Missouri

Mitt Romney's campaign is now targeting GOP rival Rick Santorum as a big-spending Washington insider. On a conference call Tuesday afternoon, former Missouri senator and Romney surrogate Jim Talent criticized Santorum’s support for expanding government spending, including his vote for the Medicare Part D in 2003—a program for which Talent himself voted.

With St. Louis and Kansas City on opposite ends of the state, and with mostly small(er) towns or rural areas in between, Missouri features a blend of urban, suburban, and rural living somewhat like that of the United States as a whole.

Rick Santorum is projected to win the Missouri primary, the first of three GOP contests held Tuesday. At this point, Santorum has garnered 55 percent of the vote, a considerable majority if he holds it.

Today's primary contests include Missouri's "beauty contest" primary, the Minnesota caucuses, and the Colorado caucuses. Polling firm PPP says all three contests look good for Rick Santorum.

To the Republicans of the states of Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado:

This is your moment to vote on a subject that speaks its own importance—who will be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, the man (if I may quote myself!) “who will save us from the ghastly prospect of an Obama second term, and who will then have the task of beginning to put right our listing ship of state, setting our nation on a course to restored solvency, reinvigorated liberty, and renewed greatness.”

I wonder if three features of the race as it stands today aren't being a bit neglected:

There is something about big, splashy economic development (“eco-devo”) projects that causes even the most conservative politicians to lose their heads. On the stump, they rail against corporate giveaways and crony capitalism. In town halls, they decry backroom deals, preferential treatment, and earmarks. In practice, though, they just cannot resist the urge to spend taxpayer money on new stadiums, shopping malls, and other civic boondoggles that will supposedly jump-start economic activity and lead to massive job creation.

Keep sending your prayers to Missouri.

"Official: Palestinian PM suffered heart attack"

They learned it from watching Geithner: "Tax cheats among recipients of stimulus money"

Pethokoukis: "Why Obama’s tax pledge is bogus"

How to become an accidental conservative (in Germany).

Cops arrest D.C. mayor. Sadly, it's just for protesting Congress' budget deal.

In a conference call with reporters, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill just disclosed that she failed to pay $287,000 in property taxes related to her co-ownership of a private aircraft. This scandal comes quickly on the heels of recent revelations that McCaskill improperly billed taxpayers for use of the same private aircraft, for which McCaskill reimbursed the Treasury $88,000: 

Perhaps one of the most impressive victories in the November 2010 election was when Vicky Hartzler unseated Ike Skelton, a 17-term congressman and then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in Missouri’s Fourth Congressional District.

Ed Martin, a 2010 Republican candidate for Congress in Missouri, has announced he is running for the U.S. Senate in 2012. The Associated Press reports:

The election in "2012 will be about a very simple question — that is what should the size and scope and cost of the fed government be?" Martin told The Associated Press. "Sen. McCaskill decided along with President Obama that bigger and stronger and more costly is better."