South Carolina Barbecue

The GOP primary today?  Going to be close...close enough in fact that Mitt Romney is now quietly talking down a loss.  And he has nobody to blame but himself, and the fact that the more he's questioned, the more he falls apart.

The idea that the former governor of liberal Massachusetts may not win the primary in a state where conservative evangelical Christians make up about 60 percent of Republican voters isn't that surprising.

But Romney's path to a neck-and-neck finish with former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has begun to look like a lost opportunity, defined by Romney's reluctance to reveal more about his vast wealth and his repeated inability to explain why.

The former private equity executive's discomfort in discussing such personal matters was again evident in Thursday night's debate in Charleston.

When asked whether he would release 12 years of tax returns as his father, George, had done while running for president in 1968, Romney said through a thin smile, "Maybe."

The answer drew a few catcalls from the conservative audience, and contrasted sharply with how Gingrich deftly turned a question about cheating on his second wife into an attack on the media that drew a standing ovation.

It may have been the defining moment of the campaign in South Carolina, the third contest in the state-by-state race to determine who will face Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 elections.

Two weeks ago, Romney had a 20 point plus lead in SC and he was buoyed by a win in Iowa and an inevitable pending win in New Hampshire.   Today, he's no longer the winner in Iowa, New Hampshire failed to put anyone but Perry out of the race, and he got ripped a new one time and time again.  I said then that a SC win would make him the nominee.

Now?  Not sure he'll win.  And as a supporter of President Obama, I want this race to go as long as it can, with Romney having to spend millions to fight against Gingrich, Paul and Santorum rather than Obama.  If Santorum bails and backs Gingrich, and Gingrich wins South Carolina, it's going to be the fabled GOP internal catfight that Democrats have been wishing for since Goldwater.

Time for some Carolina barbecue.

Last Call

Newt has locked up the all-important Walker, Texas Ranger endorsement.

We agree with our friend and governor of the great state of Texas, Rick Perry, when he suspended his campaign and endorsed Gingrich, that Newt “has the heart of a conservative reformer.” We believe Newt’s experience, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, faith and even humility to learn from his failures (personal and public) can return America to her glory days. And he is the best man left on the battlefield who is able to outwit, outplay and outlast Obama and his campaign machine.

There is no snark that I can add here that will make this any more absurdly awesome than this already is.  Except for the fact that behind Chuck Norris's beard is a Newt Gingrich fan.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 15

Steve M. is pretty convinced that this week's ABC News story on Newt Gingrich's "open marriage" is only going to help him Saturday in the GOP primary in SC.  Considering how Gingrich drew massive applause for ripping into CNN's John King for even asking about the story with a "HOW DARE YOU SIR!" tirade, Steve is not only right, I have to think ABC News wants Gingrich to win in SC in order to extend the primary season.



Crazy stuff.  Oh, and PPP's latest SC poll shows Gingrich up by six points.  If he pulls this off, the primary season just got super crazy.

And that's music to my ears. Let them fight it out into June.

The Moose And The Newt

Newt must really think he has a shot in South Carolina.  The polls are tightening up in the state, cutting Romney's 20 point lead over the pack to just 10.  Newt's in striking distance and he knows it...enough that he's playing the Palin card.

If Newt Gingrich wins the White House in November, the former House speaker said Wednesday Sarah Palin may get a big seat at the table.


"I would ask her to consider taking a major role in the next administration if I'm president, but nothing has been discussed of any kind," Gingrich said on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."

His comments came one day after Palin urged South Carolina voters to head to the polls for Gingrich during Saturday's first-in-the-South primary.

She said a win for Gingrich would prolong the Republican primary and allow voters more time to vet the remaining candidates.

She's right, but not for the right reasons.  It'll extend the primary season alright, but it will weaken the eventual nominee.  I'm okay with that, and apparently so is Sarah Palin.  Way to go, dear.  Keep up your plan.

Last Call

To recap:  Newt Gingrich on "janitors":

“Only the elites despise earning money.”

Barack Obama on "janitors":

Questions?

