Romney, Santorum Look to Smooth Things Over Before Super Tuesday

At Los Angeles Times, "Romney, Santorum trying to recover from verbal gaffes":

In the last 10 days, voters learned that Mitt Romney's wife drives two Cadillacs, and that while Romney does not follow NASCAR that closely, he is "great friends" with some team owners.

They have learned that John F. Kennedy's landmark 1960 speech on the separation of church and state made Rick Santorum want to vomit, and that Santorum thinks President Obama is a "snob" for urging people to continue their education after high school.

For a lot of voters — and many critics — such remarks have reinforced stereotypes about the candidates: That Romney, a multimillionaire, is out of touch with average Americans, and Santorum, a staunch social conservative, is a throwback to the mores of an earlier time.

Now, as Super Tuesday's crucial contests loom next week, both candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have struggled to recover from those and other self-inflicted wounds.

Okay, sound's reasonable enough.

More at the link.

And also at The Other McCain, "HUGE: Gingrich Tennessee Co-Chair Resigns and Endorses Rick Santorum."

EXTRA: At YouGov, "Santorum Leads in Three of Five YouGov Super Tuesday Polls" (Oklahoma, Ohio, and Tennessee), via Memeorandum. And also from Mark Blumenthal, "Super Tuesday Polls: Rick Santorum's Margin Fades In Ohio, Mitt Romney Leads Nationwide."