CPAC excitement, Wolf Blitzer’s “OMG!” and a strange polling result are featured in the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

The Vice Presidency, a Key Part of the Federal Witness Protection Program

Hmmm: “Almost 30 percent (29.3 percent) could not accurately identify who the current vice president — Joe Biden — is. Almost one-quarter (23 percent) couldn’t remember who the vice president is; 3.3 percent supplied the incorrect name; and 3 percent named Dick Cheney.”

I’d love to see the crosstabs of those results with the right track/wrong direction numbers. Perhaps ignorance really is bliss.

And I’d love to know how many of those folks voted for Alvin Greene in the 2010 South Carolina Democratic primary.

Then again, Mediaite reminds us, “In 2010, a Pew Research Poll found that 41% of Americans could not identify Biden as Vice President.”

We shouldn’t underestimate how many Americans go through life utterly oblivious to current events in the news. I remember in the summer of 2001, walking down the streets of Washington D.C. a few blocks from the White House. A guy who seemed a little odd but not necessarily crazy asked me for directions to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I’m going to say hello to Hillary!” he joked.

“Um . . . you may want to go the other way down Pennsylvania Avenue. Try the U.S. Senate.”

He stared at me blankly. Somehow, the entire Bush-Gore presidential campaign, election controversy, Supreme Court decision, and Hillary’s Senate race passed him by entirely.

At the precise moment when Rick Santorum is demonstrating how a fired-up, combative, but issues-centered conservative message can resonate with Republicans, the Romney campaign seems strangely . . . empty. Take a look at the Romney Twitter feed in the past 24 hours:

Only one of those messages is policy-centered, and it’s a fairly generic pledge to cut taxes and make government smaller.

At this moment . . . the Obama administration isn’t backing down from its effort to get Catholic institutions to pay for contraception that violates their principles; the president is suddenly embracing SuperPACs after denouncing them as the root of all political evil for weeks; the Syrian regime continues to slaughter its people; there’s real talk of an Israeli strike on Iran; Komen just got bullied into maintaining its protection-money payments to Planned Parenthood; a federal court just ruled that Californians do not have the right to ban same-sex marriage; a new report shows government dependency is skyrocketing and stimulus money is going to luxury yachts.

Any one of these would make a great message of the day from a GOP candidate. Any one of these could make for a compelling argument against the president and his ideology. Any one of these could help Romney connect with the base of a party that appears to be growing more skeptical of him instead of less skeptical.

Instead, we’re getting birthday wishes to Roberta McCain and fond Olympic memories.

Sigh.

Pennsylvania Democratic senator Bob Casey, back on December 7, 2009:

I want to get health-care legislation passed. No one in the Senate has worked harder than I have to get this done, and we will get it done.

Casey today:

“It’s a question of whether or not we’re going to allow — as we should — an institution that has a religious mission to make decisions that are consistent with their faith tradition,” Casey said. “Unfortunately what this does is impose upon them rules that I don’t think we should impose upon an institution that has a faith mission.”

Casey has written to Obama asking him to reverse HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision.

Too bad that in all that hard work, Casey didn’t ensure the bill would not authorize the Department of Health and Human Services to impose these sorts of rules.

A provocative thought over in the comments responding to a Charles Murray piece in Time:

I will suggest that the real reason people dislike the rich is that they know deep down that there has never been a time or a place that is more meritocratic than America today. When the evidence is in front of you that one can be the son [of] a Kenyan goat-herder and an irresponsible white mother, yet ascend to the Presidency . . . who do you have to blame for your lot in life?

The elite colleges admit people on the basis of their academic resume and their test scores, not on their bios. I will never forget my grandmother crying when I told her I had been admitted to Yale. She said, “I just never thought the People Like Us ever would have a fair chance.”

The reality is that lack of success is highly correlated with lack of virtue. And those that fail know deep down that their short end of the stick is only the result of poor decision making.

