Weigel

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Take spin rooms for what they are: Mostly nonsense. But pay attention to the theatrics. When Rick Perry "oops"ed his way out of contention in Michigan, he made a surprise visit to the spin room to explain himself. ("I screwed up," he explained.) After tonight's debate, Rick Santorum hot-footed it to meet reporters, slogging slowly through the mob as he went over to a previously scheduled interview. Oftentimes, Santorum will response to an annoying question by muttering and shaking his head. This time, when asked why Ron Paul seemed to be on Mitt Romney's side, Santorum snarked: "You have to ask Congressman Paul and Governor Romney what they have going on together."

There was immediate agreement: Santorum was protesting too much. But he was right! After the debate ended, the Paul campaign shot out a donor letter attacking one candidate. "So can Ron Paul count on you to make a generous contribution to help get the truth about Rick Santorum out to the voters and to make sure we have the resources to run a full-scale GOTV program on Super Tuesday?" asked John Tate, Paul's campaign manager?

The Paul-Romney non-alignment pact continued. The Gingrich campaign, emboldened, was talking about the long war. Did it matter that Texas's primary was delayed? No, the campaign would end there anyway. Did it matter how Michigan ended up? Only insofar as whether it would prove, sooner than expected, that Romney had no path to the nomination.

"It's not about states," said R.C. Hammond, Gingrich's spokeman. "It's about delegates."

Rep. Trent Franks, Gingrich's highest-profile Arizona endorser, was a little more realistic. "Newt has a Southern strategy, and time will tell if it's effective."

No such pessimism from the Romney campaign.

"We're going to win Michigan," said Romney adviser Stuart Stevens.

"He's going to win Arizona," said Romney endorser Rep. Jeff Flake.

MESA, Ariz. - Let's get ready to argue in alotted segments of time!

Here is what you are missing by not being in the debate hall itself, or not seeing the live feed inside the debate hall: A speech from Gov. Jan Brewer, making an impassioned case for using Arizona's natural resources. "America was built on copper," she said, "and we've got uranium. And we've got forests!" I'm informed that she was referring, cagily, to the debate over exploring for energy in state-protected parks.

8:03: Newt Gingrich's haircut is jarring; it's as if his head has reduced in size as his media coverage has waned.

8:08: Santorum says his debt plan will cut spending by $5 trillion. And by all accounts, it will. By all other accounts, the tax cuts he embeds in the plan (including some cuts for non-wealthy people) keep the long-term deficit problems humming along. I'm guessing no candidate will take a whack at this, because it's not kosher to suggest that tax cuts slash revenue.

8:12: Romney's description of his own fiscal conservative record mentions the Olympics... which, of course, benefited from federal funding, and are not quite an example of private industry creating gold out of lead.

8:17: Our first "whuh-huh?" moment occurs -- surprise! -- with a Ron Paul prompt. He reiterates his ad's claim that Rick Santorum is "a fake." Santorum tugs his sleeve and says "I'm real!" There is no cut to Romney, as he processes what it might mean to be real.

8:23: What Newt Gingrich will show up tonight? Our first answer: Conciliatory Newt. Given a chance to attack Romney's new-new tax cut plan, he says Romney "moved in the right direction." His sharpest criticism of his rivals is that "Ron [Paul] and I are close on the scale of change" they want, implying that the other guys are tinkerers.

8:29: This earmark discussion is fascinating. First of all: It's a pure meta-issue. No Republican Congress will allow earmarks, anyway, and if they did, they would not adding to the size of the overall budget. Second: It only helps Romney, who luckily missed out on ever serving in Congress, and can trap his rivals in a wonderland of pure theory and rhetoric. Third: It's actually pretty good look at how earmarks work. Romney accidentally delivered a master class on how the process should play out.

8:35: The return of "nice try," the "you're such an idiot" zinger that Romney deployed in Orlando to humiliate Rick Perry.

ROUND ONE: Give it to Romney, in full-on Dismiss My Opponents as Fools mode. He successfully baited Santorum, who can not give up on an argument, into talking about earmarks for longer than any human could stand.

8:43: I should have added a "what will the audience boo?" item to the debate pre-game. But "asking about birth control" is a bit predictable.

8:49: Santorum, so very ready for this question, makes one of those steps away from the culture wars that have become more common as he's done better. "Just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want a government program to fix it," he says. "That's what they do." They are liberals. But... no, hang on, hasn't Rick Santorum moved when he could to fix government policy when he sees morality being threatened?

8:58: The late career success of Pat Toomey disguises the fact that he really might have lost a general election in 2004, when John Kerry was carrying Pennsylvania. Still, Santorum is right -- the Specter mistake, as many hackles as it raises in the talk radio listener, says little to nothing about Santorum's own health care politics. Compare Specter's spending record to Santorum's, and you're going somewhere.

