suffer setbacks next week."

What's even stranger is that you have to wonder why anyone who's hanging out with Peter King doesn't understand that the way the GOP's primary process is designed actually favors the likelihood that no one gets "shook out" next week. Super Tuesday has 10 contests, will award 437 delegates, and those delegates will get spread around by dint of proportional allocation even if one candidate runs most of the table.

Everyone should understand this! But King's whisperers and mumblers evidently did not get the memo, and so they are close to having a conniption over the fact that Romney hasn't proven able to "break lose." What's even more insane, however, is that their solution to the problem -- send in reinforcements! -- only compounds this problem. In other words, these folks are so concerned that Romney hasn't sealed the deal already that they are prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure no one seals the deal later.

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Everyone expects a close finish in Michigan tonight, and if Rick Santorum prevails, you can already make a $10,000 bet that the Mitt Romney campaign is going to make a big deal about Democratic voters crossing over to cast a vote in the primary. Some of those Democrats will be assumed to have been a part of "Operation Hilarity," the DailyKos-led movement to win the state for Santorum (which they presume will be good for President Obama's chances).

Naturally, the campaigns are already floating the more ethereal version of the spin they'll resort to tonight if this comes to pass, with Rick Santorum's proxies talking about their candidate's continuing efforts to woo "Reagan Democrats," as if that were a thing he's been talking about doing all along. Santorum's campaign has been encouraging Michigan Democrats to come to the polls tonight by robo-calling them (the assumption here is that people like robo-calls, I guess). Should Romney lose the state's primary, of course, the expectation is that the GOP establishment will erupt into a garment-tearing panic-klaatch and renew the call for a savior. So Romney will have a tremendous incentive to speak out against all of the tactical voting that was done on Santorum's behalf.

You see the problem here, right? Well, if not, here's Jonathan Chait with an ace reminder that somebody has gone on and on during this year's GOP primary season about how he voted tactically in the 1992 Democratic primary in Massachusetts.

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Months ago, I doubt that there were many people who believed that tonight's February primaries in Arizona and Michigan were going to be all that pivotal. Depending on how far back you go, this wasn't even supposed to be a race -- let's recall that when Florida moved their primary up into the early part of the season, state officials had the notion that they might be the kingmaker. Barring that, of course, the path between the January contests and Super Tuesday featured caucuses in Nevada and Colorado, and a primary in Michigan, and Romney was surely going to win those, right?

It hasn't worked out that way. Rick Santorum was not supposed to best Romney in Colorado, and he was certainly not supposed to be remotely competitive in Michigan, (one of) Romney's (seemingly inexhaustible supply of) home state(s). But former Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) has done both, and so what would have normally been a relatively non-notable pair of contests has somehow become the pivotal event that will likely decide who storms into Super Tuesday with a head of steam, and who comes in stumbling. As Steve Kornacki notes: "How the political world interprets" tonight's result "may be the key to where the GOP race goes after Michigan."

And that's where I'm going to stop for a moment. Because if there's one thing that tonight's contests will demonstrate, besides what candidate has the "momentum," it's that the capacity to overhype and overinterpret tonight's results could not be higher. In every real sense, the potential for the Arizona and Michigan primaries to really determine the winner of the election is extremely low. But depending on what happens, it could touch off what amounts to a prolonged period of screaming meemie hysteria and panicked ravings about the need for a new candidate.

Kornacki is absolutely right when he says that everything really depends on how the "political world" -- by which he means reporters, pundits, consultants, strategists, and surrogates -- "interpret" tonight's results. But there's an excellent chance that their interpretation will be primarily founded on complete bullshit.

Let's begin with practical matters. There's only one way to win the GOP nomination and that is to receive, through the primary process, 1,144 delegates. As of right now, Mitt Romney has approximately 123 delegates, Santorum has approximately 72, Newt Gingrich has approximately 32, and Ron Paul has approximately 19. (I am very carefully saying "approximately" because the truth is, we don't actually know how many delegates have been won by what candidate in the states that have held non-binding caucuses.) How many delegates are at stake in tonight's supposedly pivotal contests? A whopping 59! Which means if Mitt Romney takes all of them, he'll need just under a thousand more to win the nomination.

