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The Left Column

The Budget

President Obama unveils populist budget

ABC News: President Obama today doubled down on the populist proposals central to his re-election campaign with a $3.7 trillion budget that outlines his tax and spending priorities for 2013.

The Obama budget calls for $1.3 trillion in spending on the nation’s credit card next year, including $350 billion in spending on jobs programs and $476 billion in infrastructure projects. Obama also wants to boost aid for manufacturing research and development by 19 percent above current levels, to $2.2 billion.

To pay for the spending, the president would raise $1.5 trillion in added tax revenue over 10 years, mainly from higher taxes on wealthier Americans. He would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on families earning more than $250,000 a year and impose a new minimum tax of 30 percent on millionaires, which the administration has called the “Buffett Rule.”

26 | President Obama unveils populist budget

Mitt's World

Romney Not Completely Melting Down (Yet)

Salon: The fact that Mitt Romney scored two straw poll victories over the weekend is not, by itself, bad news for his campaign. But the fact that the entire political world knows he did is. If things were going the way Romney and his campaign wanted them to be going (and the way they believed they were going until about a week ago), the straw votes at CPAC and in Maine on Saturday would have been campaign footnotes, two more lay-ups for a candidate well on his way to uniting the Republican Party. Instead, they made for headline news, two desperately needed and somewhat surprising victories for a feeble front-runner.

1 | Salon: How rough it’s gotten for Mitt ("not completely melting down" is not "good news")

Clown Car Update

PPP: Santorum leads Romney by 15-points in Michigan

PPP: Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich. Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.

11 | PPP: Santorum leads Romney by 15-points in Michigan (one of Mitten's home states)

Election 2012

Poll: Santorum surges past Romney, both Republicans trail Obama

L.A. Times: President Obama for the first time has opened a sizable lead over his most likely Republican opponents, thanks to growing support among independent voters, according to a new Pew Research Center poll. The poll, released Monday, showed Rick Santorum in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race. But both Republicans trailed Obama by sizable margins. Obama led Santorum by 10 points among registered voters nationwide (53%-43%) and led Romney by 8 points (52%-44%). Obama’s lead over Newt Gingrich, who has faded in the GOP race, was 18 points (57%-39%).

5 | Poll: Santorum surges past Romney, both Republicans trail Obama

The Enthusiasm Gap

Republican Enthusiasm Gap Could Spell Trouble For Party In November

TPM: "I think the lack of enthusiasm among Republicans is partially about Romney, but more broadly a reflection of their discontent with the field as a whole," said Public Policy Polling (D) pollster Tom Jensen in an email to TPM. In addition to PPP, Pew numbers from early January found the same trend. "We did a national poll last week that found only 47% of GOP voters were satisfied with their choice of candidates, while 41% wished someone else would get into the race. That compares to 73% of Democrats who said they were happy to have Obama as their candidate."

"Republican voters aren't ready to run through a wall for any of these candidates, in contrast to the way Democrats felt about Clinton and Obama in 2008," he went on. "That may change once they have a nominee and the focus shifts to beating Obama, but for now Democrats are more excited for the fall."

35 | Republican Enthusiasm Gap Could Spell Trouble For Party In November

Dems Hit Back

Obama campaign sets up 'Truth Team'

USA Today: President Obama's re-election team is seeking help from Internet and on-the-ground backers to spread the word about Obama's record in office, and to bash his Republican critics. The purpose of the "Truth Team" is to "promote the President's achievements, respond to attacks on his record and hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable," said the announcement from the Obama re-election team.

The overall website -- BarackObama.com/TruthTeam -- includes three specialty websites: KeepingHisWord.com (devoted to Obama's record), KeepingGOPHonest.com (attacking Republicans), and AttackWatch.com (responding to critical GOP ads).

"The sites also contain tools for sharing materials via Facebook, Twitter and email, and empowers supporters to take further action by volunteering, writing letters to the editor, sending postcards to undecided voters with information about the President's record, and more," said the Obama announcement.

20 | Obama campaign sets up 'Truth Team'

A Taste Of Santorum

Rick Santorum's Nightmarish America

Consortium News: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is a Republican presidential candidate who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican caucuses in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy?

4 | Rick Santorum's Nightmarish America

Romney In Severe Trouble

Krugman: Romney "described conservatism as if it were a disease."

New York Times: As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney "described conservatism as if it were a disease." Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb "severely"; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured. That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.

30 | Krugman: 'Something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism'

Clown Car Update

Ron Paul, Rick Santorum Suggest Foul Play From Romney Campaign

Huffington Post: Mitt Romney scored two minor but symbolically important victories on Saturday -- a first-place finish in the CPAC Straw poll and a win in the Maine caucus -- each of which set off accusations of foul play from the second place finisher. In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) suggested that Romney had doctored the results of the CPAC contest. "I don't try to rig straw polls," he said. "You have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought... We've heard all sorts of things." Meanwhile, late Saturday night, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) sent an email to supporters that essentially alleged collusion between the Romney campaign and the Maine Republican Party without actually mentioning Romney by name.

53 | Ron Paul, Rick Santorum Suggest Foul Play From Romney Campaign

War On Contraception

Andrew Sullivan: How Obama Set a Contraception Trap for the Right

Daily Beast: (T)he conflict-driven headlines and predictions of disaster for Obama are, in my view, deeply misleading. Right now, they are driven both by cable news’s love of a good fight and high ratings and by the Republican primary campaign, in which the candidates, especially Newt Gingrich and Santorum, are desperately battling to unify the evangelical base, which is convinced its faith is somehow under attack. In the longer run, however, I suspect this sudden confluence of kerfuffles will be seen as one of the last gasps of the culture war, not its reignition.

56 | Andrew Sullivan: How Obama Set a Contraception Trap for the Right