The Big GOP Debate Thread: Know Your Role And Shut Your Mouth

What struck me most about last night's GOP debate in South Carolina was not Mitt's awful, terrified scrambling to defend not releasing his tax returns or Rick Perry declaring war on Pakistan and the talk of the state's infamy at Fort Sumter, but on a day where the country celebrates the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we had Newt Gingrich and FOX's Juan Williams have this exchange:

"I have to tell you my Twitter account has been inundated by all races, who are asking if your comments are not intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities. You saw some of this reaction dug your visit to a black church in South Carolina. We saw some of this during your visit to a church in South Carolina where a woman dad’s asked you why you referred to President Obama as the food stamp president. It sounds as if you are seeking to belittle people."

Williams was loudly and angrily booed for even asking this, and Newt got huge cheers for his response:

“Well, first of all, Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.”

Massive applause, all this after earlier in the night where Gingrich got loud cheers when told Williams that he didn't see how telling inner city kids they need to work as janitors could possibly be considered insensitive or insulting. Because in South Carolina, apparently, you should be lucky if you're African-American and cleaning toilets as a kid.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real Republican legacy on MLK Day, where 40 plus years after his death, a crowd of white Republicans are madly cheering a privileged white Republican putting a black man asking an honest question in his place. I've got little sympathy for Williams hitching his wagon to FOX and trying to be the voice of reason, but if anyone on Earth is still wondering why black people like me don't vote Republican, here you are.

Last Call

Republicans running for President keep telegraphing their intent to ignore the laws as they stand now as they simply believe that they won't apply to them once they reach the Oval Office.  Nobody's been worse on this than Newt Gingrich, who infamously said last month that he would simply ignore Supreme Court decisions he didn't agree with.  Now he's following that nonsense up with the notion that he can impose loyalty oaths on federal employees and simply fire anyone who is liberal.  TPM's Ryan Reilly:

Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich suggested at a Fox News forum hosted by Mike Huckabee in South Carolina on Saturday that it would be a good idea to fire federal employees for being too liberal. Federal law, on the other hand, says Gingrich’s plan would be illegal.

“I think an intelligent conservative wants the right federal employees delivering the right services in a highly efficient way and then wants to get rid of those folks who are in fact wasteful, or those folks who are ideologically so far to the left, or those people who want to frankly dictate to the rest of us,” Gingrich said in response to a question from a federal employee at the forum (emphasis ours).

Gingrich wants the ability to fire federal employees who are "so far to the left"?  Hey, didn't Dubya get in trouble for doing that with US attorneys, a move that eventually cost AG Alberto Gonzales his job?

It's funny how we keep hearing how President Obama is going to purge conservatives from the country any second now, but apparently that outrage doesn't apply to Newt going after people for being liberal.

Last Call

As they say, the sharpest knife is wielded by your own friend, and thanks to Citizens United, the Super PAC backing Newt Gingrich has the cash to put together this little half-hour "documentary" on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital.



It's a glorious job of a hit piece showing the dark side of Romney's "executive experience" as his company made billions off liquidating companies and firing tens of thousands of American workers. And the worst part is Romney personally made tens of millions doing so.

No matter how much you spin it, there's a fundamental truth here: Mitt Romney made an ungodly amount of money by putting people out of a job. He's exactly the type of guy to have made out like a bandit destroying American jobs by the truckload.

And he's completely unapologetic for it.  Team Obama should be throwing a party for these PAC guys, because they just gave President Obama an unbeatable attack heading into November.

And hey, given how the South Carolina polls have tightened up this week as this ad runs in the Palmetto State and beyond, you have to wonder...maybe Mitt's not so inevitable after all.  That only has to make Team Obama grin all the more.

Some Of Newt's Best Friends Are Black, You Know

I've talked about the difference between racism and assumption of privilege before, but every now and again somebody managed to do both at the same time, like Newt Gingrich.  And every now and again, people like Gingrich get called out on it.

At a town hall event meant to appeal to Latino voters at a Mexican restaurant in Manchester, an African-American man confronted Gingrich about recent comments he made that have drawn the ire of the NACCP and other civil rights leader. Gingrich controversially said last week, “I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

Now, that was bad enough, but the reality is Gingrich's assumption that the majority of SNAP recipients are African-American males is also completely and totally wrong.  The largest plurality are white children, as a matter of fact.  And only 8% of people on SNAP received additional federal welfare benefits, while 4% recieved additional state benefits.  That's it.

