“The number of Republican voters taking part in the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses dropped significantly this year, a Globe review of data shows,” the Boston Globe writes, adding, “In last Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, 249,655 voters cast ballots, up from 241,039 in 2008 and 239,523 in the 2000. But the number of registered Republicans who voted was around 152,000, down from 165,517 in 2008 and 171,031 in 2000, also years when there was no incumbent Republican president. This year’s figures are a projection based on a Globe review of official reports from election officials in 285 of the state’s 301 precincts and wards. The rest were still out or being corrected as of Friday. The turnout numbers seem to confirm recent national polls that reflect an enthusiasm gap when it comes to Republican voters rating the caliber of their field.”

“Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum made the case as to why each of them is the best conservative pick for the Republican nomination on this morning’s news shows, slamming frontrunner Mitt Romney for overseeing health reform in Massachusetts and his moderate record as governor,” the Boston Globe writes.

“It's become a case of the unsubstantiated vs. the discredited,” the AP says. “Mitt Romney's never-supported boast to have created more than 100,000 jobs as a venture capitalist has been countered by an attack film so flawed that the Republican presidential rival it was meant to help, Newt Gingrich, has asked the sponsoring political action committee to correct it or take it out of circulation. Meanwhile, voters are no farther ahead in knowing whether Romney's work at Bain Capital -- a complex record of company start-ups, revivals, flops and shutdowns -- cost more jobs than it created, though there is gathering evidence it was not as rosy as he has portrayed.”

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) says the GOP’s tone has not been helpful in wooing Latino voters. “‘What we have to do is this: We have to tone down the rhetoric, and we have to have a sincere, honest conversation with the voters,’ Martinez said Wednesday, shortly after the Republican National Committee announced that it had hired a director of Hispanic outreach and was expanding its Latino-focused efforts. She's among the popular Hispanic politicians Republicans will deploy to battleground states in the coming months.”

GINGRICH: The New Yorker details Callista Gingrich’s role in the campaign. “According to current and previous staff members and friends, Mrs. Gingrich wields a great deal of decision-making power. Of the notorious Greek cruise, one former Gingrich strategist told me, ‘She said, ‘Either go on this vacation or we’re done.’ ‘ There were rules, he said, about ‘how many nights he could be away and what time he had to be home for dinner—which led to a huge abuse of private planes which we could not afford. There’s a sense that, I’m not gonna have a third failed marriage.’” Callista spends a lot of time on stage watching her husband speak. “Asked what she thinks about while she’s standing there, she replied, ‘I think, if anything happens to him, I could probably finish the speech.’”

More: “The former strategist had a different assessment. ‘She’s the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics—it’s all about her. They do these movies together, and she does a word count: she has to have the same number of words on camera as he does or they have to reshoot.’”

He says he’ll release his tax returns Friday, Politico reports.

HUNTSMAN: The Boston Globe describes Huntsman as a candidate, “who had hoped to parlay a centrist approach to foreign and economic policies into a winning strategy for the Republican nomination,” but noted, “it has been a long, difficult path in the primaries” for him. But “he had difficulty attracting support from conservatives, with positions that included support for civil unions for gay couples and belief in the science of climate change.”

The Boston Globe’s Johnson puts it bluntly: “Jon Huntsman’s decision to end his presidential candidacy has zero impact on the race for the 2012 Republican nomination, except to underscore the emerging futility of the campaigns embodied by the remaining challengers to frontrunner Mitt Romney.”

The New York Times: “But Mr. Huntsman’s decision [to endorse Romney] was unlikely to have any particular influence where Mr. Romney needs it most, among social and religious conservatives who remain wary of Mr. Romney’s ideological inconsistency. With the withdrawal of Mr. Huntsman, who despite his efforts to portray himself as more conservative than Mr. Romney was often viewed as the moderate in the race, the South Carolina primary is now Mr. Romney against an array of opponents coming at him from the right.”