9:09: The big takeaway from the immigration round: Romney saying Arizona "could be a model." That plays well enough in Arizona. Among Hispanic groups in other states? Well...

ROUND TWO: Hard to say. Romney set up some bear traps for the future, but Santorum's culture war walkback was his finest moment, rhetorically.

9:19: For history's sake, here are the words the candidates used to define themselves.

Ron Paul: Consistent.
Rick Santorum: Courage.
Mitt Romney: Resolute.
Newt Gingrich: Cheerful.

I have asked Buddy Roemer to complete the set.

9:25: Take note: Nobody (especially Santorum!) wants to answer this question about women in combat. A whole lot of dodging ensues.

9:27: Roemer answers: "How could I possibly outdo Newt's 'cheerful'?" A fair answer.

9:35: ThinkProgress blasts out a response to the goings-on: "ARIZONA AUDIENCE BOOS BIRTH CONTROL DURING GOP DEBATE." Not true! The audience was booing an inconvenient question, not the existence of the product at the heart of the question.

9:38: All of this discussion of the ways America must confront and not contain our enemies reminds me: What happened to the whole budget-balancing thing?

9:43: Romney misses an opportunity. Santorum gives a weak, tortured answer on why he supported No Child Left Behind. "I took one for the team," he said. It's a mile-wide target for someone to hit. And no one hits it!

MESA, Ariz. -- The media presence is greately reduced. Around half of the seats are full in the tent given over to reporters covering what will may be the final debate of the GOP primary season. The occasion requires a drinking game.

If the candidates are asked about immigration, sip.
If the immigration comes from an outraged Hispanic voter in the audience, drink.
If the Hispanic voter is actually a Tea Partier who wants to seal the border, take two swigs.

Raise your glass and toast when...

- Rick Santorum asks and answers his own strawman question. (X! Why? Z!)
- An outraged Ron Paul comments on how he's getting no questions.
- Mitt Romney dismisses a question by laughing mechanically.
- Newt Gingrich uses the word "frankly," "fundamentally," "profound," or "stupid."

If Gingrich uses two of these words in one sentence, seat the tallest person at your party in a wooden chair, lift it, and dance in a circle.

Ready several drinks for the inevitable Gingrich-moderator spat. If it's about Gingrich's personal life, drink 12-year single malt scotch. If it's because he's not getting any questions, drink bourbon. If it's in defense of another candidate, drink a dry gin martini.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- As mentioned previously, I spent Rick Santorum's speech talking to shut-out fans in a parking lot; my handy tape recorder captured his words, and I recovered it from some no-longer-harried Tea Party staffers. (One issue they had to get past: A possible Santorum speech to the shut-outs was proposed, but scrapped, as the organizers wanted Santorum to know that he was talking to a Tea Party crowd, not just a GOP crowd.

Listening to the speech now, I'm reminded how basically unexamined Santorum is as a candidate-pundit. Foreign policy -- his balliwick when he was out of the Senate -- took up a good portion of the speech, and Santorum drove his remarks home with a line that wasn't all correct. Ronald Reagan, he said, would call people "yes, evil! He identified it, clearly. Why? Because America stands for something!" Meanwhile, "the president refuses to call evil, evil! Refuses to even name it! Refuses to confront it!"

This was a little hyperbolic: The president has called terrorists and other villains "evil," and semi-controversially. Santorum was trying to make another point.

"He'll help the Muslim Brotherhood overthrow our old ally in Egypt," he said. "He'll help rebels overthrow a dictator in Libya who was no threat to us."

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A parking lot of frustrated voters is a good petri dish for agit prop. As Rick Santorum supporters arrived, they were greeted by Ron Paul fans, who lined the sidewalk outside the Sabbar Shrine with their signs. One sported a sandwich board reading NOT HERE FOR RICK SANTORUM. Another passed out home-made shopping lists of reasons to never ever vote for Santorum.

The Paul supporters crossed a line, though: One of them held up a sign telling readers to GOOGLE RICK SANTORUM. The joke (do I have to spell it out?) is that doing so will take you on a magical mystery tour of sexual terms. Ann Doherty, a Santorum backer, showed up ready to shame them.

As Santorum gains support, you hear plenty of voters who only recently discovered him raging about what they had to look at when they researched him. "This isn't somethin you'd show your grandmother!" said Doherty.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Pity the people who showed up on time for Rick Santorum. The frontrunner-of-sorts scheduled a pre-debate event in this city, a speech at a Tucson Tea Party rally at a Shriners club. The Republican candidates vying to replace the retiring Gabrielle Giffords, would give speeches, starting at 10, and Santorum would speak at 11:30.

But if you didn't show up at 10:30, you were out of luck. Same if you were a reporter. Tea Party officials (marked by their red, branded shirts) aggressively enforced the fire marshall's guidelines, capping the attendance at 450. I entered into negotiations with a "media handler" who held a batch of media badges with one hand, and with the other, pointed toward the door she wanted me to leave through. A Santorum volunteer pleaded with her to cool off.