Today, someone called Newt on it, a black small business owner who took offense at Gingrich assuming all black people take food stamps.

LAMOTHE: My question to you is, do think blacks represent an American problem. And if you don’t think that, when you start using blacks in general as a stepping stone or a punching bag–

GINGRICH: I didn’t say that. I just want to say that frankly this makes me very irritated. The Democratic National Committee took totally out of context half of the sentence, OK? I mean clearly somebody who’s served with Colin Powell, who has served with Condoleezza Rice, I have a fairly good sense of the fact that African Americans have many contributions to America.

And yes, Newt went there with "How dare you!  Some of my best friends are black!"  Which never, ever works.  Just because you have a black co-worker at your lobbyist job doesn't mean you can't be a bigoted prick making idiotically false assumptions about minorities.  It becomes a hundred times worse when those false assumptions form the basis of your Presidential campaign.

Since Gingrich prides himself on running a "fact-based" campaign as he mentioned in Saturday's debate, it's all the more awful that Gingrich is happily playing the race card.  The logical conclusion is that he's running on taking away the safety net from all people by attacking black people, so that white people won't miss it, which is the real thrust of all this lovely bigotry.

It works like this:  Republicans want to eliminate as many social programs and services as they can in order to give more money to the wealthy.  In order to do this, they need to get the people to vote against their self-interests.  In order to do THAT, they need to stigmatize social programs and pretend that they're only used by a particular "bad" minority group, signalling that the candidate will work to only take those social programs away from those groups and not the "good" majority.

The joke is of course on them.  The most effective political marketing movement in the last 30 years has been making the middle-class vote against their own self-interests.  Wages have stagnated for a generation, and Republicans (and more than a few Democrats) have led the charge in convincing the country that the means to help rectify the massive income and wealth inequality in this country need to be completely eliminated in order to "fix" the problem.  It's like saying the best therapy for chronic heart disease is to stop spending money on that expensive medicine and doctor's visits and hospital stays, and getting rid of all three because really, those are costing you more money than it's worth.

And so it goes, the GOP scapegoat plan.  On social programs it's blacks.  On immigration it's Latinos.  On marriage and civil rights it's gays.  It's been working for years.  Now they don't even hide it anymore in the Age of Austerity.  We're fighting over the scraps from the lord's table.

Newt's just doing his part.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 14

As Newt continues to self-destruct, it's funny to note that the further behind he falls in Iowa, the more desperate he gets for votes.  At this point, we've finally gotten to the "ACORN will steal the 2012 election!" nonsense.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., used a stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to accuse the Obama administration of trying to "steal elections" in the wake of the Justice Department's rejection of South Carolina's voter identification law.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division determined that the state's law requiring voters to show photo ID at polling places was discriminatory against minorities.

"...You have to ask, why is it that they are so desperate to retain the ability to steal elections and I think that what it comes down to," Gingrich said.

Because of course no black President could ever legitimately win an election in the first place, so of course he's going to steal re-election too.  Who will stop this evil, evil man before he destroys the country with left of moderate policies and common sense governance?

The larger problem of course is that the only possible explanation that Gingrich can find for opposing a law designed to disenfranchise voters is a massive conspiracy to steal elections, because all Republicans know that Democrats only win by stealing elections.  No actual living Christian Americans would ever vote for a Democrat, and America is a Christian country, so really the only way Republicans can lose is if Democrats steal the contest.

It's complete nonsense, of course.  But Newt won't pay any price for accusing the President and all Democrats of stealing elections and defrauding the country.  Hell, it'll help him in the primaries.  That's why he's doing this.

And because Virginia Republicans don't want to get tarred with this same brush, Virginia's GOP Attorney General will of course seek to drop the state's primary ballot requirements that excluded most of the GOP candidates, including Newt.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) announced today that he will intervene to ensure that more Republican presidential candidates will appear on the state’s primary ballot.

 Thanks to newly stringent enforcement of rules requiring 10,000 valid signatures, only Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made it onto the ballot for the state’s March 6 primary. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry both cried foul, with the latter suing in federal court. Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman all signed onto that effort on Saturday.

