James Capretta on the momentum for a premium support plan: “When The New York Times and . . . [Rep. Paul] Ryan are calling for essentially the same type of reform, political momentum is clearly building for the change. This is very good news for those who are counting on Medicare to be there for them in the coming years and decades.”

When Rick Santorum’s staff, whose candidate put religion front and center in his campaign and talks about it incessantly, tries out this line, you know they must be in a tailspin. “ ‘Why is Mormonism off limits?’ asks one [staffer]. ‘I’m not saying it’s a seminal issue in the campaign, but we’re having to spend days answering questions about Rick’s faith, which he has been open about. Romney will turn on a dime when you talk about religion. We’re getting asked about specific tenets of Rick’s faith, and when Romney says, “I want to focus on the economy,” they say, OK, we’ll focus on the economy.’ ” Perhaps it is because Romney doesn’t use religion as a basis for or as a cudgel in public policy.

When politicians say such things, you wonder if they have anyone around to talk sense to them. “Senator Rand Paul told a local radio station in Kentucky that he’d welcome an offer to run on Mitt Romney’s ticket in the general election.”

Be careful when you wish for something. Jim Pethokoukis: “I wanted corp. tax reform in the worst way — and that is just what Obama gave me.”

The last four Republican presidential candidates in the last debate before the Michigan, Arizona and Super Sunday contests went at it in Mesa, Arizona. It was, to be blunt, a wipeout. Mitt Romney brought the heat and the oppo research and flattened Rick Santorum, getting the former Pennsylvania senator hot and defensive. It was also a good night for Newt Gingrich, who returned to his professorial role. And Ron Paul, for once, was a model of common sense, at least when it came to the federal government and contraception.

Romney’s staff must have worked overtime to come up with a raft of data on Santorum. Romney hit Santorum on subsidies for the airline industry and the steel industry. Romney went after Santorum for earmarks. Santorum seemed to get lost in the weeds, sounding defensive and at times falling into Senate-ese. The discussion chewed up a chunk of time and finally left us with the impression he was a Washington politician. He lost in those minutes the image of being a bold conservative. Suddenly he was another weasely senator who voted for a bunch of expensive programs.

Romney bludgeoned Santorum on his endorsement of former Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), who was eventually the 60th vote for Obamacare. With help from Paul, Romney also managed to tie Santorum up in knots on his votes, which included funding for Planned Parenthood.

A much as on substance, Romney won on temperament. He was precise and calm. Santorum at times was obviously mad, pointing his finger and jabbing the air with his pencil.

Paul certainly did his part to dismantle Santorum. Asked why he ran an ad saying Santorum is a fake, Paul replied with a smile, “Because he is a fake.” Paul chided Santorum for bragging that his spending record was better than that of other members of Congress. And Paul told Santorum that he was wrong that birth control causes immoral behavior, making an analogy to the Second Amendment argument that guns don’t kill people. Santorum was reduced to pleading that he wanted to talk about contraception but not do anything as a policy matter. (But if it is really such a great threat to society, why not?) When Santorum confessed to being a good team player for George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, Paul zapped him for being too good a team player. Hitting Santorum on his strong suit — his purported conservative courage — was a masterstroke. Alas, Paul also reverted to his bizarre foreign policy, evidencing great sympathy for Iran.

1. Blame the media. They’ve done that. It’s old. It didn’t ultimately help Newt Gingrich. It sounds like whining.

2. Ask anyone else to get out of the race. That is the last way to get someone out. Besides, unpopular candidates soon become irrelevant.

3. Claim the others are “flip-floppers” unless you are Rep.Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who has never changed his mind on anything, it seems. All of the candidates have “clunkers” in their records, all have switched positions at one time or another and playing “I’m a purer conservative than you” is an invitation to get whacked.

4. Ignore the Senate. It is tempting to blame only President Obama, but the candidates shouldn’t let the Senate Democrats off the hook for failing to pass a budget or do much of anything else since ramming home Obamacare.

