Editor’s note: John Avlon is a CNN contributor and senior political columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He is co-editor of the new book “Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns.”

(CNN) — The debates this presidential primary season have been less like Lincoln-Douglas than former heavyweight champ Buster Douglas — punch-drunk pugilism, providing entertainment and some great upsets along the way.

But for all the excitement of the fights, there is a civic cost to the radioactive rhetoric that gets thrown out to excite the conservative crowds.

It’s not just that the most irresponsible candidates can play to the base and get a boost in the polls, while more sober-minded candidates like Jon Huntsman fail to get attention. The real damage is to the process of running for president itself. Because when low blows get rewarded, the incentive to try to emulate Lincoln — holding yourself to a higher standard — is diminished. And one barometer of this atmospheric shift is in the increasingly overheated rhetoric by candidates attacking the current president. This serial disrespect ends up unintentionally diminishing the office of president itself.

Look, I know that politics is a full-contact sport: Elbows get thrown and egos get bruised. But ask yourself if Ronald Reagan ever called Jimmy Carter a socialist or a communist on the stump. Sure, there were deep philosophical and policy disagreements between them, and Carter was called a failed president many times. But there was a lingering respect for the office that retained an essential bit of dignity. It was only the far-right fringe who indulged in the kind of rhetoric we now hear routinely from presidential candidates.

For example, Newt Gingrich gained steam early in the primary process by accusing President Obama of having a “Kenyan anti-Colonial mindset,” and invoking the specter of a “Obama’s secular socialist machine.” As a highly compensated historian, Newt should have known better than to say that Obama is the “most radical president in American history.” But then accuracy — or even aiming in the general vicinity of the truth — isn’t the point.

Rick Santorum raised eyebrows this past weekend for saying Obama wants to impose a “phony theology” on America. Santorum has since tried to clarify that he was not trying to raise doubts about the president’s religion and I’ll take him at his word. Likewise, when Santorum compares GOP primary voters to members of the “greatest generation” called to act against the rise of Nazi Germany, I’ll assume that Santorum isn’t intentionally comparing the president to Hitler.

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But a month ago, when a Santorum supporter accused Obama of being “an avowed Muslim” who “constantly says that our Constitution is passé” and “has no legal right to be calling himself president” — Santorum did nothing to correct her.

Instead, he told CNN: “I don’t feel it’s my obligation every time someone says something I don’t agree with to contradict them.”

But I think standing up for the truth in the face of unhinged hate is part of a potential president’s job. So did John McCain.

Four years ago, at the height of the general election, when a supporter called then-candidate Obama an “Arab,” McCain corrected her. He said, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man … (a) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” That’s the voice of a loyal opposition, putting patriotism above partisanship.

Even the sober-minded Mitt Romney has gotten into the hyper-partisan pandering game lately. Maybe he’s trying to compensate for a lack of enthusiasm on the far-right with red meat rhetoric, but the effect is desperate.

For example, when Mitt was barnstorming through Florida, a standard part of his stump speech was this: “Sometimes I think we have a president who doesn’t understand America.” This line was straight out of the “Alien in the White House” playbook, a riff that reinforced the worst impulses of some in the audience, as one woman at a Romney rally named Katheryn Sarka eagerly reaffirmed when I asked her what she thought of the line: “Obama doesn’t understand America. He follows George Soros. Obama is against our Constitution and our democracy.”

After his big Nevada win, this line of Mitt’s scripted victory speech stood out: “President Obama demonizes and denigrates almost every sector of our economy.” Romney knows this isn’t true, but he’s been convinced that it works and he seems to be willing to say whatever it takes to make the sale.

Here’s what’s most troubling about this trend: It doesn’t seem remarkable anymore. For the candidates and many in the press, it is just the new normal, the cost of doing business. The overheated rhetoric simply reflects the conversation that’s been going on at the grassroots for a long time.

Like a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, we don’t realize that the heat is killing us until it is too late — except that the casualty here is the quality of our civic debate and the bonds that are bigger than partisan politics.

It’s naïve to think it will stop when Mr. Obama is no longer president, whether that is in one year or five. Because the next Republican president will inherit the political atmosphere that’s been created and find that it is almost impossible to unite the nation absent a crisis. Some Democratic activists will no doubt take a tactical page from recent conservative successes. This cycle of incitement — where extremes inflame and empower each other — will make our politics more of an ideological bloodsport and less about actually solving problems.

Perspective is the thing we have least of in our politics these days. But perspective is what the presidency is all about — rising above divisions and distractions to make long-term decisions in the national interest. By pouring gasoline on an already inflammatory political environment, the GOP presidential candidates not only diminish themselves, they diminish the process of running for president, and make it less likely that they would succeed in uniting the nation if they actually won the office.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.

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(CNN) — On the eve of the last debate before crucial primaries, Republican presidential challengers Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich battled for conservative support by targeting President Barack Obama in increasingly strident attacks Tuesday.

Santorum told a crowd in Arizona, which will hold its primary with Michigan on February 28, that Obama and liberals consider the U.S. Constitution an out-of-date document for modern times.