On the other hand, the New York Daily News says: “Although Huntsman was viewed as having little traction in South Carolina, his endorsement of Romney could give the former Massachusetts governor, who leads in state polls, even more of the look of inevitability. The move comes as pressure has been increasing on Texas Gov. Rick Perry to leave the race in order to allow South Carolina's influential social conservatives to unify behind either former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.” 

Buzzfeed: “Jon Huntsman’s campaign was a better idea than it was a reality, and the idea was John Weaver’s. Weaver, a rangy, 52-year old Texan has a storied and controversial career in Republican politics, and now an uncertain future. And the Huntsman campaign is the latest and purest version of a strategy that he’s been pressing since he was at John McCain’s right hand in 2000: A Republican campaign that embraces the mainstream media, sets itself against elements of conservative dogma, and builds a coalition of moderate Republicans and independents that – if it could only survive the primary – would be formidable in a general election. The campaign’s birth in baroque intrigue and its high-level infighting are also Weaver signatures.”

More: “ ‘You get a lot of good out of the guy, you get a lot of brilliance out of the guy – but you get a lot of dysfunction out of the guy,’ a Republican who has often worked with Weaver said Sunday night, after the news of Huntsman’s departure had broken. Members of Huntsman’s family blame what they saw as a debacle on Weaver, the Republican said. ‘It’s really going to get ugly.’”

PERRY: His reaction to the four marines urinating on the bodies of the Taliban – so what? “The Marines videotaped urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters have at least one defender — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a GOP presidential contender,” the New York Daily News writes. “Perry yesterday said that the four Marines in the Afghanistan war-zone video were just ‘kids’ and that the real outrage was the ‘over-the-top’ rhetoric from the Obama administration condemning the conduct.”

He told CNN: “These are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids. They make mistakes. There is video out there of all types of things. What was really disturbing to me is just kind of the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military,” he said of the Pentagon’s threat to prosecute the suspected marines.”

ROMNEY: One thing has benefited Romney's campaign: "the absence so far of a fully competitive rival for the Republican nomination," John Harwood writes. Mr. Romney still faces many challenges, not the least of which is the hostility of many evangelical leaders, who sought to rally support on Saturday for former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. But through the early stages of the nominating contest, no recent Republican standard-bearer has had such a diffuse and shifting field of opponents.”

At an event in Hilton Head that was supposed to focus on veterans, Romney was asked, “Do you believe in the divine saving grace of Jesus Christ?” the Boston Globe reports. “Murmurs went through the packed room, before Romney, a Mormon, responded: ‘Yes I do.’ The crowd applauded. … ‘I happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, our savior,’ he said, ‘but I know others with different views, and I respect their views.’”

“Mitt Romney gave an unemployed woman a handful of cash after a campaign rally in Sumter, South Carolina,” The Hill reports. “An aide for Romney said the woman received about $50 dollars from the GOP presidential candidate according to reports.” The woman followed Romney’s bus to the airport, where he opened his wallet and gave her the cash. 

The Wall Street Journal reports: “Mitt Romney’s campaign is blasting out robo-calls defending his stance on abortion to voters in the most socially conservative swath of South Carolina.” From the call: “‘I know you have heard a lot of folks talking about Mitt’s record on life, faith, and marriage while governor of Massachusetts,’ the woman says. She adds that Mr. Romney ‘worked hard to protect the sanctity of life in liberal Massachusetts’ and that he faced down ‘hostile lawmakers every time they tried to push their pro-choice agenda.’”

SANTORUM: “After a two day meeting at a ranch outside of Houston a group of 150 Christian leaders, business leaders and conservative activists have coalesced behind Rick Santorum,” the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Brody reports, adding, “So what does this mean?  Expect conservative groups to start individually motivating their constituents to work for Santorum.  Also look for more money and resources to start pouring into Santorum's campaign.  No question about it, this is excellent news for Santorum's camp and a major blow to the Gingrich and Perry camps.”