A political tip sheet for the rest of us

[March 09, 2012]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- A political tip sheet for the rest of us outside the Washington Beltway for Wednesday, March 7:

WEDNESDAY'S RECAP

SUPER TUESDAY CHAMP. After racking up six wins, including an Ohio squeaker over Santorum, Mitt Romney spent a relatively quiet day off the campaign trail at home in Massachusetts. He gave an interview to CNBC and was to raise campaign money at an event in Boston. Despite failing to land a knockout punch, Romney insisted in the interview that he's getting the kind of support across the party that he needs to become the nominee. "We've got the time and the resources and a plan to get all the delegates, and we think that will get done before the convention," he said. His campaign also announced that it raised $11.5 million dollars in February.

OUT NEWT, OUT: A super PAC that supports Santorum in the Republican presidential race says it's time for Newt Gingrich to drop out. But Gingrich says he isn't going anywhere. Stuart Roy, an adviser for the Red, White and Blue Fund, told The Associated Press that Gingrich is making it harder for conservative voters to settle on a conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney. Roy noted that Gingrich won only his home state of Georgia on Super Tuesday. Santorum won three. Gingrich says he would have dropped out had he lost Georgia. But he won, and so the race for No. 2 goes on.

DOCOBAMA: Fact checkers: Sharpen your pencils! President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is preparing to release a brief documentary next week about his term in office. Campaign manager Jim Messina says it will "put into perspective the enormous challenges that the nation faced when the president took office and the strides we've made together." The documentary was directed by Davis Guggenheim, the man behind the Academy Award-winning "An Inconvenient Truth," about Al Gore and his global-warming campaign.

OBAMA'S BODY MAN: In losing his ever-present body man Reggie Love, Obama may have gained a valuable campaign surrogate. The former Duke University basketball player stars in a brief campaign video urging fellow African Americans to vote for Obama in November. "From cutting taxes to passing health care to supporting minority-owned businesses, the president has always had our back," says Love, who left the White House last year to focus on completing his master's degree in business administration. "Please visit AfricanAmericans.BarackObama.com and say `You're with him.' I'd appreciate it and I know he would, too." Love had worked for Obama since 2006.

GENDER POLITICS: Republicans and Democrats are battling for the women's vote. President Barack Obama's Democratic allies say the GOP has launched a "war against women" on contraception and other issues. Republican women, led by Ann Romney, the wife of the GOP front-runner, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are fighting back, saying it's the economy and jobs that women care about. Why all the attention? More than 90 years after gaining the right to vote, the majority of those who cast ballots in presidential election years are women. Obama won this group by 13 points over John McCain in 2008. Republicans are betting women will evaluate Obama's stewardship of the economy and find him lacking. But the GOP has helped revive social issues like contraception that many thought were settled long ago.

WHERE THEY'LL BE ON THURSDAY

• Gingrich: Mississippi

• Paul: day off

• Romney: Mississippi

• Santorum: Alabama

• Obama: at White House

DELEGATE TRACKER

Totals after Super Tuesday voting. Twenty-six delegates from Super Tuesday have yet to be allocated. It takes 1,144 delegates to secure the Republican nomination for president.

• Romney: 419

• Santorum: 178

• Gingrich: 107

• Paul: 47

IN THEIR WORDS:

• "We are still bogged down shooting at each other and the president is looking presidential." -- Former New York Gov. George Pataki, arguing that it's time for the party to close ranks around Romney

• "What won't they resort to to try to bully their way through this race? If the governor now thinks he's now ordained by God to win, then let's just have it out." -- Santorum, responding to a Romney comment that it would take an act of God for his rivals to amass a competitive number of delegates

• "We think that will get done before the convention, but one thing I can tell you for sure is there's not going to be some brokered convention where some new person comes in and becomes the nominee. It's going to be one of the four people that are still running." -- Romney, on CNBC's "Squawk Box"

• "If I thought he was a slam dunk to beat Romney and to beat Obama I would really consider getting out. I don't." -- Gingrich

[Associated Press; By DARLENE SUPERVILLE]

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