A couple of points:

1) Obama’s father was indeed at one point in his life a goat-herder, but he also had the opportunity to attend an exclusive Christian boarding school, and he was the University of Hawaii’s first African foreign student. Whether Obama’s mother qualifies as “irresponsible” will be in the eye of the beholder; I find the concept of leaving my children to perform anthropological field work for several years unthinkable. But the overall point that Obama grew up in circumstances that seemed supremely unlikely to generate a national leader stands. Will Americans look at their own difficulty in rising from less-than-ideal circumstances and recoil at the contrast? Would this spur or intensify the desire to lash out and look for scapegoats?

2) The culture Obama grew up in in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is not necessarily the same as it is today. In fact, much of the anxiety about upward mobility stems from the notion that a culture and economy of accomplishment, opportunity, and determination is eroding before our eyes, a culture and economy that is fresh in our memories from not too long ago. Certainly in the late 1990s, with the tech boom and the dot-coms creating instant millionaires, fewer Americans expressed fears that the land of opportunity no longer lived up to its name.

3) There are strong and weak objections to the argument that “there has never been a time or a place that is more meritocratic than America today.” On the Time site, the argument centers a great deal upon the cost of higher education. But more Americans are attending institutions of higher education than ever before.

No, it is beyond college, in the job market, that America’s meritocratic values seem shakier. During this recession, an untold number of Americans who did their jobs well lost those jobs through no fault of their own; the collapse of Kay-Bee Toys, Borders Books, Lehman Brothers, etc. meant job losses for the best and worst employees of those organizations. If a job is outsourced overseas because labor in the Far East is cheaper, it’s hard to see how that illustrates the lack of merit on the part of the newly unemployed. (They may be more expensive than employers are willing to pay, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have merit through skill, dedication, discipline, etc.)

Looking beyond who is hired and fired, the more activist federal government we’ve witnessed during the downturn sometimes seems to turn the definition of merit on its head. What’s more, as Glenn Reynolds writes in a column that touts Charles Sykes’s new book, A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing, this presidency seems to provide regular examples of government directing benefits to those who demonstrate the opposite of what was traditionally considered merit:

And, after a while, people who pay their bills on time start to feel like suckers.  I think we’ve reached that point now:

* People who pay their mortgages — often at considerable personal sacrifice — see others who didn’t bother get special assistance.

* People who took jobs they didn’t particularly want just to pay the bills see others who didn’t getting extended unemployment benefits.

* People who took risks to build their businesses and succeeded see others, who failed, getting bailouts. It rankles at all levels.

. . . In a world of bailouts and crony capitalism — which is to say, in the world we live in today — a rational businessperson has to compare the return on investment between improving a product or service, or lobbying the government for goodies.

A nation of crony capitalism isn’t a land of opportunity, and that system establishes much higher barriers to upward mobility than that much-derided, allegedly cruel and heartless free-market capitalism. The metaphor of “climbing the ladder, then pulling it up behind them” would appear to fit those who rose to the top through a freer system of the past generation and who now are comfortable with a nation and culture where so much economic activity is spurred, and driven, by decisions in Washington.

One more thought: The human desire to find scapegoats and excuses for one’s disappointments in life is probably so widespread, deeply ingrained, and intractable that attempting to create and administer public policies to mollify it is probably a fool’s errand.

Over on the homepage, a quick look at what yesterday revealed, most notably, the likelihood that Santorum has overtaken Gingrich as the preeminent anti-Romney candidate:

Santorum began this contest as the man of the hour, the little engine that could in a sweater-vest who challenged and beat the much-better-funded Mitt Romney . . . and yet he has, at the moment, an entire three delegates committed to him. (Iowa’s delegates to the national convention will formally be selected at a state convention on June 16.)

Santorum won no more than 17 percent in any of the subsequent contests, until last night, and he finished with a disappointing 10 percent in Nevada’s caucuses Saturday. Gingrich has declared, with increasing loudness and insistence, that the former Pennsylvania senator should leave the race to unite conservatives behind his candidacy.

Thirty-five days after the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum needed a win — even a purely symbolic win — to remind Republicans nationwide that he was still a serious contender. Tuesday night, he got it. Missouri was called for him first, shortly thereafter Minnesota followed, and in Colorado he looked likely to finish no worse than a close second. His two wins were landslides. [Three, really; at the time of writing, Colorado was much closer.]

