I don't have a dog in this fight, but...

[Lamplighter]

Romney and the press are beginning to believe Romney's lead in the Florida
GOP campaign... with no small measure of gloating thrown into the mix.

Dana Milbank has written a scathing article about the demise of the Gingrich campaign.

Washington Post Opinions
Dana Milbank
1/20/12

The end of the road for Newt Gingrich?

It’s hard to know what the most pitiful part was:
That a presidential candidate was whiling away the night at a hotel bar
(it was his second visit to the journalists’ table that evening)?
That he felt the need to do his own spinning?
That the survey he was spinning was a “robo-poll” done by machines?
Or that the pollster who did it used to work for Gingrich?

In fact, real polls were showing the opposite — a new Quinnipiac poll
had Mitt Romney with a 14-point lead over Gingrich in Florida.
If such a drubbing occurs in the state’s primary on Tuesday,
that would, for all intents and purposes, end Gingrich’s campaign.

But Gingrich is going down in his own style, leaving fabrications,
insults and scorched earth all the way from Miami to Pensacola.

And besides all that:

Comment:

That giant sucking sound you hear from Gingrich is him
draining the last bit of relevance the GOP had left.

[classicman]

I heard Chris Matthews today say that if the newt can hang on till Super Tuesday he'll have a bunch of states that would be more in tune with him. I guess those other southern states are full of Tea Partiers. (shrug)

Then again I never thought he was a serious candidate anyway.
Nor did I think he had a chance in hell of doing anything.

[piercehawkeye45]

Palin, Limbaugh, and others have endorsed Gingrich. I feel he will go down swinging.

Why they chose him over Santorum is beyond me...

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Palin, Limbaugh, and others have endorsed Gingrich. I feel he will go down swinging.

Why they chose him over Santorum is beyond me...

So, Gingrich is a swinger who goes down, but doesn't have Santorum all over him, but has been turned into a Newt. Good, I'm glad we cleared that up.

[Lamplighter]

The news media are pouncing on Romney in his failed
attempt to express his concern for the middle class.
Unfortunately, this stone in the stone soup is having
troubles even getting out of his own troubles.
It's reminiscent of Gerald Ford trying to explain SNL.

NY Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN (Op Ed)
Published: February 2, 2012

Romney Isn’t Concerned

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what
he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context.
But he quite clearly did mean what he said.
And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.<snip>

On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs
— yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,”
and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy
“very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help,
those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.

But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare
that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that
those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan
for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts
coming at the expense of low-income Americans.

To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan,
it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor;
his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction
in financing compared with current law.

And besides all that:

Yesterday, Romney accepted the endorsement of The Donald.
Why would Mitt do that ? He could have made more points by
rejecting it, or at least ignoring it. Maybe he just wanted to piss off The Newt again.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

It's reminiscent of Gerald Ford trying to explain SNL.

I remember Chevy Chase used to fall down a lot when impersonating Ford. But I don't remember Ford ever talking about SNL. What are you talking about?

[classicman]

Cute - tw. By the way does the w stand for whiner?

I guess the next 40,000 words of my post should include a few veiled insults, a mental midget reference,
the 85% problems line, 1/2 dozen mission accomplished's, innovation, some non-emotional thinking reference,
a couple baseless claims of being a moderate and a few George Jr's thrown in for good measure
Oh my ... I almost forgot the bean counters and MBA's.

[infinite monkey]

Bulls use pinecones.

Many parts are edible (Bull Gibbons)

[Lamplighter]

TV talking heads are poking fun at Gingrich's failing campaign in FL.

"The trouble with Romney is that he brings out the worst in Gingrich"

[Lamplighter]

I don't have a boob in this fight, but... this is so short=sighted

It's a longer article, but worth reading.

NY Times
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: January 31, 2012
Cancer Group Halts Financing to Planned Parenthood

In a decision that is inflaming passions on both sides of the abortion debate,
the world’s largest breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure,
is cutting off its financing of breast cancer screening and education programs
run by Planned Parenthood affiliates.

The move will halt financing to 19 of Planned Parenthood’s 83 affiliates,
which received nearly $700,000 from the Komen foundation last year
and have been receiving similar grants since at least 2005.
<snip>
Ms. Richards said all of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates provided around 770,000 women
with breast examinations and paid for mammograms and ultrasounds for those
who needed and could not afford further diagnostic services.

She said she received the news from the Komen foundation in late December
and had requested a meeting with officials there to discuss the matter but was rebuffed.
<snip>
Anti-abortion advocates and Web sites have criticized the Komen foundation’s
financing of Planned Parenthood for years. And in December, LifeWay Christian Resources,
which is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, said it was recalling
a pink Bible it was selling at Walmart and other stores because a dollar per copy
was going to the Komen foundation and the foundation supported Planned Parenthood.
<snip>

Once again it is men (and some women) trying to control women's bodies.

[infinite monkey]

There was probably a video back in the glory days of youtube.

[Lamplighter]

@Glatt: I have this mental image of Ford on SNL doing a "let me explain myself" skit, and have not found it via Google.
The closest I've come is not the same, but this link is Chevy Chase doing Ford along the same lines.

[Lamplighter]

I don't think I've ever agreed with Friedman before, but this time he has a unique idea !!!

Chron.com
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
February 12, 2012


Friedman: Few answers from today's GOP

Watching the Republican Party struggling to agree on a presidential candidate,
one wonders whether the GOP shouldn't just sit this election out - just give 2012 a pass.

You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you've got only vowels that spell nothing?
What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with.
That's what Republican primary voters seem to be doing.
They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing.

There's a reason for that: Their pile is out of date.
The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases:
anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried
about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government,
and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.

Sorry, but you can't address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions.
I've argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system.
But that's a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party
- a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals
on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country.

Without that, the best of the Democrats - who have been willing to compromise
- have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking.
Since such a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely,
maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink.

Because when I look at America's three greatest challenges today,
I don't see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.<snip>

Until the GOP stops being radical and returns to being conservative,
it won't provide what the country needs most now - competition -
competition with Democrats on the issues that will determine whether we thrive in the 21st century.
We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies
and public-private partnership concepts - not radical ones.

Would somebody please restore our second party?
The country is starved for a grown-up debate.

[classicman]

Agreed. Those of us in the middle are sure as hell sick of the one sided story.

[Griff]

There is a mix of good and bad in that article. Friedman is desirous of active government, which isn't really conservative. Active "conservatism" is what W gave us with Friedman's full support. I'd rather not see that again. He is right about not being married to hard positions. Those things have won them elections though, so it'll be difficult to shake. My view is that a moderate libertarianism would be workable and good for the country. Don't be afraid to eliminate programs that don't work, don't trash the safety net, and don't create new bureaucracies without very good reason. Do make sure the rules are fair and incentivize savings and work.