But Romney's not going to win all 59. Barring some sort of miracle, he will claim the 29 delegates from Arizona. Arizona is a winner-take-all state, and outside of travelling to Mesa to compete in a debate a week ago, none of Romney's rivals have put any serious effort into winning the state. They've essentially conceded those delegates to Romney's high-powered money machine, and have instead set their sights on Michigan, which parcels out its 30 delegates among the competitors, depending on how many votes they get and where they get them.

Now Tuesday, Michiganders are going to vote at their polling places and then the polls are going to close and then the votes are going to be counted and then at some point tomorrow night someone will come on teevee and declare that someone has "won" Michigan. When they say that, they'll be referring to whoever takes home the larger share of the statewide vote. And whoever gets declared the "winner" will surely make a speech attesting to their great victory. And how many of Michigan's 30 delegates will the statewide "winner" claim as a result of their statewide win?

Two.

Maybe!

Here's where we have to refer to what Michigan decided to do after getting penalized by the RNC for moving their primary. As Josh Putnam explains, Michigan typically has 59 delegates to award, and the usual way they are awarded is that the winner of each of Michigan's 14 Congressional Districts (CD) gets 3 delegates, there are 14 at-large delegates that are eligible to be claimed by anyone who receives at least 15 percent of the statewide vote, and there are three "automatic delegates" who are "free to choose whomever." After the penalty however, Michigan decided to get rid of the automatic delegates, slash the at-larges down to two, and give each CD 2 delegates. That means the bigger share of the prize is spread throughout the state.

And I say that the statewide winner may receive two delegates because according to the rules, the at-larges are assigned proportionally to everyone who manages to pull 15 percent of the statewide vote.

So when CNN flashes the lucky winner on the screen and puts a big red check next to their face with the word "WINNER," remember -- they've "won" the most insignificant share of the delegates on offer. As Putnam says, "In any event, all the attention...should be placed not on the statewide race, but on how things are progressing on the congressional district level. That is where the action will be."

But will all the attention be shifted away from the statewide race? Of course not. That is not how the political media works. The political media has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the minutiae of the primary process. Yes, yes: of course John King or Chuck Todd will do their level best to remind people of the way delegates get apportioned and will probably be mindful that it's entirely possible for Rick Santorum to lose the statewide vote but gobble up enough CDs to win the larger share. But the bottom line is that the hype machine loves that big red check next to the winner's name. And what's more, they come into tomorrow night's contests extremely mindful of...the implication.

And what do I mean by "the implication?" I am referring to the anonymous yet "prominent" GOP senator who hung the Sword of Damocles over this whole affair by telling ABC News' Jonathan Karl, “If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate.” Knowing what we know about the number of delegates that could possibly be won by Romney tomorrow -- and he grabs half of them just by getting out of bed! -- we know that this is an absolutely ridiculous thing for this supposedly prominent GOP senator to have said. For what that senator is saying amounts to this: "If Rick Santorum wins the statewide vote in Michigan tomorrow, guaranteeing him one...maybe two delegates, then we should definitely slip into a spontaneous orgy of animal panic."

But the potential for some sort of bonkers interpretation of Tuesday's results doesn't just stand to negatively impact Romney -- it could cloud Santorum's possible success as well. Remember, one possible scenario is that Santorum narrowly loses the statewide vote to Romney but cobbles enough wins in enough CDs to take the larger share of delegates. That it, by any practical measure, a "win" for Santorum. But, in this scenario, who will leave Michigan on a cloud of hype and claimed "momentum?" Romney, of course! He was the "winner." There will be relief all around -- panic averted!...Romney's still viable! -- and no one will care about Santorum's share of the delegates.