For conservatives hoping to unite behind one Romney rival, Missouri offered a tantalizing look at what the race would be like if Gingrich and Santorum were not splitting that segment of the GOP electorate.

Gingrich was not listed on the Missouri ballot; he and his campaign said that they did not bother to qualify for it because they deemed the nonbinding contest irrelevant. Cynics may notice the Gingrich campaign’s inability to qualify for the ballot in Virginia and wonder just how deliberate their approach to Missouri was.

In the reduced field, Santorum didn’t just win, he thrashed Romney. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Santorum led in every Missouri county that was reporting results.

Rick Santorum adviser John Brabender told CNBC’s John Harwood: “Missouri tells me that in a clean one-on-one against Romney, we beat him.” Expect to hear a lot of this argument from Santorum and his supporters. You’ll also hear quite a few assertions that Santorum has won four contests to Gingrich’s one; the former speaker and his backers will furiously dispute that any of tonight’s results count as legitimate wins.

“We doubled him up in Missouri and Minnesota!” Santorum exulted in his victory speech last night. He added, “In Massachusetts, your votes were particularly loud tonight!”

Of course, it seems hard to imagine Gingrich voluntarily leaving the race; last night, he told Wolf Blitzer: “I’m certainly in it all the way to the convention.”

Santorum’s support surged dramatically in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, as polling indicated the former senator had a chance to win and would not be regarded as a “wasted vote.” Perhaps the largest obstacle to Santorum’s campaign is clearing that psychological threshold nationally; if so, last night and its consequent surge of funds and volunteers should go a long way.

In the Wednesday morning edition of the Morning Jolt, a look at talk of Occupy DC raising a ruckus at CPAC, pro-life Democrats regretting their Obamacare votes, speculation about the reliability of the unemployment-rate numbers, and of course . . . The Night of Santorum’s Huge Wins That Don’t Actually Count for Any Delegates.

Unbridled Passions at Those Nonbinding Caucuses and Primary

Congratulations to Rick Santorum; any time you get the headlines “SANTORUM WINS MISSOURI PRIMARY,” “SANTORUM WINS MINNESOTA CAUCUS,” and “SANTORUM WINS COLORADO CAUCUS,” it’s good news, even if you did not, technically, win any delegates in the process.

And who knows, perhaps this is just what Santorum needed.

But from where I sit, the ties that bind . . . are apparently necessary to sustain any campaign drama. Santorum began the night with three committed delegates; he finished the night with three committed delegates.

Still, these are some monster results: 40.2 percent in Colorado, 44.8 percent in Minnesota, an astounding 55.2 percent in Missouri.

Robert George noticed, “The winner tonight is a Catholic conservative who’s made ObamneyCare critique his KEY issue. And Obama has given him pure gold w/HHS decision.”

“”Freedom…..religious freedom…. supply-side growth. Great combo from #RickSantorum. Helluva night for him,” raved Larry Kudlow.

Perhaps Santorum’s best line: “I’m not the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I’m the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

Early in the evening, Newt Gingrich was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, who asked about the former Speaker not appearing on the ballot, and Gingrich’s point — that today’s primary was “almost an accident of the state legislature” — was entirely convincing, plausible, and surprisingly accurate.

In some ways, the Romney campaign took the night off. As the Minnesota caucus began, Jim Acosta of CNN noticed, “Quiet night so far from Team Romney. No emails on sked, endorsements, or surrogate attacks on rivals in about five hours.”

Of course, judging by his share of the vote, you could argue Romney supporters took the night off, too.

One somewhat surprising no-show in Minnesota last night: “One of Minnesota’s most prominent Republicans isn’t participating in the North Star State’s caucuses Tuesday. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who dropped her own bid for the White House in January, said on CNN she was unable to get home because of votes in Congress. Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Bachmann said she wished she could be in Minnesota caucusing.”

So, how are Missouri Republicans greeting their chance to participate in a sort-of-hotly-contested primary that will determine exactly no delegates today? Turnout is “very low, much lower than expected.”

The Missouri presidential primary winner won’t receive any delegates, and that’s resulting in low voter turnout.

In most precincts in southeast Missouri, the presidential primary is the only vote on the ballot, leaving many voters at home.