5. Avoid the Supreme Court. The justices will be hearing the Obamacare cases next month and have agreed to review a critical case on affirmative action. It is widely suspected they will also take up Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. If Republicans don’t capture the White House, the left is likely to get one or two more justices. Make sure voters know that.

6. Go overboard on illegal immigration. It’s tempting to pander to immigration exclusionists in Arizona, but as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told me in an interview at CPAC, Republicans need to be the party of legal immigration.

One way to look at how “conservative” a tax plan is to consider the overall tax burden. President Obama’s tax plan, for example, raises corporate taxes $250 billion. Another is to consider the degree to which the government tries to control private sector decision-making and investment through the tax code.

Conn Carroll points out:

The right policy prescription would be to close loopholes for all industries and lower the corporate tax rate. But that is not what Obama does.

Instead, he identifies industries he doesn’t like (e.g. “oil and gas” “insurance industry” “aircraft”) and takes away their loopholes, but leaves other industries alone. This selective enforcement of tax simplification would be bad enough by itself, but then Obama makes it far worse by expanding other loopholes and creating brand new ones.

Specifically, to “strengthen America’s manufacturing sector” Obama cuts the top corporate tax rate on manufacturing income to 25 percent “and to an even lower rate for income from advanced manufacturing activities.” Obama also “Extends, consolidates, and enhances key tax incentives to encourage investment in clean energy.” This will all be a boon for K Street as they fight to make sure their business qualifies as either a manufacturer, clean energy firm, or (like Solyndra) possibly both.

Rick Santorum doesn’t go nearly that far, but he does come out with a special manufacturing rate. Just like Obama, he thinks he knows best where investment dollars should go.

Mitt Romney’s plan, from what we can see, does the least amount of picking “winners and losers.” He comes up with a uniform tax rate, which depends on eliminating special credits and deductions. He is, in effect, taking away the incentives for corporations to game the system. It is the lobbyist/crony capitalist unemployment act since, of course, their lifeblood requires a tax code (and a budget) riddled with special carve outs, credits, deductions and give-aways.

In the House Budget Committee's report on income inequality, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) made this critical point in an interview last year:

Right Turn spotted this trend some ago: Rick Santorum has a problem with women voters. What started as a gap has now become a gender gulf:

A gender gap for Rick Santorum has surfaced in the most recent set of polls released before next week’s primaries, with women in Arizona supporting Mitt Romney over Mr. Santorum by nearly 2 to 1.

This is the first time in the campaign that polling in various states, as well as exit polls, has shown that Mr. Santorum’s backers have noticeably tilted toward men.

The latest poll, conducted in Arizona by NBC News/Marist and released Wednesday, showed that women support Mr. Romney over Mr. Santourm 46 percent to 23 percent. In addition, Mr. Romney has an eight percentage point lead among men.

Now these are Republican women, many of whom are pro-life and therefore the female sub-group that would be most inclined to favor him. They, however, don’t seem to share Santorum’s views and that of the right-wing mostly-male blogosphere that he is being persecuted because he is a social conservative. He’s told them women work because they want too many “things” (i.e. they are greedy) or because “radical feminists” conned them (i.e. they are fools). He pronounced that women don’t belong in combat. He declared contraception harms women and prenatal testing is to facilitate abortions. He is dogmatic and sometimes angry. He is pushing special tax breaks for an industry in which women are disproportionately under-represented. (In 2009 women held 29 percent of manufacturing jobs as compared to about 50 percent of jobs in the economy as a whole.)

Given all that, it is surprising he isn’t doing even worse among women voters. It also suggests a flaw in his argument that he is going to win over swing states in the Rust Belt. For example, still looking at only Republicans in Michigan, “Men were evenly split between the two top candidates, but 39 percent of women went for Mr. Romney to 33 percent for Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator.”