There are just so many utterly stupid ways that the results of Tuesday's contests could be presented. Romney is definitely going to move closer to the eventual goal of 1,144 delegates, and probably by the largest incremental sliver of the field. But because some random senator made a melodramatic statement to ABC News, no one cares about that. And Santorum could make Tuesday's Michigan primary a "pivotal" moment in the campaign -- but if he wants to do so, he'll have to win in the very specific way the media decided Michigan must be won to make it "pivotal," regardless of whether he actually claims a greater share of the actual award.

So, yeah: the results of Tuesday's primaries will probably be interpreted in some titanically stupid way, and that titanically stupid interpretation could have a huge bearing on how the rest of the race goes. Enjoy!

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Everyone knows that presidential aspirant Mitt Romney is some sort of Bain-capitalizing technocratic manager-genius par excellence, right? No one denies this! But what you might not have known is that Romney is actually a constantly evolving, Bain-capitalizing technocratic manager-genius par excellence. Actually, I might be overstating this, as it's likely that the storied history of Romney's flipping and flopping have all but made it clear that he's "constantly evolving."

But what I'm trying to say is that today I found out that Mitt Romney has become the master of the "gotcha" moment, and it's made him "the candidate most prepared to take down his rivals' records." This I learned from a three-page story in Politico that attests to Romney's mad "gotcha" skillz. And in all sincerity, it's a very fine chronicle of how Romney has succeeded in meticulously zeroing in on his opponents' vulnerable spots and drawing blood, especially at the numerous candidate debates.

That said, there's nothing about the story's lede that is not hilarious. The scene opens on Wednesday night's debate in Mesa, Ariz. Romney, we are told, is caught in a "make or break" moment, locked in battle with Rick Santorum over contraception. Fortunately, he "clicked on a classic piece of opposition research for a peek." Wait. Did he literally "click on" a piece of opposition research during the debate, because he is actually a MacBook Pro in human form, running Google Chrome? Not exactly.

"Senator, I just saw a YouTube clip of you being interviewed where you said that you personally opposed contraceptives but that you, you said that you voted for Title X" -- the federal family planning program, Romney told Santorum during Wednesday night's CNN debate in Arizona. "You said this, you said this in a positive light, 'I voted for Title X.'"

Aww, yeah! "Boom: roasted!" and all of that, right? Totes. We are told by Reid Epstein and Zachary Abrahamson that this was a "classic gotcha moment." What's more is that this was "also a snapshot of the new Romney." And that snapshot? "The 'gotcha' candidate."

Right, OK, if you're peeping the piece online, you sort of saw that coming, because the headline is "The 'gotcha' campaign," which primes the readers to expect something about someone -- probably Romney, since he's pictured -- as the guy running that "gotcha" campaign. See, I was able to surmise all of that ahead of time because I looked at the Internet and made note of things. But here's what's so totally "kewl" about that. I was using the exact same skill set as Mitt Romney:

"To do last night effectively, you had to have done very careful research and then the candidate has to master the information and think through how and when to use it," a campaign adviser said Thursday. "And the campaign has to remain disciplined around a message and a strategy."

See, until I read the paragraph where a Romney adviser described this process of "observing things" and "remembering stuff," I had no idea that the act of watching a YouTube clip and recalling the contents of said YouTube clip was actually a complicated, white-knuckled feat of political derring-do! It's just not something anyone can do. And you can totally understand why this Romney adviser wanted to be anonymously quoted, right? Who wants to be known as the guy who praised Mitt Romney for being able to absorb information from YouTube?

At any rate, here's hoping that Mitt Romney will go on "Meet the Press" soon so that he and David Gregory can have an epic "Men Who Stare at YouTube" showdown.

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In your "Where Are They Now: 2012 Also-Rans Edition" update of the day, we have two Minnesotans, Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, falling into a cuddle-puddle now that their battles on the campaign trail have concluded.

If you cast your mind way, waaay back, you might recall that Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, was a presidential aspirant up until Aug. 14 -- the day after Bachmann, current Minnesota representative, bested him in the Ames Straw Poll. Bachmann would go on to take the momentum she garnered from her Ames win...uh -- nowhere in particular, actually. Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the race the same day, stole her thunder and her support, and then...well, he also went nowhere.

