From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On Michigan—

HUME: [W]ho has made the right pitch to win this nomination, Fred? Can you tell?
BARNES: It’s clear that Romney wins the “do the most for Michigan” sweepstakes. He is promising to bring back the auto industry to the level it was 50 years ago—he is going to completely revive it. . . .
But this is a state that Romney grew up in, and I think he’s gotten the better of it so far, except for one thing: You just don’t know, since Independents and Democrats can vote in this primary and they don’t have any reason to vote on the Democratic side, and that’s why I don’t know whether we can trust the polls or not because you don’t know how many are going to show up and vote, and if they do it’s probably for McCain.
HUME: Is it true that McCain made a mistake in emphasis if not in substance in the early days of this . . . too much about jobs that are not coming back when he was talking about certain kinds of jobs?
LIASSON: I’m not sure about that. I think what he said was the truth, that those jobs are not coming back.
He did have a plan, an economic dislocation plan to compensate people who lost their jobs. But I think the problem is that McCain hasn’t had a strategy for Michigan. He had focused so much on New Hampshire he didn’t have an organization. . . .
KONDRACKE: It’s probably significant that McCain has dropped the lines in recent speeches that those jobs aren’t coming back.
In fact, those jobs are not coming back, and everybody agrees that you have to have different jobs and better jobs, if you can possibly do it. But I would think that Democrats certainly don’t want to hear that those jobs are never coming back.
Some independents might value the straight talk idea that McCain specializes in, but I thought that Romney’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club today was pretty forceful, and it was “I’m going to get everybody together.” That’s his usual thing. “If I’m elected president, I’m going to get everybody together and we’re going to figure out how to solve Michigan’s problems.”
But it was forceful and aggressive speech, and it may do him some good. . . .
HUME: Is Romney pandering himself into being a non-conservative on these issues?
BARNES: Absolutely; of course he is. . . . I think that he’s not taking a conservative approach. It’s one that Washington will come out and bail you out, and you’re such a great state. Michigan has done this largely to itself. . . .
HUME: If Romney wins, is he in the thick of it?
BARNES: Oh, yes. I never thought that Romney was out of it.
LIASSON: It’s very important for both of them. Romney needs to win. I think he can go on as long as he wants. He has the money; neither of them have to drop out. But McCain has to show he can win somewhere other than New Hampshire.