“It’s disappointing,” said Cape Girardeau County Clerk Kara Clark Summers. “We put a lot of time into the election, and not to mention a lot of money.  We’d really like to see voters turn out because it’s a good indicator of who could win the caucuses next month.”

Polls are open until 7 p.m. local time.

Perhaps Colorado turnout will be higher . . . oh, wait:

Residents of Denver and a wide swath of nearby cities and towns awoke to find another several inches of snow, frigid temperatures and hazardous driving conditions on Tuesday, worrying local Republican leaders who fear the weather may dampen voter turnout at tonight’s Colorado caucuses.

This is not exactly surprising — Bob Kerrey’s been registered to vote in New York for the past decade — but it is good news for the GOP nonetheless:

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey said Tuesday he will not run for the Nebraska Senate seat he gave up more than a decade ago, shutting down hopes for a bid both parties called Democrats’ best chance to hold the seat but that Kerrey himself described as a longshot. The 1992 presidential candidate and former Nebraska governor had considered seeking the Democratic nomination to succeed Sen. Ben Nelson, who replaced Kerrey in the Senate in 2001. Nelson’s decision not to run for a third term this year came as a boon to Republicans, who must net four seats to retake the Senate and have made capturing the lone remaining Democratic seat in Nebraska’s congressional delegation a priority.

By the way, if the GOP wins the presidency, they only need to pick up three seats to control the Senate.

Congratulations to the next Nebraska senator, who is likely to be state attorney general Jon Bruning, state treasurer Don Stenberg, state senator Deb Fischer, or investment adviser Pat Flynn.

This morning, Obama adviser David Axelrod cheerfully spotlights a Bloomberg story declaring:

The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.

The recent increased use of fracking, shale-gas technology, and directional drilling are all wonderful developments — all opposed, of course, by the president’s Green allies. The article talks about the boom in North Dakota, which makes one wonder why the administration wouldn’t want the Keystone XL Pipeline to expand our energy production and transportation capacity.

Meanwhile, all of this surging production still isn’t helping consumers, and that’s likely to be the factor that most moves perception of the economy and votes in the year ahead:

Last month turned out to be the most expensive January ever at U.S. gasoline pumps, boosted by growing economic strength.

January is typically a month of falling gasoline prices because fuel demand falters in the slower travel weeks that follow the year-end holidays.

Not so this year.

In January, retail gasoline prices averaged $3.37 a gallon, according to the Oil Price Information Service, a private fuel information service. That compared with the previous record average for the month of $3.095 a gallon, set last year. In 2010, January gasoline prices averaged just $2.71 a gallon.

The new record meant more pain in Americans’ budgets. A typical household, burning about 50 gallons of gasoline a month, paid about $168.50 for that fuel in January, or $33 more than in January 2010.

Whoohoo! Non-binding caucuses! Non-binding primaries! Can you smell the excitement?!

Today in Colorado!

Tuesday 7 February 2012: Precinct Caucuses meet in each precinct to choose delegates to the County Assemblies and District Conventions.

There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucus to relate the presidential preference of the participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates to the Colorado County Assemblies and District Conventions; however, a non-binding Presidential Preference poll of the delegates will be conducted. (NOTE: It is the District Conventions and the State Convention that will actually pledge Republican National Convention delegates to presidential contenders).

Since no National Convention delegates are bound to Presidential contenders, the Precinct Caucuses do not violate the RNC’s Tuesday 6 March 2012 timing rule.

Today in Minnesota!

Tuesday 7 February 2012: Republican Party Precinct Caucuses meet to choose the precinct’s delegates to the BPOU [="Basic Political Organization Unit" (the next higher tier: County, State Senate District or State House District)] Convention. There will also be a non-binding straw poll re: Presidential Preference held in coordination with these Precinct Caucuses. (NOTE: It is the later Congressional District and State Conventions that will actually elect Republican National Convention delegates).

There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates to the Republican Convention of the BPOU [which may be a County, State Senate District or State House District] in which the precinct is located. The participants at each Precinct Caucus alone determine if presidential preference is to be a factor in such choice and, if so, how it is to be applied.

Today in Missouri!

Missouri Republican non-binding Primary. Today’s primary has no effect on delegate allocation.

