1) This was the “Trading Places” debate
For a 120 minutes, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich essentially traded roles — Romney, often meek and shrill-sounding as he defended himself this cycle, became the aggressor, and Gingrich, who’s played the debate hall crowd like a musical instrument in the past, seemed to shrink from the attacks.
Romney came with balled-up fists to the debate stage, and swung hard at Gingrich during the first few questions — in the exact fashion that the former House Speaker has typically gone at the front-runner.
But it’s the first half-hour of almost every GOP debate that’s set the tone for the rest — so the debate counts as a victory for Romney, who needed to keep the momentum from moving away from him again.
2) Whither Gingrich?
It was Gingrich who needed to recapture his momentum and he simply couldn’t do it.
The former House Speaker, appealingly pugnacious to GOP voters in past debates, simply seemed worn out and off point. Gone was the brawler who could whip up the crowd. And it’s not quite clear where he went.
He never raised any of the well-worn phrases he’s used to define Mitt Romney on the stump — “Massachusetts moderate” comes to mind. He also bypassed an opportunity to hit Romney over his Massachusetts health-care plan.
Gingrich’s pushback against Romney over the immigration issue simply failed to connect. He initially tried to avoid repeating his criticisms of Romney’s now-closed Swiss bank account on the debate stage — something he’s hit him for on the trail in the last few days.
Whatever the reason, this was not A-game Gingrich, who has used debates to pivot to strength. For a candidate who has cited his strength in debates as an electability factor and who needed to get his momentum back, this wasn’t a strong night.
3) The crowd was with Romney
Gingrich got what he wanted — a noisy crowd — after the audience was silenced in Monday night’s NBC News debate. Unfortunately for him, the crowd preferred Romney.
It’s hard to overstate how significant this was.
The crowd helped set the tone early on, noisily cheering for Romney after he derided Gingrich over the “anti-immigrant” claim. It was some of the loudest cheering Romney has gotten in any debate, and it largely came at Gingrich’s expense.
Many wondered whether Romney packed the debate hall with supporters; even if he did, he would hardly be the first candidate to so — it’s what well-run campaigns usually do.
4) Rick Santorum’s got game
We’ve said before that there’s no reason for Santorum to drop out of the race any time soon, and Thursday night’s debate was another reminder of why.
Santorum turned in another strong debate performance, and shined in areas where Gingrich failed to.
It was Santorum who brought the toughest attack against Romney over Massachusetts health care. Every time Romney pushed back, Santorum went back at him — underscoring every time that he thinks the former Massachusetts governor would have a hard time distinguishing himself against President Obama in the fall.
He also successfully tethered Gingrich to Romney over the issue of an individual health care mandate.
Romney called him “angry,” but GOP voters — for whom Obamacare remains a red flag and a major base-motivator — may not quite see it that way, and could be offended by Romney’s characterization.
5) Ron Paul was a crowd-pleaser
That does not mean he was giving serious answers to questions.
The Texas congressman laughed it up as he made quips about going for a 25-mile bike ride to prove he is in good health, and said the first thing he’d ask of Cuba’s leader if he called was what he wanted to talk about.
6) Wolf Blitzer refused to be John King
King got a memorable beat-down from Gingrich at the start of the last CNN debate, a few days before the South Carolina primary. Gingrich rode an anti-mainstream media wave of applause from the GOP crowd that night, and King retreated from asking any further questions about allegations from Gingrich’s second wife.
Blitzer refused to play that role.
He pushed Gingrich to explain comments he’d made on the stump about Romney’s wealth. When Gingrich looked exasperated, Blitzer continued.
7) The pause in debates is coming at just the right moment
After a season of what felt like dozens of debates, there are no more scheduled until Feb. 22 — when CNN hosts another event, this time in Arizona in advance of that state’s primary.
It’s a timely pause, given that, after so many of these face-offs, there really are no major, relevant questions left to ask of the remaining four GOP hopefuls. What more can voters possibly learn about the candidates that they haven’t heard in the six that have been held since Jan. 4?

