Foreground and background

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I have found this year's Republican primaries fascinating,
particularly the shifting fortunes of the candidates. While Mitt Romney has
been more or less the frontrunner of his ambivalent party, the rest of the
field has been one crazy jumble of surges and falls from grace. It's political
spectacle at its most interesting, if not necessarily its best.

But through all the tumult and rise and fall of candidates,
I have no clear idea of what is in the foreground for any of them. What I know
is that they all want desperately to be elected, that they definitely don't
like President Obama and that they are willing on any given day to slash at
each other. What they actually stand for, however, seems vague at best.