"There's a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who drove two hours to be here!" she said. "This is about coverage."

"We have more than 30 reporters here," said the Tea Party wrangler. "We're prioritizing citizens."

But dozens of voters were stranded outside, too. This picture doesn't do justice; I took it after people moved out of the way. They stayed for two or three hours, thinking that Santorum might come out and address them with a bullhorn.

If Santorum lost any votes over this, I couldn't find them. The Santorum backers, ranging from old fans to people who had just marked their absentee ballots, were absolutely committed.

"I think it says something that Trump is backing Romney," said Bill Kershaw, a hobby ancestry researcher who said he'd traced his family roots back to 90 A.D. "He's the candidate of the rich and nobody else."

Steve Johnson, a church youth leader, claimed to be the most faithful Santorum fan in the parking lot. "Check my Facebook timeline," he said. "I started supporting him in 2006."

TUCSON, Ariz. -- I'm en route to Rick Santorum's big morning rally in Tucson; Jon Justice, the pop culture-aware conservative talker down here, will be introducing him. And according to Justice, who does have a vested interest in success here, the Santorum crowd was building two hours before his scheduled arrival.

The crowd buzz was almost as interesting as the radio ad I heard between segments. Winning Our Future, the Adelson-funded pro-Gingrich Super PAC, bought 30 seconds for a commercial that listed the names of lame moderates foisted upon Republican voters. "Will we let the establishment pick our nominee again? They gave us Bob Dole." BOOM. "They gave us John McCain." BOOM. The ad ended with... no mention whatsoever of Newt Gingrich. If I wasn't a Super PAC fanboy, I would have pegged it as a Santorum ad.

There were no Santorum ads. In a short stay at my hotel, I'd seen only one TV ad running during local news. It was a standard Winning Our Future hit on Santorum, attacking him for "voting against the debt ceiling five times" and "siding with Hillary Clinton on voting rights for felons."

ELOY, Ariz. -- NBC/Marist return from the field with two polls that calm the poor suckers with Romney stock on Intrade.

First, 767 voters in Arizona:

Mitt Romney - 43%
Rick Santorum - 27%
Newt Gingrich - 16%
Ron Paul - 11%
Undecided - 3%

Next, 715 voters in Michigan:

Mitt Romney - 37%
Rick Santorum - 35%
Ron Paul - 13%
Newt Gingrich - 8%
Uncommitted - 2%
Undecided - 4%

Romney has regained the lead, has he? Sort of. The pollsters add that 16 percent of likely GOP voters have voted in Michigan, and they've broken 49-26 for Romey; half of Republicans have voted in Arizona, breaking 52-22 for Romney. Take them out and Romney's still losing Michigan.

It was only seven short weeks ago when Charlie Pierce and I stood in the breakfast nook of the Manchester, N.H. Radisson and watched Buddy Roemer announce that his invisible presidential campaign would go on. He would skip the states with filing fees; he would concentrate on voters in Michigan.

Or maybe he wouldn't. The statement just out from Roemer world headquarters, located in an asteroid circling the planet*:

Tomorrow, I will formally end my bid for the GOP nomination for President of the United States.  As the GOP and the networks host debate number twenty-something this evening, they have once again turned their backs on the democratic process by choosing to exclude a former Governor and Congressman.  I have decided to take my campaign directly to the American people by declaring my candidacy for Americans Elect. Also, after many discussions with The Reform Party, I am excited to announce my intentions of seeking their nomination. It is time to heal our nation and build a coalition of Americans who are fed up with the status quo and the partisan gridlock that infects Washington. Together, we will take on the special-interests that control our leaders and end the corruptive influence of money in politics so we can focus on America’s top priority – jobs.

In some mirror universe, one with looser rules about entering televised debates, Roemer is a minor star. He nestled in to part of the Zeitgeist last year, attacking Citizens United and marching in solidarity with Occupy protesters. There surely were real human voters who wanted to hear a message like this, but they never heard Roemer. How that will change now that he's seeking a Reform Party nod, I have no idea, but I'm surprised to see that the Reform Party still exists and is in a "rebuilding stage." One of Roemer's rivals is "one of NY’s top fitness models," which isn't something you could say about the GOP field.

*Waiting for a fact check on this one.

ELOY, Ariz. -- Here, about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, is my temporary home: One of the non-Sleepy Bear rooms at a Travelodge. Arizona is my home for the next few days, and I'll be at tonight's debate in Mesa.

Elias Isquith says I'm all wet about Super PACs.

Paul Waldman and Jamelle Bouie become bloggers. Welcome to 2002, fellas!

Two great journalists are killed in Syria.

The Rick Santorum hits begin -- the archives were really raided for these stories.