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Jon Stewart had a field day with what was potentially the last Republican debate of the primary season on everything from the way CNN introduced them, "resolute" Mitt Romney, Paul calling Santorum a "fake", booing Santorum describing having to compromise to get legislation passed, to Gingrich's ridiculous flame throwing on "infanticide."

If there's one thing you can say about this Republican primary race as it continues to drag on, it's that they're going to make sure Stewart is not going to run out of new material any time soon.

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Lawrence O'Donnell took Ron Paul to task for his very non-Libertarian like views on people's sex lives and contraception that sadly were on full display during last night's Republican debate on CNN. Anyone who's been following him at all already knows his views on women's issues, abortion and contraception are about as awful as his economic policies, but then you could say that for the lot of them.

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During some of CNN's follow up to the potentially final Republican primary debate this Wednesday night, Anderson Cooper asked former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer what he thought about Newt Gingrich's statement during the debate that "the elite media" didn't ask President Obama about a vote he took back in 2008 as a Senator that would have made "infanticide legal."

Rather than point out, as TPM noted that Gingrich's inflammatory rhetoric was dubious at best, Fleischer decided to go on an attack of the media as well, and asked if the same sort of "hardball" questions of a similar ilk were asked of the Democratic candidates back when President Obama and Hillary Clinton were embroiled in their primary race.

Sorry Ari, but Newt didn't get a "hardball" question. Here's what John King asked Gingrich that he thought was such a tough question:

KING: Let's get right back to questioning the four contenders for the Republican nomination. We take a question now from cnnpolitics.com. You can see it up on the screen here.

Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why? As you can see -- it's a -- it's a very popular question in the audience, as we can see. Look, we're not going to spend a ton of time on this but it is -- please.

So apparently asking someone whether they believe women should be allowed to use birth control in the wake of Republicans attacking women's ability to afford to have access contraception is now considered "hardball."

This coming from the same man that was overpaid by the Susan G. Komen foundation for such sage advice as their recent attack on Planned Parenthood, which somehow never seems to be a topic for discussion at CNN when they're got him on there.

Why CNN thinks any of us should care what this overpaid Bush lackey and apologist who's obviously on the wrong side of women's reproductive rights if he thinks he can make a buck off of it has to say about anything that involves women's health, ever, is beyond me, but it just looks like just more of CNN's continued move to do their best to become Fox-lite.

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During what could be the final Republican debate of the 2012 presidential primary season, Mitt Romney decided to double down on his prior statement that Iran will attain a nuclear weapon if President Obama is re-elected. More fearmongering straight out of the Johnson playbook from back in 1964.

Romney: Iran Will Get Nukes If Obama Is Re-Elected:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney doubled down on his claim that a second Obama term will bring a nuclear Iran.

"We must not allow Iran to have nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes. America will be at risk. And some day nuclear weaponry will be used. If I'm President, that will not happen. If we re-elect Barack Obama, it will happen," he said at the CNN Republican debate on Wednesday night.

Rick Santorum was right there with Romney but we happily got some push back from Rep. Ron Paul who reminded the audience that somehow we've managed to negotiate with countries that were much more of a threat than a country surrounded by our military bases that has yet to attain a single weapon.

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I don't know about anyone else, but watching the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove try to explain how the current clown car that is the Republican presidential primary race is not something the rest of us should be watching with anything besides sheer horror at just how far to the right they have all moved, or how much or whether the candidates should beat up on each other in the upcoming CNN debate this Wednesday night just tickled me to watch.

They've really both got their hands full trying to gloss over the fact that even Drudge was going after Rick Santorum that day, or the fact that they've all been beating the hell out of each other with their political ads, or those paid for by their Super PAC supporters.

We got a little preview here of how Fox is going to handle it if heaven forbid anyone asks Rick Santorum too many tough questions about his comments that Protestants aren't real Christians from back in 2008 during the CNN debate. Per Bill-O, they'll just be trying to "bear bait" poor old Santorum into explaining himself, because that evil "librul" CNN just wants to stir things up.

I have to say that if you're a paid Republican talking head whose job is to try to make the public think that the Republican Party hasn't fallen off of the right wing cliff with the likes of Rick Santorum as your potential front runner right now, you might actually be coming close to earning that generally over paid salary of yours, because you've got your work cut out for you. No amount of talking points or glossing over the sheer crazy coming out of that man's mouth day after day is going to make a dent in the fact that most of the public that is not the right wing Evangelical portion of the GOP base is going to recoil once they get a chance to listen to him it they haven't already.

