We Are In Agreement

This is what I was thinking but was unable to articulate

TPM's analysis of Mitt's sitch

Second, and a bit more intangibly,[Mitt Romney] running around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is just ... how to put it? inherently demeaning and diminishing. It's like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag. People see you doing that and you just look weak and feckless, even pitiful.

Santorum getting the nomination? Nate Silver hedges

To have a chance at winning in the delegate count, he will need to supplant Mr. Gingrich as Mr. Romney’s major rival in the South. The results in Missouri, a borderline Southern state where Mr. Santorum beat Mr. Romney by 30 points without Mr. Gingrich on the ballot, suggest that he could run strongly if Mr. Gingrich were to bow out.

It is certainly not a straightforward path, but nor is Mr. Romney’s at this point. And so far in this Republican race, betting on the underdog has yielded dividends.

538 via Sullivan

Obama slowing it down a little bit, for the ladies

From WaPo

Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.

Those two demographics are important here for a key reason: they were crucial to Obama’s victory in 2008. Third Way crunched the numbers earlier this month and found that the “Obama Independents” — the swing group that proved crucial to his 2008 victory — are, as Ryan Lizza put it, “disproportionately young, female and secular.”

This is starting to come into a sharper focus:

Mark Steyn Looks like an Old GI Joe Figure

There's no way I'm the first one to notice this...

Let's say you're Newt Gingrich

And lets' stipulate that you haven't run to the bathroom, drank a liter of watchhazel and hung yourself.

So you're still alive (corporally and electorally. That sounds kind of like Jesse Jackson, actually).

Anyway, this is how you did in Florida:

Check out that panhandle, a section of the state that closely resembles the rest of the south/appallachia.

Wouldn't you just rachet-up the rhetoric, stay hawkich on Israel (to keep the Adelson money coming in) and hold on till convention?

This is the sound of me praying for that very secenario.

Now THIS is a fucking Robocall!

 

I'll take issue with "holocaust survivors, who for the first time were forced to eat non-kosher" as I don't suspect there was a lot of latkes at Dachau. But still, pretty persuasive.

A President Scarface Would Know Much About Mowing Down People with AR-15s

...and rushing for the yeaho....

This is droll:

Romney Paid More Than He Owed

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, a notorious Wall Street operator, as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It turned out that Kennedy’s understanding of how the system had been abused in the past was a great asset in his new job.

A President Romney would probably enter office knowing more about loopholes in the tax code than any of his predecessors, and could, if he so chose, be an effective advocate for reform. Whether or not Mr. Romney wins, the disclosure of his tax returns provides the rest of us with an insight into just how dysfunctional the system has become.

NY Times

Hilarious!

If there's one thing we can count on, it's a president Romney fighting from the bully pulpit on behalf of more coherent tax law.

As John Stewart discussed with Elizabeth Warren, it was Romney and his homies who fought to maintain Byzantine tax law:

 

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Pointing and Laughing - but also a total bummer - We're Doomed to Many More Gingrich Candidates

Ann Laurie over at Balloon Juice enjoys pointing out the irony that Citizen's United effectively created the Gingrich "situation" in the GOP primary.

Jonathan Chait, at NYMag’s Daily Intel, on “How Citizens United Created Newt“:

...Money is the primary mechanism that parties use to herd voters toward the choices the elites would prefer them to make. The nomination of George W. Bush offers a classic example. Bush and his network had organized so many Republicans to donate so much money that the contest was essentially over well before a vote had been cast. The Bush fund-raising network didn’t involve a handful of billionaires in a room. It required thousands of fairly affluent people working together.
 
In 2000, the Bush network froze challenger John McCain out of party fund-raising networks. Now, the GOP is trying to do this again on behalf of Romney:

    If Gingrich does win, veteran GOP strategists tell CNN to expect pressure on Senate     Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and other     Republican leaders to call key GOP donors and ask them not to contribute to     Gingrich’s campaign.

Ten years ago, this sort of edict would have suffocated Gingrich. But under the present system, Gingrich can simply have a single extremely wealthy supporter, Sheldon Adelson, write a series of $5 million checks. “Winning Our Future” is Gingrich’s “independent” PAC, and it’s an entire shadow campaign, complete with a ground operation in addition to advertising. Adelson’s money isn’t enough for Gingrich to attain parity with Romney – he’s probably being outspent at least two to one – but it is keeping him alive…

This is indeed delicious, except that it's going to keep happening. As wealth becomes increasingly concentrated, each election cycle will bring with it another (or 2 or 3) Shelden Adelson(s) who can bankroll a single candidate.

In 2012 we saw Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, fake candidates running to increase their street cred and speakers fees. In 2016 and 2020 we'll see candidates funded by the oil lobby, or big pharma, or foreign interests (how would we know) advancing specific agendas on the national stage.

Not good, all this money. Repeal Citizen's United.

Newt Thinks Pelosi has nothing but gay on her mind

Saying that Nancy Pelosi “lives in a San Francisco environment of strange fantasies,” Newt Gingrich on Wednesday dismissed the House Democratic leader’s odd claim that she knows something that will prevent him from becoming president.

“She lives in a San Francisco environment of strange fantasies and strange understandings of reality. I have no idea what’s in Nancy Pelosi’s head. If she knows something, spit it out. Tell us what it is. I have no idea what she’s talking about,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Politico

Romney Brings Hair-Pulling to a Gun Fight

Today Romney denounced the Cordray appointment as “Chicago style politics at its worst.”

The Obama campaign responds: “Mitt Romney today stood with predatory lenders and Republicans in Congress over the middle class. He doubled down on his promise to eliminate the Wall Street watchdog and allow Wall Street to write its own rules again, leaving consumers vulnerable to hidden fees, financial traps and excessive risk taking that will hit their pocketbooks. Governor Romney has made clear he has not learned the lessons of the economic crisis, instead, he’s giving the most irresponsible financial actors a bright green light to pursue profit at any cost to communities across America.”

WaPo