Anyway, there's apparently no hard feelings between Pawlenty and Bachmann, because today, he got behind her re-election bid for the House. The Hill's Alicia Cohn has the story:

“I am thrilled to accept the endorsement of Gov. Tim Pawlenty in my race for reelection to Congress,” Bachmann said in a statement released by her office. “Gov. Pawlenty and I will work together to make Minnesota ‘red’ in 2012.”

I can't wait to hear Pawlenty backing her bid on the trail. I'm picturing the inevitable ad copy now: "She and I have fought for many of the same issues, we have fought the same fights...But she hasn’t won. I have.” Or maybe: "I respect Congresswoman Bachmann, but her comments, I think, were consistent with her pattern of being inaccurate and off the mark." And don't forget: “I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her. But her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent.”

Followed by, "I'm Michele Bachmann and I approve this message, for some reason."

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For the bulk of the campaign season, we've been keenly aware that the GOP establishment-types had some grave misgivings over the fact that Mitt Romney might end up winning the nomination. But at the end of last week, what basically amounted to a sense of free-floating despair flared into a hot flash of panic -- only this time, it was paced by fears that Mitt Romney might lose.

The focus, of course, of the past two weeks, has been the upcoming primary in Michigan, where Rick Santorum surged into the lead. All of that hype was perhaps premature -- after all, Santorum's poll peak came well ahead of Romney operationalizing his money-powered character assassination machine. But ABC News Jonathan Karl landed the scoop of the week, in the form of an anonymous -- yet "prominent"! -- GOP senator, who said, "If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate."

Can: open. Worms: everywhere. Newt Gingrich: telling anyone who would listen that winning one's home state was of paramount importance. And the general feeling set in that Super Tuesday's fortunes might well be determined by the result in Michigan.

Right now, the Republican field has those GOP establishment-types in a knot of exquisite tension. The guy that's likely to carry the banner in the general election, Mitt Romney, is someone who's never been easy to pin down ideologically, and that makes Republican elites -- who are ever cognizant of the fact that John McCain failed amid numerous flip-flops, and the ever present "Republican In Name Only" label on the minds of the Republican base -- quite nervous. In Rick Santorum, the same key establishment figures know they have a "team player." Santorum himself, in this week's debate, famously copped to this. But with his tendency to never keep the "unadulterated Republican dogma" in dog-whistle form -- a matter that was examined hilariously by John Oliver of the "Daily Show" -- those same elites know that Santorum always puts the affections of independent voters at risk.

Meanwhile, their other choices are anything but team players. Newt Gingrich has burned bridges with his massive ego and boundless self-regard, and Ron Paul has staked out an entirely different patch of ideological territory. And he's got himself a delicate, deliberate plan to earn enough delegates through the primary process that, at the very least, could leave him in the position to play dealmaker.

Paul actually probably deserves some credit for being on the leading edge of the phenomenon that now has the GOP establishment cycling through various stages of grief. The elites have largely lost control of the process. They couldn't get the horses they wanted into the race to run. An eclectic group of flamboyant millionaires and billionaires now fund the machine through super PACs. The media has kept candidates who would otherwise have faded into also-ran status in January alive through debates. And the grassroots is up for grabs. The elites maintain a fantasy that they could still decide everything in some smoke-filled room, but look what that fantasy has been reduced to -- openly rooting for a deadlocked convention. That's what the comments of this anonymous GOP senator seem geared toward. Their ace in the hole is little better than a suicide pact.

But the GOP establishment still has one desire that could well unite everyone in the end: the desire to beat President Barack Obama in November. And that's why when a candidate finally emerges from this process -- and like Karl Rove, we believe that the "odds are greater that there's life on Pluto than that the GOP has a brokered convention" -- there's a good chance that everyone is going to look back on this time in their lives and their panic and their doubts and wonder why they made such a big deal about everything.

