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

THAT'S CRAZY THERE IS NO MONEY TO BE MADE FROM POLITICS.

everyone knows this.

willing to suggest that there's *some* chance of this going all weird and romney not getting it, but 50%?

btw, rick perry is now a populist

CarrieNBCNews Carrie Dann -- "You don't have to sit back & take it any more," "reach beyond the confines of the Beltway." Big push against "insiders" (read: Mitt/Newt)
____________________________

CarrieNBCNews Carrie Dann -- More Perry: "Americans were snookered" by "Wall Street highrollers" who were "betting against America." Harsher than usual.

____________________________

CarrieNBCNews Carrie Dann -- Populist Perry this AM in Nashua: "What's wrong with America can be diagrammed on a napkin... Straight line between DC and Wall St"

CarrieNBCNews Carrie Dann -- Populist Perry this AM in Nashua: "What's wrong with America can be diagrammed on a napkin... OOH I DREW A DOGGIE!"

LOL

If Gingrich is leading NH polls ten days before the primary, look for amazingly timely, scandalous "revelations."

I sorta doubt Newt will pull ahead in NH but if so, yeah this is going to happen. Newt will never get the nomination, will probably limp through Iowa and NH and bank all his hopes on South Carolina.

btw, rick perry is now a populist

If someone doesn't kick him in the nuts for this, we should just give ourselves back to Britain. His corporate whoredom is blatantly obvious.

<i>Newt will never get the nomination, will probably limp through Iowa</i>

He may well get crushed in NH, but, barring sudden developments, it doesn't look like he'll be limping through Iowa. "Never"'s a strong word; the older I get, the less and less I'm inclined to speak in absolutes.

Square brackets--okay, now I get it.

Newt will never get the (GOP) nomination

______________________________________

"Never"'s a strong word; the older I get, the less and less I'm inclined to speak in absolutes.

i will go out on a limb and say the following people will never get the GOP nomination.

• hillary clinton
• abe vigoda
• bradford cox, from deerhunter
• prof. griff, from public-enemy
• prof. newt gingrich, from the planet look-at-me

Never say never, but even among Republicans Newt's negative numbers are probably insuperable and even if they want to nominate someone who Obama is likely to beat, they'll want someone they actually like.

i feel like newt will fuck this up and flame out at some point because he's newt gingrich and that's what he does.

Chamblis/Duffy '12

i feel like newt cain perry will fuck this up and flame out at some point because he's newt cain perry and that's what he does.

naw, newt's actually got a chance here, especially if other non-romneys drop out of the race. he'll do pretty well in iowa and NH, and might do very well in south-carolina, where the south begins to roll.

NEWTNEWTNEWTNEWT

I wouldn't discount Abe Vigoda--Tessio was always smarter, and believe me, I know.

Tiffany's of NY is definitely in Newt's corner on this nomination thing.

I hope he uses "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as his campaign song.

The Freddie Mac thing has got to be thrown in his face. Perry is a ham-fisted hypocrite about the 'napkin diagram' but Newt is the ultimate Beltway insider and the Teabaggers and the Base have to decide whether even a shred of coherence is important to them. Personally, I'd like to see all their heads explode Scanners-style at the multitude of contradictions they presently contain.

Frum's head has already exploded, evidently (that was a great piece btw, thx for the link upthread)

The Freddie Mac thing has got to be thrown in his face

don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes (i.e., general election v. newt gingrich).

Bobby Moynihan is probably out distributing Newt fliers as we speak

How can you not love him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU72izvZVRA

"I can't tell you what Speaker Gingrich is saying." I can only tell you what Speaker Gingrich is saying.

I love how the de facto GOP position is "round em up and deport em" as if that is a) moral, b) simple, c) inexpensive and d) a net benefit for the economy

their old position was "let them fry on an electrified fence with an alligator-infested moat dug around it," so this is an improvement.

in that it's only slightly less feasible eh I guess so

Josh Marshall thinks Newt-mentum may have legs:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/11/mitts_darkening_horizon.php

don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes (i.e., general election v. newt gingrich).

I said this not as a partisan but as general advice. S/he who is (relatively, to him) w/o sin cast some mf'ing stones ppl!

lol how badly did romney screw-up that FOX News interview?

Bring in the clowns...

the clip above seems like yr standard Romney performance to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Bring in the clowns...

they're ... all... rea...dy... heeeeeere

lol romney's answer on immigration question:

talk talk talk talk talk talk talk maybe he'll move on to something else talk talk talk talk talk talk talk

talk talk uh . . . you know . . . (nervous laughter) . . . uh talk talk

the lolsome part is that uh, aren't people who are here illegally already at the "back of the line" re: becoming legal

anyway, gingrich has a chance, because (a) he's an angry white guy who knows how to dog-whistle to his reactionary constituency (i.e., the GOP base) and (b) romney's No. 1 asset was the total, utter inability of his opponents to speak in coherent sentences and discuss even rudimentary policy, and -- as wrong as gingrich is on most issues -- he can speak full sentences and discuss policy.

basically, i'm willing to give amnesty to any undocumented person who can speak english better than rick perry.

which means amnesty for almost all of america's 11M undocumented persons.

anyway, gingrich has a chance, because (a) he's an angry white guy who knows how to dog-whistle to his reactionary constituency (i.e., the GOP base)

which means he has no chance of gaining independents, therefore he's lost the primaries.

let me put it the way my favorite candidate, herman cain, would put it: I'M SORRY BUT YOU ARE WRONG..