I actually hope Santorum ends up winning some of the upcoming primary races just to have a chance to watch the GOP go into full freak out/damage control mode. O'Reilly can pretend all day that there's not much difference between the candidates, which he tried to do here, and from my stand point, there's not. They're all horrible. He's going to find some disagreement among their ranks on that point if Santorum pulls off a few more primary wins.

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Here we go again. Mitt Romney doesn't seem to care much that there are people out there actually debunking his lies even if we can't get our talking heads in the mainstream media to do it, because he just repeated another one during this Thursday evening's debate on CNN.

Romney repeated the lie that his tax rate is "closer to 45 or 50 percent" although he walked that back a tiny bit during the debate and used the number forty instead. Here's more from Think Progress -- Watch Mitt Spin: Romney Claims His Real Tax Rate Is ‘Closer To 45 Or 50 Percent’:

During an interview with Univision, Romney was pressed on whether it was fair for him to pay about 13 percent of his income in taxes — as he did in 2010, according to his recently released tax returns — when many middle class families pay far more. Romney proceeded to claim that his actual rate is “closer to 45 or 50 percent.” To justify his figure, Romney relied on his belief that “corporations are people.” When Univision’s Jorge Ramos asked Romney if his 13 percent tax rate is “fair,” Romney suggested adding the maximum corporate tax rate (35 percent) to his personal taxes to calculate his real rate [...]

Romney glosses over the fact that he is not a corporation and doesn’t pay corporate taxes. Additionally, most corporations pay far lower than a 35 percent rate. In fact, many profitable corporations pay nothing at all.

In the alternative, Romney suggested that his tax rate should be considered “almost 40 percent” because he gave a substantial amount of money to charity, mostly to the Mormon church. Romney should be lauded for his charitable contributions — and received a tax deduction for them — but charitable contributions are not taxes.

Transcript via CNN of his comments during the debate below the fold.

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During Monday night's Florida NBC GOP primary debate, presidential candidate Rick Santorum was asked by the Tampa Bay Times Adam Smith about his call for Congressional intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, who as our readers here know was the subject of a court battle between Schiavo's husband and her parents as to whether she should remain on a feeding tube even after the courts had ruled that she was in a vegetative state.

As The New York Times noted on their blog, The Caucus tonight, Santorum was allowed to tell a big whopper during his response and was not called on it by any of the moderators.

Santorum and Terri Schiavo:

Tonight, Mr. Santorum said he “didn’t call for Congressional intervention, I called for a judicial hearing” to review a case in which the parents, who were constituents of his from Pennsylvania, and Ms. Schiavo’s husband were on different sides.

But a New York Times Magazine article in May 2005 about Mr. Santorum said he “not only pushed the Senate to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, but he also traveled to Florida and prayed with her parents.”

John Amato wrote about Rick Santorum's interference in the case back in 2005 here -- Santorum the Weather Man.

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So much for Mitt Romney following in his father's footsteps who released twelve years of his tax returns when running for President. I'll be surprised if this answer satisfies anyone since just the last two years may not show us much about how Romney has been investing or offshoring his money for the last decade. From this Monday night's NBC Florida primary debate -- GOP debate: Romney says he'll only release two years of tax returns:

Mitt Romney said that he will only release two years of his tax returns.

He also said there will be "no surprises" in the returns that he will release on Tuesday.

The former Massachusetts governor said he disagreed with his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney (R), who released 12 years of returns while running for president.

"I agree with my dad on a lot of things but we also disagree," Romney said at Monday night's GOP debate. "Going out with 12 years of returns is not something I'm going to do. I'm putting out two years, which is more than anyone else on this stage. I think it'll satisfy the interest of the American people... I think that's the right number." [...]

After losing Saturday's South Carolina primary, Romney said he'd release his 2010 returns and a 2011 estimate on Tuesday in an effort to put the issue to rest.

But the issue came up again Monday night.

Romney tried to pivot the conversation to his economic plan, saying: "The real question is not my taxes but the taxes of the American people."

But moderator Brian Williams brought the conversation back to Romney's tax returns.

Romney said he was sure people would talk about his returns. "You'll see my income come, you'll see how much taxes I paid, all I gave to charity," he said, adding he hadn't paid one more dollar in taxes than he owed.

