2. Which should be soon, if the former Pennsylvania Senator is in his right mind. Santorum has achieved something remarkable in this election cycle: emerging out of nowhere and against all expectations as Romney’s principal competitor for their party’s nomination, racking up wins in eleven states. Put aside the questions of party unity (which are overblown) and Establishment blowback (ditto). This is purely about self-interest. If Santorum sticks around until the next set of contests on April 24 to compete in his home state — the only one where he stands a chance of winning — the Romney campaign is likely to turn Pennsylvania into a veritable Dresden. Together with its affiliated super PACs, in other words, it is all but certain to fire-bomb Santorum as it did Newt Gingrich in Florida. And if Santorum, who holds only a single-digit lead in the state now, is left similarly scorched, it will be an embarrassment eclipsing even his seventeen-point loss in his senate race in 2006. Meaning one that won’t easily be forgotten, which should mean something to a man who presumably harbors the intention of hurling himself at the presidency again in 2016 or 2020.

3. Judging from Obama’s speech yesterday, Romney-Ryan is the new Dole-Gingrich. Please recall that in 1996, Bill Clinton’s campaign spent the spring hanging the controversial Speaker of the House around the septuagenarian senator’s neck like a twenty-ton anvil — and in the process effectively won the general election six months early. Team Obama, like the rest of the Democratic Party, is confident that the same stratagem can work again. That they can win (and win decisively) the argument with the Republicans if they frame the election as a choice between the Ryan budget (and the philosophy animating it) and their vision of the fiscal future. The howling on the right over Obama’s assault was not an unfortunate byproduct of the speech; it was the intended purpose. The president’s people want to goad the Republicans into a posture of unified and feral support for Ryan, and thus yolk Romney to him ever more tightly. The sight of Ryan speaking at Romney’s victory event in Wisconsin had tails wagging vigorously in Chicago; imagine a kennel at feeding time and you’ll have a decent vision of what Obama’s reelection HQ looked like last night.