2012 GOP Presidential Campaign -- "This individual's going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time."

the level of denial with Paul fanatics is... something

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/438015/thumbs/r-GINGRICH-large570.jpg
http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0705/81/2/photo-Thunderbirds-et-l-odyssee-du-cosmos-Thunderbirds-Are-GO-1966-2.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FTCcCWSxkE

pro-life AND pro-choice!

How common are targeted non-endorsements?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285787/winnowing-field-editors

Key line:

We will render further judgments in the weeks to come as the candidates continue to make their cases and are, just perhaps, joined by new candidates.

Keep wishing.

Jeb Bush

There's a new site up, similar to The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you can check your own personal non-Romney number. Being Canadian, mine's high: I'm 251,737,819th in line.

Senator Santorum was an effective legislator. He deserves credit for highlighting, more than any other candidate, the need for public policies that topple barriers to middle-class aspirations. Weighing against him is a lack of executive experience.

rip k-lo

Ann Romney, fundraising in Iowa today, talked about how her husband had supported her when she was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, including comforting her when she worried about what she would still be able to do. “He said, ‘And I really don’t care that you can’t cook dinner anymore — I really could eat toast and cereal for the rest of my life,’” Romney recounted, reported the Washington Examiner. She also talked about the couple’s early dating years: their first date was watching The Sound of Music.

So I wonder who that's directed at? Also: the Romneys will not be chiming in on the Pauline Kael thread.

if she said their first date was watching faster pussycat, kill! kill!, i might have voted for him.

so valiant! 'i'll bet you 10k i could eat toast and cereal for the rest of my life'

Could anything be more wholeseome?

Ann Romney really ought to look more like Sally Field, just to keep up with Mitt.

Jeb Bush

Now, funny you should say that...

"So a writer I follow who lives in New Hampshire just tweeted:

@publicroad: I live in NH & just got a robocall polling me about what I think about Romney vs. Gingrich vs. *Jeb Bush*.

Other folks are reporting the same polling is taking place in New Hampshire."

Other folks are indeed reporting that. Erick Erickson’s heard from three sources about it and the mayor of a town in New Hampshire claimed on Facebook that he was “just phone-surveyed about Jeb Bush for President.” Doesn’t mean that Jeb Bush is behind it — it could very well be (and probably is) an outfit like PPP trying to gauge how the frontrunners would fare in a hypothetical match-up — but times are sufficiently desperate right now that any murmur about a deus ex machina is worth blogging.

And speaking of Erickson, this is most entertaining.

yeah, that has -- at one point -- been his position. it is total nonsense. also, eventually, he took responsibility for what's in the newsletters.

― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, December 14, 2011 6:30 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

is it nonsense? not that i don't think he's a senile and doddering troll, but as i've heard it he "took responsibility" in the sense that one takes responsibility for things with ones own name on the masthead, buck stopping there and all that. lew rockwell--an even crazier rightist who paul definitely continues to roll with--has taken credit for the most ~engaging~ bullshit in those newsletters.

just fact checking

gingrich's stock slid pretty hard on intrade today

mitt spending some dough?

hoos u crazy cap'n save a libertarian

haha

i'll dig down into this later, but for now:

Paul’s alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report,published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,” read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” It also denounced “the media” for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.”...

This “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” was hardly the first time one of Paul’s publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of hisInvestment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author--presumably Paul--wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” The newsletter inveighed against liberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”

as to paul's defense, bear in mind that these newsletters have been published for decades (and under ron paul's name) with the same views bobbing to the surface routinely:

But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

again, more on this later, if i find time.

Feeling very nostalgic about Newtmania.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNEcQS4tXgQ

Is there any actual movement back to Romney, though? For the sake of argument, let's say Paul wins Iowa, Romney wins New Hampshire, and Gingrich hangs on in South Carolina and Florida? What happens then?

yes romney is going to win every state, then select marco rubio as his running mate, they will instantly pivot to the center and win 44 -- 46 states in november 2012.

as soon as they are elected, they will repeal the affordable care act and all financial regulation, and re-invade iraq.

We have a sincere if addled GOP candidate.

xpost

I've never found Perry all that addled.

Hey, Fox debate tonight!

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/recuse-yourself-chris-wallace.html

This is the one where midway they wheel out a big cake--everybody pretending that it's Rick Santorum's birthday--out jumps Palin, and phase 7 of the campaign begins.

I meant Ron Paul but we cross-posted.

What, heh, is she wearing? (xp)

http://www.paplayhouse.org/images/miss_f1.jpg

This is the one where midway they wheel out a big cake--everybody pretending that it's Rick Santorum's birthday--out jumps Palin, and phase 7 of the campaign begins.

LOL

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/12/all_in_against_newt.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Talking-Points-Memo+%28Talking+Points+Memo%3A+by+Joshua+Micah+Marshall%29

Here's the thing that amuses/appalls me about this latest turn. (Yes, I'm a whining, sulking, heartbroken Newtette.) The National Review and John Sununu and Anne Coulter and everybody else says, "Stop! You can't nominate this guy or we'll lose to Obama," and overnight everyone in Iowa realizes, "Wait! We can't nominate this or guy or we'll lose to Obama." They didn't realize this already when they were swooning over Gingrich last week? This is news, some kind of revelation? I thought they'd settled on Gingrich knowing full well they were probably conceding the election, but that that was preferable to nominating Mr. Roboto. I'm starting to believe that Republicans are extremely irrational and a little bit erratic.

i know those excerpts well, i waved them in the face of paultards in texas back in 08. dave neiwert has been killing it on the "ron paul is a crazy militia/white supremacist-sympathizing wacko" front for a minute.

i'm just tryin to keep my facts straight is all

Thought this was good:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-stump/98602/does-newt-really-want-be-president

Massive ego, but only up to the point where you have to do, rather than just be.

Go!

http://live.foxnews.com/

Meanwhile in NRO WorldJonah tries to be the sane one. Fails.

megyn kelly's makeup wtf

my god the lighting in general

"I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses"

I can't describe how much I love the expression on Romney's face every time he looks on as Perry speaks.

perry is teetering on disaster every time he speaks; it's really unnerving

Newt may snap and strangle Chris Wallace on national TV.

I'm surprised Ron Paul hasn't after Wallace' stupid remarks last night.

Huntsman with the bold plan to invite a few dissidents to our embassy in china

Sully says Ron Paul's on fire.

Gingrich's judiciary plans are retarded and his take on Jefferson's critics was false.

Sully says Ron Paul's on fire.

― Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:59 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

of course he does

yes, hellfire.

JonahNRO RT @EWErickson: RT @JimPethokoukis: Perry's favorite justice? Frontier Justice, brother!

The baseball writer Bill James actually wrote about Perry today (behind a firewall, else I'd link):

It’s not that he doesn’t know the things the other candidates know; he doesn’t know the things my 18-year-old son knows. Perry speaks of memorizing lists of names of Supreme Court justices--excuse me, Supreme Court judges--as is this was a feat that would test the capacities of Ken Jennings. My son knows not only who the justices are, but roughly how old they are, when they were put onto the court, who appointed them, and what their politics are. You could give Rick Perry a list of nine racehorses and nine Supreme Court justices, and it’s 50/50 whether he would have Harness Breaker as a thoroughbred or a strict constructionist.

He doesn't just shoot fish in a barrel--it's quite a good piece.