Citing the reported comment by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the South African Constitution is a better modern model in some respects, Santorum said such thinking amounted to disrespect on the political left for America’s founding document.

Obama believes “that this document has lived past its expiration date and that we need something new, and since it is so hard to change, these old men that put this together made it really hard for it to change, so we’ll just find out a new way,” Santorum said. “We’ll use the courts or in the case of President Obama we’ll just run roughshod over the Constitution and do whatever we want to do.”

Gingrich, meanwhile, said in an interview on the CBS program “The Early Morning” that Obama’s policies pander to Islamic countries and the federal government refuses to “talk accurately about radical Islam.”

“I think it’s dangerous to America,” Gingrich said a day after he accused Obama of being incapable of defending the country.

Gingrich also criticized Obama over what he called “outrageously anti-American energy” policies such as the failure to grant approval for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada’s tar sand production and the administration’s push for more efficient cars.

At a later campaign event, Gingrich outlined his energy policy by calling for opening up federal holdings on land and at sea for development, as well as writing off the cost of new equipment in the first year.

Both Santorum and Gingrich have ratched up their rhetoric in recent days as the topsy-turvy campaign endured another shift, with Santorum surging to the top of the polls while Gingrich has slipped well back.

The two are considered the conservative challengers to the more moderate Mitt Romney, a consistent top-tier candidate who has received solid but, so far, limited support. The fourth candidate, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, also has the backing of a devoted, but limited, following for his libertarian views.

The 8 p.m. ET debate Wednesday, to be broadcast on CNN, will be the last face-to-face showdown before the Arizona and Michigan primaries and subsequent contests including the Super Tuesday showdown on March 6 when 10 states and 437 delegates will be at stake.

A new CNN/Time/ORC International poll Tuesday showed Romney and Santorum in a statistical tie at the top among likely voters in next week’s Arizona primary, with Gingrich well back in third place and Paul trailing.

Romney campaigned Tuesday in Michigan, which is considered his home turf because he grew up there and his father George served as governor back in the 1960s and 70s. Santorum’s surge has raised the previously unimaginable possibility that Romney could lose Michigan, a result that would launch questions about whether Romney can gain any conservative backing to win the nomination.

At a town hall-style meeting in Shelby Township, Romney tackled a host of social issues that he has generally avoided at more scripted events, but have been brought to the forefront by controversial comments by Santorum in recent days.

Seeking to establish his conservative credentials in the face of Santorum’s energized campaign, Romney declared he was anti-abortion and would cut off funding for Planned Parenthood if elected. He added that his running mate would be pro-life and “conservative to the core” if he gets the GOP nomination.

Romney also accused Obama of following a “secular agenda” and said a Romney administration would promote religious freedom.

“You expect the president of the United States to be sensitive to that freedom and protect it and unfortunately, perhaps because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda, they have fought against religion,” Romney said.

In a rare reference to his Mormon faith, Romney continued by saying: “I can assure you, as someone who has understood very personally the significance of religious tolerance and religious freedom and the right to one’s own conscience, I will make sure that we never again attack religious liberty in the United States of America.”

Romney also took a shot at Santorum, responding to a question from the crowd by saying the former Pennsylvania senator had yet to undergo the rigorous scrutiny that comes with being a front-running candidate.

“Rick Santorum voted to raise the debt ceiling five times without getting compensating reductions in spending,” Romney said. “The fact that he continues to defend earmarks, including his $ 500,000 earmark to the Pittsburgh zoo for a polar bear exhibit — I don’t think that is consistent with the principles of conservatism. I don’t think Rick Santorum’s track record is that of a fiscal conservative.”

Paul’s campaign also questioned Santorum’s record as fiscal conservative in a new television commercial in Michigan.

“Is this dude serious? Fiscal conservative? Really?” asks the narrator in the ad. “Santorum voted to raise the debt ceiling five times, doubled the size of the Department of Education, then supported the biggest entitlement expansion since the 1960′s. Not groovy. Santorum voted to send billions of our tax dollars to dictators in North Korea and Egypt, and even hooked Planned Parenthood up with a few million bucks. Rick Santorum a fiscal conservative? Fake.”

The Santorum campaign was quick to respond, with national communications director Hogan Gidley telling CNN that “for all of Ron Paul’s blustering about conservatism, the bottom line is that he’s been in Congress for decades and has not had a single accomplishment to forward the cause of conservatism. Not one.”

Santorum later told a Maricopa County GOP lunch that “I voted for smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation — the things that we need desperately in this country.”

“You see all these commercials — Rick Santorum is a big spender — but they never once mention, talk about how I voted for any increase in the appropriation bills. Why? Because I never did,” Santorum said. “I voted to cut appropriation bills. They never talk about I voted for a tax increase why? because I never did in 16 years of public life.”

The heightened rhetoric reflected mounting stakes in the campaign to choose a Republican nominee to face Obama in November.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll Monday showed Santorum leading Romney 36% to 26% among Republicans nationwide. The new numbers represented a six-point drop for Romney since last week, when the former Massachusetts governor was statistically tied with Santorum, who rose by five points in the same period.