I still think Mitt Romney is the likely Republican presidential nominee. But I don’t think, in the way I did a few months ago, that he’s the inevitable Republican nominee.

Can Romney, under the right conditions, break out of the 20s, where he’s been stuck for almost the entire campaign? Sure. Jonathan Bernstein is persuasive on this point: Polls of Republicans show that Romney has low negatives and he performs well in hypothetical match-ups against other Republicans. But what if Romney faces the wrong conditions?

The central mystery of the Republican primary is this: How can Romney’s support be so stable in a primary that’s so volatile? So far, we’ve seen a boom-and-bust cycle take Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain from candidate to frontrunner to not-gonna-happen. But after each bust, Romney’s support was unchanged. He picked up none of their disappointed supporters. Now he’s trailing Newt Gingrich in the polls. Here, via TPM, is what that’s looked like in Iowa:

(chart i can't print here)

Ron Brownstein has come up with perhaps the best explanation for this. The Republican primary, he writes, has “become two races running along parallel but very distinct tracks.” One is the non-tea party primary. There, Romney is winning, and easily. The other is the tea party primary. There, Romney is losing, and big. Here’s the graph, which was published before Gingrich’s surge:

(chart i can't print here)

But ultimately, there’s really only one primary, and Romney needs more supporters if he’s going to win. And though Romney does not have a low ceiling, he clearly has a sticky floor. Republicans may not refuse to support him, but there’s strong evidence that a substantial number don’t want to support him. If Romney is inevitable, they’ll come around. But what if, at the wrong moment, Romney is not inevitable?

Last night, Romney sat down for one of the first televised interviews he’s given in this campaign cycle. It was with a fairly friendly audience: Bret Baier of Fox News. And it was such a disaster that this morning, the Democratic National Committee released a video splicing together the reviews — many of them from Fox.

(video i can't print here)

Debates are a format that suits Romney well and his competitors poorly. So far, Romney hasn’t even stumbled. But eventually, he will stumble. Nobody runs a truly perfect campaign. So imagine Romney loses Iowa, as is very possible. And, under the strain of the loss, he gives a bad interview, or has a testy debate performance, right before New Hampshire. That might be all the excuse a critical number of New Hampshire voters need to coalesce around Gingrich, or perhaps the excuse that some resigned Romney supporters need to jump ship to Huntsman. And so Romney either loses New Hampshire or barely wins. And then he loses South Carolina.

To be sure, Romney could, even under those circumstances, mount a comeback. As Nate Silver points out, there are eight weeks separating the New Hampshire primary from Super Tuesday. In 2008, there were merely three weeks. The 2008 calendar favored a momentum candidate like Gingrich, while the 2012 calendar favors a fundamentals candidate like Romney.

Even so, Romney is having enough trouble adding supporters that he’s clearly vulnerable to a run of bad luck or bad news coming at the wrong time. And thus far, the primary has been so focused on a medium in which he shines — debates —that his flaws in interviews, his vulnerability to ads portraying him as a flip-flopper, and his weaknesses as a retail politician haven’t really been tested. Romney has looked so strong that even a slight stumble could be significant for a media that wants a horserace and voters who clearly want to support another candidate. So is Romney the likely nominee? Sure. Inevitable? No.

it's true that Romney and Gingrich are the only two candidates that can, how you say, talk good

that's how i say.

actually, santorum can talk good. he's just lol.

Debates are a format that suits Romney well and his competitors poorly. So far, Romney hasn’t even stumbled. But eventually, he will stumble. Nobody runs a truly perfect campaign. So imagine Romney loses Iowa, as is very possible. And, under the strain of the loss, he gives a bad interview, or has a testy debate performance, right before New Hampshire. That might be all the excuse a critical number of New Hampshire voters need to coalesce around Gingrich, or perhaps the excuse that some resigned Romney supporters need to jump ship to Huntsman. And so Romney either loses New Hampshire or barely wins. And then he loses South Carolina.

this is all sort of ridiculous since a) Gingrich is the one more likely to stumble/give bad interview/have a testy debate performance. and Gingrich is the one with the weaker ground campaign. also Gingrich has less money. the deck is way stacked against him.

wait 'till FOXNews becomes gingrich's ground campaign.

WAIT 'TILL GINGRICH CO-OPTS ALL OF FORMER CANDIDATE HERMAN CAIN'S GROUND CAMPAIGN

the cain campaign is a moving train

Monk, keep flagellating yourself into excitement.

I think the Marshall and Klein pieces have it exactly right: there's no logical reason why this is happening (and 20 logical reasons why it shouldn't be happening), I don't think it's going to last, but I'm a lot less sure of that today than I was three weeks ago. I'm assuming that Alfred and Shakey Mo Collier don't view Marshall and Klein the same way they would, say, Cokie Roberts or David Gregory. So where do they get the certainty that Marshall and Klein don't have?