So to recap, when a Republican changes the election rules for a state, it's liberty and freedom and justice and apple pie.  When a Democrat does it, it's stealing elections.

That's how the game is played.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 13

With just 5 days until the Iowa Caucuses, Team Newt is "managing expectations" for Gingrich's crash and burn.

On Wednesday evening around 6:30 ET, Newt Gingrich strategist Joe DeSantis declared the Gingrich surge in Iowa officially over.

“Oh I think anywhere in the top five would be surviving Iowa,” DiSantis told CNN.

Just a couple weeks ago, Gingrich was riding high in Iowa, leading by huge margins. DeSantis acknowledged that his candidate is no longer in “the top tier” however, chalking up the decline to the blanket of negative ads that have been run against Gingrich since he surged.

“I don’t care what candidate’s in the race, if they get $9 million in negative advertisements against them they’re going to drop in the polls,” he said. “Considering we’ve been outspent 30-1 on the air, that still being very competitive for fourth place right now and, frankly, really not that far off from being in the top tier in Iowa still is pretty impressive.” 

The latest polls find Romney having regained the lead, with Ron Paul now dropping to second, Gingrich dropping to fourth rapidly, and if anything, Rick Santorum gaining a bit of momentum as he's now in third.  Gingrich has disintegrated, going from 33% to 14% and falling.

But Mitt can't seem to break that 25% mark.  That means a vast majority of Republicans still want him to jump off the nearest pier.  That probably explains why Newt is talking about sticking around after finishing fifth or so:  whoever does drop out after Iowa would end up giving their votes to, well, anybody but Mitt.  And it's not going to take much to beat Mitt's weak showing down the road.

And for now, that may be enough.

About As Grudging As It Comes

CNN's David Gergen seems almost disappointed that the President's prospects for re-election have improved this year as the GOP has dropped the ball again and again.

Even though House Republicans are now wisely folding their tents, their disarray this week over extending a payroll tax cut has left a sour taste at year's end in Washington, contributing in no small part to an even bigger political story: the resurrection of President Obama and his fellow Democrats heading toward the 2012 elections.


After the debt ceiling debacle of last summer, the conventional wisdom among many political analysts was that Obama would go the way of President Jimmy Carter, that Republicans would lose a few seats in the House but retain control, and that the GOP would surge into power in the Senate. In short, Republicans were looking for a clean sweep.

Who believes that now? Obama is still highly vulnerable and could lose, but the CNN poll coming out of the field this week reveals a remarkable turnaround, especially in the past month.

Gergen then goes on to completely misread the why of the situation as well, seemingly dumbfounded as to why Elizabeth Warren is looking very good against Scott Brown in Massachusetts, wondering aloud why Jeb Bush isn't running, and still refusing to give the President any credit for the economic improvement.

In other words, he's one miffed Republican, our David.  But that's okay, he does arrive at the correct conclusion through the tortured logic:

Even so, we are witnessing an important change in the political landscape -- and it could be lasting. Republicans well remember the mid-1990s when they seized power in Congress and Speaker Newt Gingrich went mano-a-mano with President Bill Clinton. For a while, Gingrich had the upper hand, but Clinton then outmaneuvered him on two governmental shutdowns -- and when the momentum turned in Clinton's favor, he rode it to an easy re-election. No one should doubt that could happen again.

Ironically, it's Newt himself providing that same impetus.  Now that we're seeing the bottom of the GOP candidate barrel and Orange Julius's true colors, it's the Republicans who have been exposed for what they are, and what they can't do for the country.

No mention of the other big political movement in the last six months either:  Occupy Wall Street.  Pretty silly stuff here, even from a Villager like Gergen.

Last Call

Gotten some rather pointed disagreement about my indefinite detention post today in the comments.  Good.  I welcome your discussion.  By all means, if you disagree with me and make a reasonable argument as to why, I'll listen to you.  I'm just screaming into the darkness without you guys.

My response to that is this:  As bad as this decision is, as bad as it was having his won party put him in the position to sign it due to an 86-13 vote in the Senate that a presidential veto would not have stopped, the other party's frontrunner really is showing a complete disregard for anything but the executive.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is doubling down from Thursday’s Fox News debate on his vow to abolish federal courts if he disagreed with their decision.