Also note that today’s Missouri ballot will feature Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul . . . but no Newt Gingrich.

This is going to make for a pulse-pounding, dramatic wrap-up piece tomorrow morning!

There’s campaign news and talk of war in the Middle East in today’s edition of the Morning Jolt, but the two sections dealing with Obama seem the most likely to generate buzz . . .

Good Morning, Mr. President!

Breaking this morning:

Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials.

When The New York Times asked the Obama campaign early Monday about the Cardonas, officials said they were unaware of the brother in Mexico. Later in the day, the campaign said it was refunding the money raised by the family, which totaled more than $200,000.

At least these guys are courteous enough to tip the administration that supplies their friends with guns so well . . .

What It Takes to Get Barack Obama to Leave a Room

I’m surprised to see this complaint in Al Hunt’s column:

The White House put out a picture of a private meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 27 that included former President George H. W. Bush and his son, Jeb, the former governor of Florida.

The Bushes were in town for the annual black tie dinner the next night at the Alfalfa Club, a gathering of business and political elites. The two featured speakers, both intended to be brief and humorous, were Obama and Jeb Bush. The president spoke to good reviews. He left before Bush spoke.

Obama hates such dinners. Some of his aides, in particular his political adviser David Plouffe, urged him not to spend an evening mingling with the 1 percent. Yet he chose to go, and attendees said it was the first time they could recall a speaker leaving before the other side had its fun. In addition, Obama’s 87-year-old predecessor was present.

Imagine the criticism five years ago if President George W. Bush had walked out on a dinner before Hillary Clinton spoke, with Bill Clinton in the audience.

I mean that I am surprised that a non-conservative made the complaint, not that Obama behaved this way.

Put another way, Obama will walk out on Jeb Bush, or debt-ceiling talks, but not a 50-minute anti-American diatribe from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega.

The good folks at the Republican National Committee send along word about what is really at stake in tomorrow’s caucuses . . . which is . . . not that much:

To:       Political Reporters

From:  Sean Spicer, RNC Communications Directors

Subj:   Reporting on Delegates for Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri

For those of you covering the race for the GOP presidential nomination and writing about the current delegate count, please keep in mind that no delegates will be awarded tomorrow.

Colorado is a non-binding precinct caucus. Their 36 delegates will be chosen at district conventions held between March 31 – April 13, 2012, and at the state convention on April 14, 2012.

Minnesota is a non-binding precinct caucus. Their 40 delegates will be chosen at district conventions held between April 14 – 21, 2012, and at a state convention on May 5, 2012. Delegates are not bound unless the state convention passes a resolution to bind the delegates.

Missouri will hold a primary tomorrow that is not recognized as being a part of any delegate allocation or selection process. A precinct caucus will be held on 3/17/2012 to begin the process of choosing their 52 delegates which will be chosen at district conventions on April 21, 2012, and a state convention on June 2, 2012. Candidates for delegate must state a presidential preference at the time of nomination and will be bound to support that candidate for one ballot at the national convention.

Right now, Mitt Romney has 73 delegates, Newt Gingrich has 29, Ron Paul has 8, and Rick Santorum has 3. Another 30 are currently unbound.

(Remember, Iowa awards its delegates based on the results of the state convention.)

This morning there seems to be a bit of buzz about this Super Bowl ad:

A couple of points worth remembering.

1) The 30-second spot cost GM, the parent company of Chevrolet, something in the range of $3.5 million — just for the air time, not the cost of filming the commercial, etc.

2) The good folks at LessGovernment.com calculate that the U.S. taxpayer would lose an additional $13 billion if the federal government sold its GM shares now.

The United States Treasury owns roughly 500 million shares of common stock in General Motors. (Source: U.S. Treasury) The Treasury would need to sell these shares at roughly $53 per share in order to “break even” on the investment. (Source: WSJ) Using Google Finance API, we multiply the current GM stock price by 500,065,254, and subtract that total from $26,503,458,462 (or, 500,065,254 x $53).

Our calculations estimate the loss taxpayers would suffer if UST sells its GM common stock shares at the current ticker price.

