The World’s Favoritest President

MSNBC seat warmer Ed Schultz was named one of GQ’s least influential people. He responded by telling them to kiss his ass. Predictably, almost no one noticed. I turned on MSNBC for entertainment purposes and saw the following clip.

This was followed by Ed’s remarkable advice to Obama that whenever Republicans criticize his foreign policy, he should respond with something involving bin Laden. Why not? The hallmark of this Nobel Peace Prize winner’s administration is in the targeting or assistance in targeting foreign leaders who do anything to tick off the president.

The funniest part is that the above clip is from Talking Points Memo. It seems they are on board with the idea of taking out individuals as long as a Democrat is doing it. By comparison, look at what they used to say about Bush and his “get,” Saddam Hussein.

Then there’s the news about “Fast and Furious,” a high octane adventure with Vin Diesel overly macho named disaster starring either the State Department or the Attorney General, depending on who goes under the bus first. Eric Holder lowered the standard of perjury down to a witness’ state of mind.

Mexico’s normal government corruption is being overtaken by what is deemed narco-terrorism. The US response was to track weapons going over the border to the drug lords who would then by arrested. Instead, it was a fast and furious delivery of untraced weapons to a bunch of dangerous criminals over the border of another country.

I’d sure hate to have Newt Gingrich as the president next year. He might do bad things in the rest of the world.

Romney’s “accidental” anti-Newt ad

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Pro-Romney group accidentally leaks ad attacking Gingrich

A well-funded group backing Mitt Romney accidentally posted a campaign ad that harshly attacks Newt Gingrich.

The ad said Democrats are hoping for Gingrich as the nominee because all of his “baggage,” including ethics violations while he was Speaker of the House and earlier support of climate change legislation, “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, and a requirement that everyone buys health insurance.

The group, Restore Our Future, announced a $3.1 million ad buy in Iowa earlier in the day, and released an ad praising Romney’s record in the private sector and slamming President Obama.

The anti-Gingrich ad was put on YouTube on Thursday night but was quickly taken down. Brittany Gross, a spokesperson for the group, said that “it’s an unfinished ad” and that the group would not comment further on it at this time.

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Mitt doesn’t have the balls to do it himself.

“But screw your courage to the sticking place . . .”

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Waste, fraud and abuse open thread

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There should be a whistleblower program that gives a reward of 10% of the savings.

This is an open thread.

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Where’s the schadenfreude?

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Fifteen years ago I would have received great pleasure from this headline:

The Coming GOP Gingrich Freakout

Today’s question is: will the Gingrich balloon deflate like all the previous Not Mitt balloons?

The answer is: yes of course–but given that these balloons take typically 6-8 weeks to shrivel, the impending Gingrich bust may not arrive soon enough to save Romney. No question though, it will arrive in time to freak out the Republican party.

The most important thing to remember about Gingrich is not the three marriages, not the dubious financial practices, not the abrupt reversals on healthcare mandates and climate change. It’s not the grandiosity of language, not the habit of casting opponents as un-American, not the lack of self-awareness that allowed him to impeach a president for lying under oath about an extramarital affair while engaged in an extramarital affair of his own.

The most important thing to remember about Newt Gingrich is that his colleagues in the House of Representatives effectively fired him as their leader even before the impeachment crisis, shifting power instead into the more competent hands of Tom DeLay. It was Tom DeLay who ran the caucus while Newt Gingrich was traveling the country giving speeches about Total Quality Management and the Struggle for Western Civilization.

Gingrich was not pushed aside by his caucus for any of the offenses listed above. He was pushed aside because he plunged the caucus into chaos, because he lost fights that he himself had chosen, because he could not control his mouth, because he wanted to be a star more than he wanted to get things done. There’s a reason Gingrich is fascinated by management gurus: he needs the help.

That weakness in Gingrich will not now abruptly change. The chaos that surrounded him as Speaker, the chaos that engulfed his presidential campaign earlier this year – that chaos will replicate itself again. But when? It’s less than 5 weeks to the New Hampshire primary. Perhaps Gingrich can behave himself till then, in which case Mitt Romney has a big problem on his hands. But it’s more than 8 full months to the Republican convention in Tampa.

Prediction: if Gingrich has emerged as the nominee by then, the mood of that convention will be full unconcealed panic.

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The GOP establishment has only themselves to blame. They anointed Mitt as the front-runner and tried to rig the race so that he didn’t have to face any first class challengers.

Just one little problem – the GOP base hates Mitt. After searching all year for Not-Romney, it looks like they have settled by default on the Newtster. Panic and hilarity ensue.

So why am I not enjoying this?

Barack Obama is why.

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2012 GOP Field May Not Be Closed

Betcha thought it’s too late for anyone to jump into race?

From Rhodes Cook at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Conventional wisdom is that the Republican presidential field is set, and that it is much too late for a new candidate to enter the race.

In years past, that would be absolutely correct. Over the last few decades, dozens of primaries and caucuses have been shoe-horned into the opening weeks of the election year, with the tendency on the Republican side for the front-running candidate to score a quick knockout.

But next year, the arrangement of the primary calendar is much different. It is less condensed at the front, much more loaded with events at the back, with the prospect of a viable, late-starting candidate quite real.

This is not to say that it will happen, but simply to note that it could. Such a scenario could not have unfolded in 2008, when the early January events were followed in short order by an early February Super Tuesday vote-fest that involved nearly half the country.

But the elongated layout of the nominating calendar this time provides the opportunity for a late-starting candidate to emerge. Should Mitt Romney stumble badly in the January events in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, another establishment Republican could enter the race in early February and still compete directly in states with at least 1,200 of the 2,282 or so GOP delegates. Many of them will be up for grabs after April 1 when statewide winner-take-all is possible.

Cook makes the case for a window for someone to jump in in February with charts and further explanations here.

Which means my late-primary vote might actually count this year.

And which also means this is an actual possibility…

Non-News – Newt’s Naughty

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Woman says she performed sexual acts on married Newt in 1977, thinks voters simply must know

A woman who worked for Newt Gingrich’s first successful congressional campaign in 1977 is sharing allegations of an adulterous affair with her boss in an attempt to stem the rise of the current GOP front-runner.

Anne Manning says that she had an adulterous relationship with Gingrich 34 years ago. At the time, he was married to his first wife, Jackie Battley, and campaigning for Congress with the slogan “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.”

Manning told the National Inquirer that she performed a sexual act on Gingrich in a Washington, D.C. hotel room, but adds that they didn’t have sex so that “he could say he had not slept with me.”

“He always talks about being big on family values but he doesn’t practice what he preaches,” Manning said, according to London’s Daily Mail newspaper. “I wasn’t planning to say a word about him, but voters need to know what sort of man they’re being asked to support.”

Manning first alleged in 1995 that she had had an affair with Gingrich, telling Vanity Fair, “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’”

Gingrich has publicly acknowledged his past infidelities: He cheated on his first wife with Marianne Ginther, who he later married. In turn, he cheated on Ginther with his current wife Callista Gingrich.

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So back when Jimmy Carter was in his first year in the Oval Office this woman played a tune on Newt’s skin flute. I’m shocked. Shocked!

I’m shocked she kept it a secret so long.

Any bets on how the media will handle this?

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