According to The Hill, in a conference call with reporters, Gingrich indicated that it was in the president’s power as commander-in-chief to deem any Supreme Court ruling irrelevant if he or she in the White House disagreed.

The former House Speaker used the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Bush administration exceeding its constitutional authority in handling suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2008 as a basis for his extreme view.

“They just ignored it,” he said. “A commander-in-chief could simply issue instructions to ignore it, and say it’s null and void and I do not accept it because it infringes on my duties as commander-in-chief to protect the country.”

And either President Obama or someone like Newt Gingrich is going to be President, period.  All the wishful thinking about a third party is not going to make a whit of difference.  And of the two choices, I will take Barack Obama every time.  I do not like this decision.  I understand why he made it.  I continue to support his presidency over the Republicans who have at every turn demonstrated they would be far worse.

Period.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 12

So right-wing radio loudmouth Michael Savage offered Newt Gingrich a million bucks to drop out of the race.  We all ought to be much more concerned with the gentleman who just gave Newt twenty million to stay in, a Greg Sargent explains:

Politico weighed in today with a bombshell revelation: Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is set to hand $20 million to a “Super PAC” backing Newt Gingrich. Such a sum could have a major impact on the GOP primary, enabling him to ward off the barrage of negative ads currently pummeling him daily — meaning that one extremely wealthy man could play an extraordinarily outsized role in helping decide the GOP nominee for president.

This prompted a good question from Taegan Goddard: “How on earth is this legal in American politics?” I checked in with David Donnelly of the Public Campaign Action Fund to get an answer.
It turns out there are scenarios under which this might not be legal. If someone who works directly for Gingrich’s campaign solicted this money in any way from Adelson, that would violate Federal laws that prohibit coordination between campaigns and super PACs.

But here’s the interesting twist: The scenario under which this is legal is, at bottom, not significantly different from having Gingrich’s campaign aides directly solicit such contributions.

Thanks to Citizens United and a subsequent court decision, Super PACs can raise unlimited sums, and spend it all advocating directly for or against a candidate, as long as there’s no coordination between the Super PAC and the candidate’s campaign. But this prohibition against coordination doesn’t really have much significance in the real world.

So yes, when the one percent drops $20 million in order to buy a race at a critical time, it's 100% legal because our Supreme Court has said our nation's most important resource when it comes to campaign speech is rich people who have tens of millions of bucks to give to people like Newt Gingrich on an idle Thursday.

Bought and paid for.

Million Dollar (Cry) Baby

As a GOP one percenter, how much would you pay to get rid of Newt Gingrich if you were convinced his nomination as the Republican candidate for President guaranteed a second term for President Obama?



If you're Michael Savage, the particular price tag for putting Mitt back in his crib is a cool million bucks of his own filthy lucre as he announced on his radio show his intent to buy off Gingrich.

“Newt Gingrich is unelectable,” Savage continued in his screed. “Mitt Romney is the only candidiate with a chance of defeating Barack Obama…therefore, I am offering Newt Gingrich $1 million dollars to drop out of the presidential race for the sake of the nation.”

Savage added that Gingrich “will come off badly compared to Obama” in the debates and he would “look like nothing more than what he is: a fat, old, white man. If Newt Gingrich really loves this country as much as he says he does, if he really wants what is best for America, he will set his ego aside, call me, and accept my offer. His continued candidacy spells nothing but ruin for conservatives, Republicans and all true American patriots. One million dollars in exchange for preserving the nation, Newt. I say take the money and don’t run.”

Yeah Mike, because the condescending blue blood former CEO with the charisma of a frozen Vienna sausage who made a fortune buying companies in order to lay thousands of people off will look so much better against President Obama in the general than Newt Gingrich.

Savage should take that million and buy himself a clue with all the added features.

Iron Flagpole In A Velvet Railgun

My views on Jennifer Rubin, Hackzilla are well-documented at this point, but Jon Chait does that best job yet that I've seen of dismantling her so completely that she's probably not aware at all of the missing bolts.  He discovers that there's actually something that Jennifer Rubin will defend more than Israel, if that's even possible:  Mitt Romney.