3) “A letter from Ford attorney Lynne M. Matuszak says that according to insurance industry data it is Ford, and not GM, that makes the safer pickup truck and she called on GM not to use the ad.”

4) As I saw on Twitter last night? “Hey, where’s Ed?” “Ed didn’t even make it to the Apocalypse. He bought a Chevy Volt that burst into flames.”

Buried in the very last question of the Washington Post poll: “On another subject, what is your view of the Tea Party political movement — would you say you support it strongly, support it somewhat, oppose it somewhat or oppose it strongly?”

The survey found 43 percent support the Tea Party movement (12 percent strongly, 31 percent somewhat) and 45 percent oppose it (20 percent somewhat, 25 percent strongly).

But that’s a bit of a shift from mid-January, when 40 percent supported it and 50 percent opposed it.

Also note that this is a poll of “adults”; on certain questions relating to the upcoming elections, the Post limited the sample to registered voters. But that poll question about the Tea Party’s popularity would appear to include some respondents who are not even registered to vote, much less likely to vote in the upcoming election.

If Rick Santorum surges in the the next few states (Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri’s nonbinding “beauty pageant,” where Newt Gingrich will not appear on the ballot), it’s not that unthinkable that he could end up the premier challenger to Romney.

It’s a surprising thought, because since Iowa, Santorum has finished fourth, third, third and fourth. But for whatever it’s worth, Public Policy Polling has Santorum leading Romney slightly in Minnesota and eight percentage points ahead of Gingrich in Colorado for second place. And Romney isn’t competing in Missouri, dismissing the value of a nonbinding contest that amounts to a poll (albeit one that will cost the state $7 million to administer).

In other words, it’s possible Santorum could win two of the three contests this week (even though only Minnesota and Colorado will influence delegates). Maine is also holding caucuses this past weekend and next: “State Republican Party rules require that each town hold a caucus to elect delegates to the state convention early each election year. Feb. 11 is this year’s deadline, which also is the date the town-by-town presidential poll results will be announced.” Romney won those caucuses by a wide margin last cycle.

From the first Morning Jolt of the week:

What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas — Including, Apparently, Caucus Results

We’re sorry, Saturday’s Nevada Republican presidential caucus did not conclude in time for the Monday edition of the Morning Jolt.

I exaggerate . . . but not by much.

As of 6 a.m. Monday morning: “As projected, Mitt Romney won handily, finishing with 50 percent. Newt Gingrich was second with 21 percent, edging out Ron Paul who had 19 percent of the vote. Rick Santorum finished last with 10 percent . . . GOP executive director David Gallagher says representatives from the campaigns approved the counting. Only 32,963 voters participated in the caucuses, far short of the 44,000 Republicans who voted in the 2008 GOP caucuses.”

The word late Sunday night:

More than 24 hours after Nevada Republicans began gathering at schools and community centers across the state to choose their presidential nominee, the election results remain uncertain.

While most of the results were released hours after the Saturday morning contest, the results from the state’s most populous county are still being tallied.

Clark County officials say they stayed up until the wee hours of Sunday morning counting ballots, but couldn’t finish the task. Only 70 percent of all the votes had been counted, and an official turnout for Clark County had yet to be made public.

“It is just layer upon layer of issues that we are trying to work through,” said acting GOP chairman James Smack. “We are not dragging our feet on it. We just want to make sure we get it right.”

One reason for the holdup?

Long lines, voter fraud complaints and angry Ron Paul supporters are turning a special caucus for religious voters who honor the Saturday Sabbath into a circus.

The Las Vegas caucus was supposed to start hours after the rest of the state concluded its Republican presidential caucuses.

But party officials were still frantically trying to sign in voters an hour after it started, further delaying election results from Nevada’s most populous county.

Part of the trouble was some Paul supporters told voters they could show up for the late-night caucus for whatever reason.

But voters could only participate if they signed a declaration affirming that they couldn’t vote during the regular morning caucuses because of their faith.

Clark County GOP chair David Gibbs says it’s up to voters to be honest.

Boy, that last sentence just sends waves of reassurance surging through your body, huh? Because if there’s anything that millennia of human history have taught us, it’s that people are honest, particularly when it comes to obtaining political power.