Providing they win, that is. As for who wins, so much depends on Michigan. For the rest of what went down on the campaign trail -- including third party titillations, Obama polling palpitations, and the Arizona debate conflagration -- please feel free to enter the Speculatron for the week of February 24, 2012.

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Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman really wants voters to consider supporting a third-party candidate. Which is strange, because just over a month ago, Jon Huntsman really wanted voters to consider supporting Mitt Romney.

He also wants people to know that, in his opinion, the GOP in general is a party bereft of big, bold ideas. That is also strange, considering that a month ago, Huntsman was calling for "GOP unity." What's going on? I'm guessing that Huntsman just missed having teevee cameras pointed at him.

No worries, then, because today Huntsman appeared on "Morning Joe," where he revised and updated all of his previous opinions on these matters. The Hill's Justin Sink provides a good blow-by-blow:

"Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff," Huntsman said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"I see zero evidence of people getting out there and addressing the economic deficit -- which is a national-security problem, for heaven's sake," he said. “I think we're going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas."

Okay, but: "It's now time for our party to unite around the candidate best equipped to beat Barack Obama ... Despite our differences ... that candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney." What happened to that?

And if you're wondering to yourself, "Hey, is this some attempt to get himself anointed as the third-party banner-waver," worry no more. "That ain't gonna be me, by the way; I know the next question. I'm not interested in that," said Huntsman, placing a dagger squarely in the heart of Americans Elect.

But again, didn't this guy endorse Romney?

"I’m not a surrogate for anybody," said Huntsman.

Okay, so Romney would not necessarily be the ideal choice in this election, then, considering his lack of "big, bold, visionary stuff," right?

"I think Mitt Romney’s the best person to handle the economic side," said Huntsman.

Honestly, this is about as much sense as Huntsman ever makes.

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The good news, I suppose, for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is that he's won the endorsement of the Detroit Free Press. The bad news is that it is a very, very reluctant endorsement. That presents something of a challenge for the Romney campaign, which apparently prefers to edit the endorsements it receives to its liking, and then hide behind journalistic rules that it makes up and pretends are important to follow.

Let's begin with today's endorsement from the Free Press, which is titled "Mitt Romney is best -- but we urge him to recapture collaborative spirit." The basic idea here is that the Free Press has taken stock of the current GOP field, and responded by saying, "Uhm, I guess we like Romney, kinda?"

This endorsement should be a slam dunk for Mitt Romney.

His record and history — his term as governor of Massachusetts, his rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, even his time as a venture capitalist and management consultant — make him far more qualified to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential race than the other candidates.

His personal background, as a native Detroiter and the youngest son of a successful and popular governor here, also makes him an obvious pick for Michigan’s largest news organization.

But for the past 12 months, Romney has been refashioning himself as something other than what his record suggests. He has made gestures toward economic and social radicalism, and eschewed the common sense of cooperative governing that made him a success in Massachusetts.

Of paramount concern to the editors of the Free Press is Romney's position on the government intervention in the auto industry, which is widely understood to have been successful. Even Michigan Governor Rick Snyder -- who is Romney's most important in-state endorser -- takes issue with Romney over his position on the matter.

And Romney hasn't been too clear on what his problem with it is -- the op-eds he's penned suggest his chief problem (besides the fact that President Barack Obama might get credit for saving the auto industry) is that the government was involved at all. Romney seems to have thought that GM and Chrysler should have been subjected to a managed bankruptcy. But absent taxpayer intervention, there was nobody to fund such a bankruptcy, and so without the government stepping in with its "bailout," the likely result would have been liquidation, layoffs, and chaos up and down the retail chain.

In fact, it sure looks like at one point, Romney was fully supportive of Obama's efforts (following those of his predecessor, President George W. Bush), until he got ripped for it. Then he changed his tune to something more discordant.

Regardless, it remains a problem for Romney in Michigan, where members of the GOP base he needs to turn out for the Michigan Primary don't feel the same way about the auto industry intervention as the state's voters as a whole. So the Free Press, as you might expect, bloodies Romney up a little bit:

Romney was also dead wrong when he opposed government bailouts for the auto industry (Michigan’s most vital economic engine) in late 2008. And he has since adopted a recalcitrant and, at times, revisionist defense of his position in the face of overwhelming evidence that the bailouts he opposed were necessary.