If you’re not in on the joke, allow me to explain. Rubin holds extremely right-wing views on Israel, and is highly prone to inflammatory and false charges. Gingrich’s comments on Palestinian nationality fit snugly within Rubin’s worldview – if anything, they are a bit too staid for her taste. Yet here she is denouncing him for his excessive anti-Palestinian bluster! If Gingrich simply quoted Rubin, I wonder if Rubin would denounce him for it.

Aside from demonstrating just how far Rubin is willing to follow the cause of advocating for her candidate of choice, it sheds some light on a controversy that arose last week over the term “Israel-firster,” a term of derision used by some left-wing critics to describe Israel hawks. The term implies that certain Americans, American Jews, place the interests of Israel above those of their own country. Rubin’s reaction to the Gingrich-Palestinian controversy offers a neat refutation of the charge. You can’t find a more passionate Israel hawk than Rubin. She is faced with a choice between her loyalty to the Republican Party and her loyalty to Israeli nationalism. And she sides with the former, clearly showing that her loyalty to the GOP – and, by extension, America – sits above her fidelity to Israel.

You've heard of an iron fist in a velvet glove.  In this case, it was an iron flagpole loaded into a velvet railgun and fired through Jennifer Rubin's front door, and I'm not sure it made any noise greater than a whisper.  If Chait were any drier, you'd have to keep rare manuscripts in him.

Well played, man.  Well played indeed.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Old Broken Down GOP opinion on debates:  Debates are stupid and meaningless.  Voters only care about whether or not candidates are likeable enough to have a beer with. Dubya and Palin won all their debates just by agreeing to this outdated nerdy nonsense and showing up.  Real presidents don't have time for debates.

New GOP Hotness on debates:  Debates are the most important thing ever and Newt Gingrich will put that uppity empty suit affirmative action hire in his place because he is the smartest Republican alive, just ask Ross Douthat.

It’s easy to see why this kind of myth-making would infuriate Obama’s opponents. And so ever since the 2008 election, the right has embraced a sweeping counternarrative, in which the president’s eloquence is a myth and his brilliance a pure invention. Take away his campaign razzle-dazzle and his media cheering section, this argument goes, and what remains is a droning pedant, out of his depth and tongue-tied without a teleprompter.

This is where Gingrich comes in. Just as Kerry’s candidacy represented an attempt to effectively out-patriot George W. Bush (“You have a war president? We have a war hero!”), the former speaker has skillfully played to the Republican desire for a candidate who can finally outsmart and out-orate Obama. 

Ahh, but Douthat concludes.  The debate stuff really is meaningless...because President Obama really is nothing more than a pathetic affirmative action hire, so we don't need to prove it.

More important for the Republican Party’s purposes, it isn’t 2008 anymore, and conservatives don’t actually need to explode the fantasy of Obama’s eloquence and omnicompetence. The harsh reality of governing has already done that for them. Nobody awaits the president’s speeches with panting anticipation these days, or expects him to slay his opponents with the power of his intellect. Obamamania peaked with the inauguration, and it’s been ebbing ever since. 

See, he's dumb.  Just quote the unemployment rate for an hour and you win.  That's what a real President would do against President Black People Aren't That Smart After All, Huh?

So yes, the Republicans like Ross Douthat are indeed now trying to have it both ways:  debates are meaningless because President Obama has already lost on his record and he's pretty stupid anyway, so it doesn't matter in the end.

Of course, you could have seen that one coming a mile away.

More Running The Numbers

The latest NBC/Marist polls for Florida and South Carolina show a big lead for Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney, 15 points in the Sunshine State, 19 points in the Palmetto State.

That's not the shocking part.  This is, buried in paragraphs 20-23 at the tail end of the MSNBC FIrst Read article (but on page 2 on each poll's full results, pretty much right up top.)

Turning to the general election, President Obama’s standing has improved in Florida, always a key presidential battleground state.

Forty-six percent of registered voters in the state approve of his job, which is up five points since October.

In hypothetical match-ups, the president leads Romney by seven points (48 to 41 percent) and Gingrich by 12 points (51 to 39 percent).