"I'm proud of the fact I pay a lot of taxes," he said.

Think Progress has more on that here -- Romney ‘Proud Of The Fact’ That He Pays ‘A Lot’ Of Taxes, But His Plan Would Cut His Own Taxes In Half.

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Former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt made the statement over the weekend that were Newt Gingrich to win the Florida primary after winning South Carolina, we might see a bit of a civil war within the Republican Party ensue. Well, I think we got a taste of some of the opening salvos of that during this interview from Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN.

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin was not at all happy with CNN debate moderator John King for the question he asked Newt Gingrich to open up their South Carolina debate earlier in the week, but not for the same reason the audience was displeased. It's not often I agree with Rubin on much of anything, but she's right here that King lobbed Gingrich a complete softball in the way he framed the question and should have known better that Gingrich was going to go after him and attack him for it.

Rachel Maddow actually made a very similar point in her coverage shortly after the debate, noting that there were about a dozen different ways that question could have been framed for Gingrich so he would have had to answer for the hypocrisy of one, being from the party that claims to run on family values when you've got a history of cheating on your spouses. And two, the utter hypocrisy of Gingrich cheating on his wife at the same time he was trying to have President Clinton impeached for similar behavior.

Howard Kurtz did point out that Rubin is a supporter of Mitt Romney during the segment. What he failed to note is that she wrote an op-ed the previous day, basically begging a number of people in the Republican Party leadership to come together and "collectively get behind a not-Gingrich candidate." Schmidt talked about the panic that was coming if it looked like Newt Gingrich might actually have a chance to win the Republican nomination. Well, as BooMan put it in his post on Rubin's op-ed -- I Got Your Panic, Right Here.

The other thing missing from this discussion is one of the reasons for the audience at the debate being so completely hostile to John King, or to Juan Williams earlier in the week as well, and that's how many of them are potentially Fox News viewers or listen to right wing radio and have been completely propagandized to believe that you can't trust the "liberal media" and that conservatives are somehow under assault from those evil lefties that are just out to get them? We've got large swaths of this country who have been trained to believe that Fox is the only place they can trust to get their information from and as much as CNN tries to go after those viewers by catering to the AstroTurf "tea party" or with their fake balance and host of "conservative" pundits who come on the air and lie to their viewers as well, they're still going to be part of that "liberal cabal" that they've been taught to hate.

As has already been noted here, Fox viewers are less informed than those who watch no news at all. I imagine a good deal of them were in those audiences cheering for Gingrich's attack on John King and booing Juan Williams for daring to point out that Gingrich has been playing the race card. I don't expect Kurtz and his guests to be pointing that out since CNN is about one notch above Fox in the misinformation game, if not on a par with them.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Rick Perry continued his string of gaffes during this Monday night's Fox GOP primary debate when he suggested that Turkey "is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists." Needless to say, Perry's remarks aren't sitting to well with the Turkish media.

Turkey responds to Perry remarks:

In a statement e-mailed to CNN, Selcuk Unal said presidential candidates should "be more informed about the world and be more careful their statements."

"The unfortunate views of Perry are not shared in any case by Republican party supporters, considering the weak support he has received in public polls and primary elections," Unal concluded.

Top Turkish government officials were unavailable for comment Tuesday, with many of them in Northern Cyprus for the funeral of veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktas, but the country's largely-tabloid press wasted no time in responding to the comments on websites early Tuesday morning.

"The debate that the Republican candidate Rick Perry attended on American Fox TV turned into a scandal that contained very ugly statements about Turkey," announced TRT state television.

"Rick Perry: what an idiot," tweeted Mustafa Akyol, a columnist with the English-language Hurriyet Daily news. The Hurriyet newspaper also posted a video on its website of Perry drawing a blank in the middle of a prior debate, forgetting in mid-sentence which was the third of three government departments he would cut if elected president.

Perry's remarks came on the same day a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman announced that a new NATO radar station, manned by Turkish and American military personnel, went online this month in the Turkish province of Malatya. The radar station is part of a controversial U.S.-led missile defense shield that both Russia and Iran have publicly opposed.

For more than 50 years, Turkey has been the only Muslim member of the NATO military alliance. Read on...

As Steve Benen noted:

For the record, Turkey is a democracy, a key U.S. ally, and a member of NATO. The country is not run by terrorists.

When this guy drops out, it’ll be bad for comedy, but almost certainly good for democracy.

Full transcript below the fold.

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