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In his State of the State Address and stops around the state, Governor Jay Nixon has promoted his Missouri Works plan. It would expand on the provisions of the Missouri Manufacturing Jobs act of 2010, which helped promote expansion at Ford’s Claycomo Plant in Kansas City and General Motors’ plant in Wentzville. Legislation introduced this week basically targets those incentives at manufactures in the automotive industry.

The House version, HB 1455, will be carried by Representative Chuck Gatschenberger (R-Lake St. Louis). He says, “Those manufacturers of vehicles … they need brakes, they need windshields, they need trim, they need engines … and not all of those are built right there on that spot.”
Parts makers qualify under the proposal if the products they make are used by an automaker. Companies with at least half of their sales coming from parts used to modify vehicles can also qualify for incentives.
Gatschenberger says it offers two options to those companies. “One is if you employee five employees, you’re gonna get the same benefits with withholding the taxes that you pay from the state for the benefit of the company. The other aspect of it … there’s a lot of companies in this state that are not going to be able to employ five people but they can employ two people. If they do two people and $100,000 of investment in their business, they can fall under the same guidelines.”
Gatschenberger says it also includes some clawback provisions. ”Let’s say they have those two people but they lay two other people off. Then they lose the benefit. It’s not the specific people that they hire, it’s the total number of people.”
The package increases the standard incentive period to five years, from the three found in the 2010 language. Companies would get a tax break equaling 5 percent of their new payroll if wages are at the average for the county, 5.5 percent for wages that are 120 percent of that average and 6 percent for wages at least 140 percent of the county average.
Gatschenberger notes the package opens up incentives to all auto manufacturers, not just Ford and General Motors, “So if Nissan thinks, ‘Hmm, we might want to put a plant somewhere but where are we going to put a plant,’ it’s making the carrot bigger and jucier.”

Read more here: http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/vratil-pokes-hole-education-plan/#storylink=cpy

Missouri’s high court declined the request to block a new map for the 163-member state House but permitted a legal challenge to be filed in circuit court. More than a dozen people joined the challenge over the new House districts, and a new lawsuit could be filed as soon as Friday. Bob Johnson, a Republican former lawmaker who is among the plaintiffs, said the challenge would add a new claim that the process used to develop the map violated Missouri’s open meeting laws.

A panel of six appeals court judges developed new state House districts after a bipartisan commission deadlocked this past summer. The judicial commission met and deliberated in secret after accepting public testimony for one day in October. The panel said it did not believe it was required to follow the requirements for posting notices of its meetings and conducting most discussions in public sessions.

Already this month, the state Supreme Court this month has rejected new districts for the 34-member state Senate and ordered further legal review by a trial court in two separate lawsuits challenging a new U.S. House map that reconfigures the state into eight districts instead of the current nine.

Missouri candidates start filing Feb. 28 for this year’s elections. If the new House boundaries are rejected, the redistricting process may start from scratch.

The measure was approved Thursday and now goes to the House, which passed a similar bill earlier this week.

The Senate bill would require cities and other political subdivisions to post information about bonds on the Missouri Accountability Portal, including how they plan to pay off the bonds.

The legislation also would require the governor’s office to submit daily reports online about money being withheld from the state budget. And state departments would have to post information about federal grants they receive that are larger than $1 million.

Sponsoring Sen. Brian Munzlinger, a Republican from Williamstown, said the information will help taxpayers know how their money is spent.

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Fiscal bills are SB467 and HB1140

Jenkins told The Associated Press on Thursday she believes the lines of her district need only minimal changes. She represents the 2nd Congressional District in eastern Kansas, which currently includes Manhattan.

State lawmakers must redraw the districts to account for population changes over the past decade. The 2nd District must pick up only 3,200 residents to reach the ideal population of about 713,000.

The neighboring 1st District of western and central Kansas is nearly 58,000 residents short. Some legislators are talking about expanding its territory to take in Manhattan.

Jenkins says Manhattan officials have made a good case that their community has more in common with eastern Kansas.