In South Carolina -- a reliable Republican state in presidential contests -- Obama’s approval rating stands at 44 percent, and he holds narrow leads over Romney (45 to 42 percent) and Gingrich (46 to 42 percent).

Yeah, see, President Obama leading in South Carolina over both these chuckleheads should be a big, fat story.  But no, it's all about Newt's double digit lead.

Funny how that works.

The Big GOP Debate Thread

So this morning the pundits are trying to figure out who was hurt more by their own words, Romney's $10,000 bet crack to Perry, or Newt's full-throated endorsement of child labor to fix the economy.

The answer is "neither, because Republican voters realize both of these piss liberals off, so it's okay."

Know your audience, people.  BooMan explains why this won't hurt Romney:

People aren't going to vote for Romney because they want to have a beer with him. He doesn't drink beer. They won't vote for him because he's the most conservative or principled candidate. He is probably the biggest flip-flopped in the history of electoral politics. They'll vote for him for the same reason that Donald Trump was briefly at the top of the polls. They'll vote for him because he's the kind of guy who can light his fondue with c-notes and not even flinch. He's filthy rich, and that's why people are attracted to him.

We're talking about the Republican base here. Their heroes are all CEO's. They reflexively defend bankers against accountability and corporations against regulations. When John McCain couldn't remember how many houses he owned, they thought he was cool. When Bush said his base was the have-mores, they convinced themselves that they would one day be part of Bush's base.

It didn't hurt Romney that he bet $10,000 in the debate last night. It was an applause line. 

The same goes for Newt's love of child labor.  That applause line got actual applause, because the notion of having poor minority kids clean out toilets and otherwise do as much menial labor as possible really, really appeals on a basic level to the kind of people suddenly terrified by the prospect of what happens to them in an America where the population can vote one of those people in as President.

So no, neither one will be hurt in the primaries.

The Miseducation On Newt Gingrich

If you want to know why I believe there's a enough solid chance Newt will win enough primaries to seriously panic the GOP establishment into doing something amazingly stupid that may blow up the entire party, I direct you to Pajamas Media's Bryan Preston, who has this analysis of the Newt.

Newt Gingrich is such a mixed bag it’s hard to know where to start in assessing his true record. He helped scuttle HillaryCare. He balanced the budget for the first time in forever. He authored, and forced President Clinton to sign, welfare reform. These are all historic achievements for which Newt Gingrich deserves credit.

But he resigned in disgrace after being the only Speaker of the House in US history to be punished and fined by his own majority for ethics violations. He fell for global warming. He lobbied — despite what he says, that’s what he did — for Freddie Mac. He raked in tens of millions promoting big government health care including the individual mandate, all the way up to 2009. He called Paul Ryan’s budget reforms “right wing social engineering.” In an anti-establishment national moment, he’s the embodiment of much that’s wrong with the establishment. He is, ironically, more of an establishment figure than the incumbent president. That “crossroads where government meets enterprise”? Gingrich has occupied it for 30 years. And then there are the private life problems, which stretch all the way to the beginning of his political career. You can’t even argue that he has always been faithful to his next wife. He’s an opposition researcher’s dream opponent. His nomination would take several major issues off the table.

But at least he can debate well and swat the media. There’s no chance that either can wear thin and end up turning voters off, right?

What an amazing mix of fact and fiction there to create Gingrich's larger than life persona...or more importantly, the facts are the part where Preston is attacking him.  The fiction is where anyone other than a die-hard Republican voter over the age of 40 has any positive connotations of Newt at all, and even with the silly nonsense about Newt "balancing the budget" and "reforming welfare", not even a winger hack like Preston can make up enough winger nonsense to rehabilitate Newt Gingrich.  There's just too much baggage there.

On the other hand, the fact that the GOP establishment despises Newt Gingrich only hands the Tea Party nutjobs all the motivation they need to vote for him.  And should Newt actually start winning and the polls stay where they are into the January primaries, I wouldn't put it past the GOP powers that be to put Newt down like a rabid animal.  And if they don't, and they accept him, he augers into the ground at Mach 4 in the general.  Who would be pick as his VP in order to help him win?  Palin again?  Bachmann?  Cain?  Please.

Either way then things will get really, really fun.