Rick Santorum has benefited from excellent timing. Unlike the other not-Romneys who ran for president this year, he had the good fortune of not catching the imagination of the Republican base until late in the primaries, after Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich had all had their brief moments as the alternative to the likely eventual nominee. By the time the voters got around to Santorum, there was just nobody else left, which has enabled him to have his moment in the sun at the end of the primaries, just where you'd want it to be if you're going to parlay your loss into a lucrative and influential career opportunity.

Today the Washington Post makes the case, without much in the way of evidence, that "Santorum has, after 10 weeks of contests, all but claimed the title of leader of the conservative wing of the GOP." I don't buy it...

The next jaunt on the wild Republican roller-coaster is this weekend. Missouri voters head to their local polling locations for the second time this cycle. They first expressed themselves back in early February in a nonbinding primary, a vote won by Rick Santorum but that has no bearing on the delegates that will be sent to Tampa this summer. Missourians vote once again tomorrow, this time in caucuses that will eventually, down the line, help select who is sent to the GOP convention, and by extension, whether the state votes for Santorum or Mitt Romney.

Is Mitt Romney a guy who tells a bunch of lies, or is he a liar? That the question Jonathan Chait asks, and he winds up sort-of defends Romney, saying that his lies, many of which revolve around his effort to deny his own history, have been practical in nature. "It's Romney's bad luck that fate has dictated his only path to the presidency lies in being a huge liar," Chait says, so those lies don't tell us much about what's deep in Romney's character.

There are two problems here. The first is that Romney lies about President Obama as often as he lies about himself. It's just that when he does the former, he does it with actual squirming (if he's sitting down), the phoniest smile you've ever seen, and panic in his eyes, so it's really obvious. The second problem is that Chait's distinction applies to pretty much every political liar in history. There's always a reason why a politician lies. The biggest lies come when they get caught doing something they shouldn't have (Nixon with Watergate, Reagan with Iran-Contra, Clinton with Monica Lewinsky). They might be telling themselves, "Taking responsibility is all well and good, but it's better for the country if I get out of this scandal and continue with my duties." ...

What should we make of those scary poll numbers? The most recent New York Times/CBS poll, conducted March 7 to March 11, reported a big drop in President Obama’s favorability ratings, which declined to 41 percent from 50 percent just a month ago.

This occurred during a period when the economic news was relatively good—the economy created more than 200,000 jobs for the third straight month; gas prices rose but not steeply; and Obama acquitted himself well on the treacherous terrain of resisting Iran’s nuclear ambitions without embracing war. 

Tonight, the Obama campaign will release a sort-of-anticipated 17-minute video, telling the story of the Obama administration's challenges and achievements in an effort to help frame the debate about how to understand its first term. I'll offer some comments on it tomorrow, but for now I thought I'd take the opportunity to assemble some of these videos from prior campaigns...

The other day I rather superficially raised the issue of whom Mitt Romney might choose for his vice presidential nominee, and said it would no doubt be some boring white guy, in keeping with Mitt's risk-aversion. But after thinking about it some more, I've decided this may turn out to be more complicated than it appears. I'm assuming, of course, that Romney will be the nominee, something that has perhaps gone from a near certainty to a high likelihood this week. In any case, since everyone will be talking about this for a brief period starting in a few months, and we here at the Prospect like to keep you not just up with today's news but at the bleeding edge of tomorrow, it's worth giving this another look.

Most presidential candidates have one problem them want to solve with their choice. Sometimes it's the relatively inexperienced outsider choosing the old Washington hand—Obama with Joe Biden, George W. Bush with Dick Cheney, Michael Dukakis with Lloyd Bentsen, Jimmy Carter with Walter Mondale. Sometimes it's the need to shore up your base—Gerald Ford with Bob Dole (Dole was considered hard-right back then), Dwight Eisenhower with Richard Nixon (same), to a degree Carter with Mondale. Or you might go for geography, picking someone to give you a boost in a swing state (though this hasn't really worked in the past).

Mitt Romney's problem is that he'll have not one but two problems forming the horns of a real dilemma, one forged by his inability to put this race away...