N.H. Primary 2012

It's the story that continues to, well, dog Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. And, according to some experts, it could jeopardize his standing with voters who care about animals. And yes, it turns out, that is not an insignificant voting bloc.

The incident happened back in 1983, and it's been public since 2007. But it seems that only now a critical mass of voters is hearing it for the first time.

The dog story was told by a Romney son and published by The Boston Globe as part of a multipart series on the former Massachusetts governor. The anecdote was intended to highlight his problem-solving skills.

Cutting taxes is part of the DNA of the modern Republican Party. All four of the remaining GOP candidates for president have proposed steep cuts in business and personal taxes, and it sometimes seems like Republicans are competing to show the most enthusiasm for tax cuts.

At a debate last month, former Sen. Rick Santorum said tax cuts were needed to get the economy thriving again — even if they benefit the wealthy.

"We need to have as much money funneling through this economy as possible, and the people who make those investments are people who have resources and wealth," Santorum said. "We want them to deploy that wealth in the most productive way possible."

Fresh off his hat trick in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum campaigned in Texas on Wednesday, speaking to a group of pastors at Bella Donna Chapel in the town of McKinney.

Forty miles north of Dallas, where black prairie dirt meets the fresh poured concrete of suburbia, this is Rick Santorum country.

This used to be Texas Gov. Rick Perry country.

"My husband, about four months ago, he told me he was going to go meet Rick Santorum, presidential candidate, and I was like: 'No, his last name is Perry. Our governor's name is [Rick] Perry," joked host Donna Blackard, in introducing Santorum to the crowd. "I was like, 'Who's Rick Santorum?' "

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's losses on Tuesday, while not very meaningful in the race to accumulate delegates, have raised questions once again about his ability to inspire passion from his party's base and about his viability in the general election.

Rival Rick Santorum's victories in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota dealt a setback, if not exactly a body blow, to Romney — whom Santorum routinely dismisses as a candidate with a big machine but no core.

"Gov. Romney's been able to bully his way through this primary, outspending opponents on average about 5 to 1," Santorum said Tuesday. "But he's not inspiring. He's not painting a vision."

The Experience Question

In South Carolina, the race to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney is hitting a fever pitch. The state is seen by many as the last stop before inevitability in the GOP primary.

In campaign stops Tuesday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid out what sounded like an ultimatum.

Scott Sanders will be eating lunch at his desk again. Sanders is the general sales manager for the NBC affiliate in Columbia — South Carolina's capital — so all his time is devoted these days to handling ad traffic ahead of Saturday's Republican primary.

"It's been crazy this week," Sanders says. "It will be hard to watch TV, because there are so many ads."

All five major GOP candidates have ads running during the station's nightly news programs. Their messages are also being amplified and augmented by supportive superPACs.

That means the usual run of furniture store and car dealer ads that viewers might expect to see during program breaks have largely been replaced by attacks about various candidates' position on issues such as abortion and job loss.

The battle for the Republican presidential nomination may or may not be decided by the end of this month. The battle for control of the Senate, on the other hand, is likely to go on all the way until the final votes are cast in November.

The numbers suggest a good year for the GOP. Of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs, 23 are currently held by Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. Only ten are held by Republicans. With Democrats currently holding a 53-47 advantage, the GOP would need four seats to take control — or three, if they win the White House (and the VP would break a 50-50 tie).

All of the Republican presidential hopefuls take on President Obama in their stump speeches, attacking his health care plan, his jobs record and more.

But the shorthand former House Speaker Newt Gingrich uses, calling the nation's first black president the "food stamp president," is raising questions.

It's a theme Gingrich has used since Iowa, and he returned to it during a forum in Charleston, S.C., over the weekend.

"Over here you have a policy which, with Reagan and me as speaker, created millions of jobs — it's called paychecks. Over here you have the most successful food stamp president in American history, Barack Obama," Gingrich said.

Campaign 2012's juiciest political Red Herrings. The revolutionary tea-parties that didn't take place in Boston harbor. Tim Tebow - and whether football and faith belong together. And, Shalom Auslander, author of Hope: a Tragedy.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced his presidential campaign in South Carolina last August, but now his campaign may soon come to an end in the same state where it started. Ben Philpott of KUT News reports on Morning Edition that with the clock ticking down to the Jan. 21 primary, Perry is polling in single digits.

That means Perry has just over a week to convince South Carolinians to vote for him. Philpott spends some time on the campaign trail with Perry, reporting that those attending stops, like Lexington resident Glenn Gainey, know the deal.

"Today, I guess, with being down in the polls, he's got an uphill battle to fight," Gainey says.

The New Hampshire primary is about politics – obviously – but it’s also about economics, albeit in a much smaller way. While the rest of the state was watching vote totals and checking on the mood at campaign headquarters, reporter Amanda Loder of StateImpact New Hampshire was looking at the economic effects of the first in the nation primary. She tells All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about what she learned. 

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A number of media outlets(including the Boston Globe) noted that Mitt Romney's victory speech after the New Hampshire primary felt more like a general election speech than a nomination contest speech.

This year, NHPR's GOP primary coverage took on a strong national flavor, broadcasting to listeners all over the country. Among the network's expanded audience were WNYC listeners in, well...NYC. And in the spirit of inter-station cooperation, the good folks at WNYC and Patchwork Nation used AP polling data to put together a county-by-county map of election results.

What interested StateImpact about this map is that it also classified each county according to its main economic drivers.

One of our most popular New Hampshire primary posts looked at how much the months-long political circus affects Granite State tourism. (You can read that post here.)

Political tourism is definitely a niche hobby.

Given that context, we were rather entertained by this tweet from Union-Leader Editorial Page Editor Drew Cline:

Last night was vindication for Mitt Romney as the former Massachusetts governor claimed nearly 40 percent of the vote; Texas Congressman Ron Paul took second with 23 percent.

"Thank you New Hampshire. Tonight we made history," said Romney.

Candidates always say that, but Romney did make history: The former Massachusetts governor is the first non-incumbent to win both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Romney did so with strong statewide support from GOP regulars. In a race with five major candidates, exit polls suggest Romney collected fully half the votes cast by registered Republicans.

“We made a commitment to the ground here,” said Jim Merrill.