No doubt, much of Romney’s shifting owes to the nature of the GOP primary, which has been dominated by the party’s furthest right elements. To compete with stauncher conservatives of lesser achievement and stature, Romney has essentially played down to their level. He is chest-beating and straining to prove his ideological bona fides (recently, he called himself “severely” conservative), rather than focusing on the nuanced, sophisticated strength of his record.

The editors go on to state their lack of affection for Romney's competitors, and applaud his "past leadership" -- which boils down to the accomplishments Romney touted four years ago that he has to treat gingerly now. The editors note Romney's position-switching, calling it "troubling," before going on to speculate about who "the real Romney" might be.

The Romney campaign will have a much harder time pulling out the parts of this endorsement that it will want to tout than it did when the Free Press' sister paper, the Detroit News, published its own, less reluctant endorsement. (Both papers are owned by Gannett, but present themselves as ideological rivals, with the Free Press leaning left and the Detroit News leaning right) But even the Detroit News had its reservations:

We disagree with Romney on a point vital to Michigan — his opposition to the bailout of the domestic automobile industry. Romney advocated for a more traditional bankruptcy process, while we believe the bridge loans provided by the federal government in the fall of 2008 were absolutely essential to the survival of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Corp. The issue isn't a differentiator in the GOP primary, since the entire field opposed the rescue effort.

The Romney camp, in passing along news of this endorsement to supporters, was careful to excise that paragraph (among others), which did not sit well with the folks at the Detroit News. As Evan McMorris-Santoro reported yesterday:

“We’re not pleased,” Detroit News Editorial Page editor Nolan Finley told me. “We would have preferred the campaign link to the electronic version of the editorial at DetNews.com so that readers could see the complete version. If they were going to simply present excerpts, as sometimes happens, they should’ve identified them as excerpts.”

The Romney camp’s version of the editorial — which removed a paragraph that criticized Romney for his opposition to the auto bailout — included elipses in the places where the criticism was removed. Finley said they weren’t enough.

“I don’t think that’s entirely appropriate,” he said. “Readers have no way of knowing what’s missing and are clearly being led to believe that this is the editorial as written by the Detroit News.”

Finley said the paper has contacted the Romney campaign “and expressed our displeasure.”

Naturally, I'm hardly surprised that the Romney campaign cut out the caveats and stuck to the bright side in its own press release on the endorsement. Why would anyone expect the candidate to disseminate criticism? That said, the Romney camp's excuse for doing it is pretty laughable. According to Jim Romenesko:

A Romney campaign spokesperson called me after getting Finley’s call and said that “because of copyright laws, we’re required when sending something out that it’s less than half the original article.”

Romenesko asked for copyright experts to "chime in" and copyright experts basically said, "Ha ha, no, that's a load." Maria Amante sent Romnesko the relevant regulations:

According to the US Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#permission

How much of someone else’s work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.

McMorris-Santoro cited First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams:

Abrams said that excuse was essentially total crap. Though a newspaper maybe could sue a campaign for reprinting their work in its entirety, it never happens (candidates and committees routinely blast out full copies of articles to reporters. The standard Romney’s campaign cited is non-existent, Abrams said.

“The short answer is the 50% doesn’t come from anywhere,” Abrams said. “And saying that they had to cut out what they did for copyright reasons is wholly unpersuasive.”

(One of the reasons that the Detroit News might think twice about actually suing Romney's campaign over this is because the paper has been on the other side of complaints over editing recently. The Michigan Education Association complains here that an editorial they submitted to the paper was also edited in such a way to allow for their critique of Romney, on the "auto bailouts" to be lessened.)

At any rate, the takeaway here is that if some political campaign sends you word of some endorsement they're touting, maybe go and find the endorsement and read the whole thing, because chances are that political campaign is lying to you.

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