Gingrich, a former House speaker, has seen his poll numbers decline over the past month since his only primary win in South Carolina on January 21.

According to Gallup, Gingrich came in third place in Monday’s poll with 13%, and Paul close behind at 11%.

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Romney’s once presumptive march to the nomination has come into question since Santorum swept contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on February 7. For Romney, the question is why he can’t increase his always solid but never dominating support as the primary campaign moves across the country.

Romney’s campaign said Monday it raised $ 6.5 million in January, while Federal Election Commission findings showed it significantly depleted resources by burning through $ 18.7 million during the month.

According to the documents, Romney finished January with $ 7.7 million on hand and no debt after starting the month with $ 19.9 million on hand.

Gingrich finished January with almost $ 1.8 million cash on hand and owing nearly as much in debt, his campaign disclosed Monday. He raised nearly $ 5.6 million during the month, according to financial reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Santorum’s campaign brought in $ 4.5 million in January, more than the candidate spent over the course of a month that saw his poll numbers rise and his national profile expand.

According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the former Pennsylvania senator spent $ 3.3 million in January, and ended the month with nearly $ 1.5 million cash on hand.

Paul raised about the same amount as Santorum and has $ 1.6 million cash, according to his campaign and filing documents.

CNN’s Shawna Shepherd, Paul Steinhauser, Gregory Wallace, Peter Hamby and Rachel Streitfeld contributed to this report.

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But Saleh Debaki, its Damascus-based spokesman, said Thursday the aid is located at nine distribution centers around the city, but none has reached ravaged neighborhoods such as Baba Amr.

Residents and activists in the neighborhood said Friday they have not had any humanitarian aid reach them in more than a month.

“It is the 13th days of shelling over our neighborhood,” said Abu Omar, who was reached by satellite internet at a Baba Amr shelter. “We have not had any electricity, phone service, … or even running water for weeks. We have not had any food or medical supplies either. We are so desperate! There are only a few houses here that have water wells. That’s our only access to any water!”

Abu Omar, who did not want to reveal his real name over safety fears, said the few dozen people staying at shelters in Baba Amr shower once every five days or so and limit other use of water to only drinking.

Khalil Ahmed, another resident of Baba Amr, said he has not seen any bread coming from outside the neighborhood in weeks.

“That’s why we decided to collect whatever flour we could find to bake some bread and share at the shelters,” Ahmed said. “We have no baby formula. Parents put bread in water … and that’s what babies eat and drink.”

There is only one medical facility in Baba Amr operating out of a basement of a mosque. It moved there because its last location was shelled in January, killing three medics, according to Mohamed al-Mohamed, one of a handful of doctors running the makeshift clinic using “primitive tools.”

Back in the United States, Khairullah says the suffering will only get worse in many parts of Syria unless there is a way to deliver humanitarian aid to those who need it most.

Shortly after the Syrian uprising began on March 15, Khairullah and other Syrian-American professionals started the Syria First Coalition to collect donations and deliver them to affected families in the nation.

“In light of the sanctions, we did not want to fall into any legal traps. And we did not want to deal with the government’s institutions. So we started paying influential businessmen inside Syria in U.S. dollars and get food, water, blankets among other humanitarian items in return,” Khairullah said.

This worked for only a few months until no more businessman could risk doing that under the watchful eye of the regime, he said.

So he identified financial institutions in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon — to which the group transferred money in order to buy aid locally.

The aid was then smuggled across the Syrian borders. But with more and more limited safe passages into Syria and a drying flow of cash, this option became even harder.

The current sanctions allow transferring money to charitable groups in Syria.

“But how could we trust these government-sponsored Syrian groups to oversee the distribution of aid?’ Khairullah said.

A couple of international humanitarian groups such as the Humanitarian Relief for Syria admit that they only go through Syrian charity organizations to reach affected people inside the country.

Others — such as Islamic Relief and Zakat Foundation — only reach out to Syrian refugees in neighboring countries.

“The only way to reach us in Homs is through establishing safe passages,” Abu Omar said.

On the international level, France is trying to revive a plan it first introduced in November that tries to do just that.

The idea is to provide safe access for relief organizations to deliver aid to affected populations through land border routes, a sea port or an airport – - all under the watch of international observers.

But such a plan needs either Syrian government approval or the backing of armed peacekeepers. In the latter case, a U.N. resolution may be needed.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé discussed his government’s “humanitarian corridors” plan Thursday with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in order to avoid a veto on a possible U.N. Security Council resolution.

The two met in Vienna to reach a compromise despite Moscow vetoing a U.N. resolution based on an Arab League proposal on Feb. 4, according to Russia’s state-run Itar-Tass.

“We can possibly reach a compromise on a short-term objective.” Juppé told reporters “We are ready to work in New York on a draft resolution inspired by the Arab League to stop the violence and provide humanitarian aid.”

Lavrov was not committed to the plan and said more details are needed before an agreement, Itar -Tass reported.

But many Syrians seem to have no choice but to be optimistic as their tragedy plays out on the international stage.

“I am hopeful,” Khairulla said. “I am finally sensing change among international and regional powers regarding the suffering in Syria … And it is about time!”

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