The finger-pointing has begun, but this is no time for this, fellas. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Chuck Muth, a former Nevada GOP executive director, wrote on his blog that the night was the “Nevada GOP’s national embarrassment.”

“You can say this about Nevada Republicans: they are consistent,” Muth wrote. “They never blow an opportunity to blow an opportunity. And hoo-ahhh . . . did they ever blow this one!”

Clark County GOP Chairman Dave Gibbs did not return messages left on his cell phone Sunday morning.

By all accounts, the night was a foreseeable disaster, months in the making.

The county party leaders rebuffed the state party’s wishes for a streamlined method of delivering results and state officials here don’t have sufficient clout to order the local officials around.

Oh, and Fox News reports that in some precincts, there are disputes because of more ballots cast than people signed up for that precinct.

“Romney is at 49.6%. Will probably get over 50% once all NV GOP votes are tallied, sometime in 2013,” summarized Larry Sabato.

The era of caucuses must come to an end.

A Campaign Spot reader from Colorado offers this automated digital voice transcription from a volunteer on a campaign:

Hi I’m Jill calling from the Ronnie for President campaign to invite you to a rally with Matt on Saturday February fourth at two forty five pm. be available be at Spring fabrication located at eight five zero zero Plaza Drive in Colorado Springs. If you’re interested in attending. Please call us at 7202829815 or e-mail us at T L C o-net-rodney-.com(?) we hope to see you there. Thank you for your time. This call was paid for by ronnie(?) for President Inc..

Sure, Romney may have disappointed conservatives, but we still have warm, affectionate, appreciative feelings for “Ronnie.”

Matt Ronnie: the poorly transcribed choice for 2012!

Kinda reminiscent of the Bad Lip Reading coverage of this campaign:

This is the point a lot of folks are wondering about in today’s otherwise good-looking numbers in the monthly jobs report:

Population estimates for the household survey are developed by the U.S. Census Bureau. Each year, the Census Bureau updates the estimates to reflect new information and assumptions about the growth of the population during the decade. The change in population reflected in the new estimates results from the introduction of the Census 2010 count as the new population base, adjustments for net international migration, updated vital statistics and other information, and some methodological changes in the estimation process. The vast majority of the population change, however, is due to the change in base population from Census 2000 to Census 2010.

The adjustment increased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population in December by 1,510,000, the civilian labor force by 258,000, employment by 216,000, unemployment by 42,000, and persons not in the labor force by 1,252,000. Although the total unemployment rate was unaffected, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio were each reduced by 0.3 percentage point. This was because the population increase was primarily among persons 55 and older and, to a lesser degree, persons 16 to 24 years of age. Both these age groups have lower levels of labor force participation than the general population.

The Zero Hedge site suggests this is a deliberate revision to make the unemployment rate appear lower than it is:

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million.

Except that these people weren’t showing up in any other category in the figures of previous months; pretend the BLS discovered a city of 1.5 million people that it had previously overlooked. But that city is probably a college town with a lot of retirees and small children, since only 216,000 of the residents are working and only 42,000 of them are “officially” out of work, meaning actively looking for a job. (Remember my video with my son’s little figures. If you stop looking for work long enough, you’re no longer “officially” unemployed.) The vast majority of this Missing City is made up of people who are “not in the labor force,” and they’re disproportionately women: 297,000 men, 955,000 women.

It is fantastic that the number of Americans working is increasing. But those working Americans are supporting more and more non-working Americans. There are a lot of reasons to leave the labor force, some by choice and generally happy (parenthood, going back to school, affording early retirement) and bad and unhappy ones (despair, unaffordable involuntary early retirement). The number of Americans not in the labor force jumped from 86,001,000 to 88,784,000 with this revision. While they may have been invisible in the previous figures, the bottom line remains the same: a gargantuan number of Americans who could be working aren’t.

As noted before, we usually see the size of the labor force growing consistently under “normal” growth times. Between January 2006 and December 2008, 4.4 million Americans joined the labor force. We’ve been largely stagnant since then: 154,236,000 in January 2009; 154,395,000 last month.

As long as your labor force doesn’t grow, even anemic-to-modest job growth can chip away at the unemployment rate.