The presidential race is super close. Mitt Romney was gaining, but then President Obama had two very good debates performances. The clip above from the foreign policy debate got a ton of play as Obama hit Romney hard for his silly comments about the size of the Navy.

Of course, Ohio is the ultimate swing state again, and Obama is holding on to a small but stable lead. If that happens, there’s almost no way Romney can win.

Ohio will be a battleground again in 2012 for the presidential election, and right now President Obama is hanging tough against likely opponent Mitt Romney.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney overtook former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a new Buckeye State poll released Wednesday by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The eight-day survey, which ended Monday, shows that 27 percent of Republicans here favor Romney. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who finished eight votes behind Romney in this month’s Iowa caucuses, received 18 percent; Gingrich received 17 percent.

Romney today would be the strongest candidate in a head-to-head showdown with President Barack Obama. The poll found that 44 percent of Ohio voters would vote for Obama, 42 percent for Romney — a virtual tie given the poll’s 2.4 percent margin of error.

The hypothetical match was a percentage point tighter in last month’s poll.

Romney was in favor of Issue 2, so I suspect that the Obama campaign will hammer him on that. If they do this in the spring and early summer, Romney might not be able to recover in Ohio, and there’s no way Romney can win the election without Ohio.

Richard Cordray gets a big job:

President Obama nominated Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, to officially have your back. If and when Cordray is confirmed, he’ll run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created last summer to defend consumers against abusive practices by banks and other financial institutions.

The article goes on to analyze why Cordray was selected. Many expect him to run for governor of Ohio in 2014, so this can be a big stepping stone for him.

The polling has been great for Sherrod Brown for 2012.

Back in December of last year, shortly after Ohio was pretty much ground zero for the Democratic wipeout in the 2010 midterm, Sherrod Brown was looking like he was in dire shape, polling in the low 40s. A funny thing happened since then, though: people got to see what it’s like again to have Republicans in charge (in Ohio’s case, with John Kasich in charge as governor, who at this point would lose to Ted Strickland by 25 points in a PPP hypothetical-rematch poll). The overall shift in the direction of the political winds — particularly pronounced in Ohio — has taken what initially looked like a Tossup, given a decent GOP challenger, and it turned it into what’s looking like a snooze instead, with Brown racking up leads in the vicinity of 20 and hovering around the magic ’50’ mark.

Kasich is a complete disaster for the GOP in Ohio. President Obama should be feeling better as well.

Just when you think Dennis Kucinich has some common sense, you have him saying ridiculous things again. His latest loony statement has him suggesting that President Obama’s Libya strikes might be an impeachable offense. Good grief . . .

Ohio may yet get on track with President Obama’s newly announced $53 billion initiative to build a nationwide high speed rail network.

A bipartisan group of northern Ohio Congress members met Thursday with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to discuss building a high speed rail line along Lake Erie that would link Cleveland with Chicago, Detroit, Toledo and Buffalo, and also include routes to Youngstown and Pittsburgh. Building a line along the lake is a top tier part of Obama’s rail program.

Bainbridge Township GOP Rep. Steve LaTourette said he plans to work with Republicans and Democrats from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan “to see if there’s a way we can help restore some of what the President’s vision is on high speed rail in our part of the world.”

Though newly elected Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich rejected $400 million in federal funds to build a different train line between Cleveland and Cincinnati, LaTourette believes Kasich might be more receptive to the lakeshore route. He said it also might be possible to secure funds for the project so “the state of Ohio would not have to be the political subdivision that gets the money and does the work.”

Kasich indicated he would be willing to consider it if Steve LaTourette was behind it.

And that’s really the key here, and this will have a huge impact in Congress as well. Even Republicans like LaTourette support this, so you might just see a bi-partisan effort to support the President on this one.