At New York Times , ” Gingrich Predicts a ‘Wild and Woolly’ Campaign “: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Despite signs that he could lose the important Florida primary on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich pledged Saturday to stay in the nominating fight until the very end, telling reporters he would press on until the Republican convention in Tampa in late August. “I will go all the way to the convention,” Mr. Gingrich told reporters after a rally at a golf course in this coastal community. “I expect to win the nomination.” Mr. Gingrich alluded to two national polls that he said showed him ahead, but it is the state polls that count, and in Florida they show him lagging 8 or 10 percentage points behind Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, exuded confidence, telling jokes to a crowd in Pensacola and drilling down against President Obama, a shift from recent days, when he had divided his focus between Mr. Obama and Mr. Gingrich. But he mentioned Mr. Gingrich only once, to gloat slightly about his own strong debate performances in Florida this week, which his campaign hopes will propel him to a win here on Tuesday. Mr. Gingrich turned in uncharacteristically weak debate performances, something of a surprise since he had climbed in the polls on the strength of his ability to make sharp, succinct arguments and confront his questioners in the news media. He has also faced a torrent of criticism from the Republican establishment warning that he is too erratic, unhinged and temperamental to be president. Moreover, they have said, he would lose to Mr. Obama in November. The taunts seem to have emboldened Mr. Gingrich, who predicted a “wild and woolly” campaign ahead as he barreled through a series of speeches and town-hall-style meetings Saturday on Florida’s affluent Treasure Coast. The Romney campaign has been sprinkling its surrogates on the edge of crowds at Gingrich events to talk with reporters about Mr. Gingrich’s failings and why they were supporting Mr. Romney. The Gingrich campaign criticized this tactic, even as it brought out its own surrogates and said a backlash was developing against Mr. Romney for orchestrating criticisms of Mr. Gingrich from the Republican establishment. Despite Mr. Gingrich’s three-decade career in Washington, he argues to audiences that he is the only one with vision bold enough to change it. “Have courage!” he told the crowd here of about 150 people who were standing by the golf course in shorts and flip-flops. And in the face of assertions that he is exaggerating his closeness to President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Gingrich added that he was “very proud to run on a Reagan-Gingrich record.” Also, at CNN, ” Herman Cain endorses Gingrich .”
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Gingrich, Ignoring Attacks, Plays Up Ties to Reagan
Check out Glenn Beck's golf cart tour of his new GBTV Texas studios.
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Take a Golf Cart Tour With Beck of His New Texas Studio
At The Foundry, ” Obama’s $4 Million Hawaii Vacation .” Also at Lonely Conservative, ” Obama’s Hawaiian Vacation Estimate to Cost More than $4 Million .”
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Obama Hawaiian Vacation to Cost Taxpayers $4 Million
Jeffrey Lord has this at The American Spectator , ” The Ron Paul Newsletters ” (via Memeorandum ). And from Dan Riehl as well, ” Ron Paul Can’t Withstand the Scrutiny of Being a Frontrunner .” But don’t miss especially Ace of Spades HQ, ” Only Ron Paul Can Restore America to Its Former Greatness* .” Check that link for what follows after the asterisk. The post is a devastating indictment of what looks like a blatantly racist newsletter program of pandering ggressively to paleoconservatives and “libertarians and old-time neoconfederates and former Klanners.” And according to Ace, “it wasn’t just the newsletters.” Here’s the block quote from the post: Paul is closely connected to the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, founded by the libertarian conservative Murray Rothbard and currently run by Lew Rockwell. Rockwell was formerly Paul’s chief of staff. … For Rothbard, freedom was best when it wore pants: he blamed the “origins of the Welfare State” on “the legion of Yankee women, in particular those of middle– or upper-class background, and especially spinsters whose busybody inclinations were not fettered by the responsibilities of home and hearth.” He regretted the Constitutional amendment that had “imposed” women’s suffrage on the nation. In 1963, for example, at the height of the Civil Right movement, Rothbard warned about “the negro crisis as a revolution.” “Demonstrating Negroes,” he said, “have taken to a favorite chant: ‘What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!’” One might expect a libertarian to like such a chant, but Rothbard found the idea of freedom for negroes alarming: they did not understand it properly. Freedom was a “hopelessly ambiguous word as used by the Negro movement,” and “the very fuzziness of the goal permits the Negroes to accelerate and increase their own demands without limit… it is the very sweep and vagueness of the demands that make the movement insatiable.” An insatiable desire for freedom usually stands in libertarian accounts as the most praise-worthy of human attributes, but Rothbard found the African American freedom struggle alarming. Rothbard worried not just about “insatiable” negroes, but also about King and his non-violent protests against “private citizens as store-keepers or owners of golf courses; their rights are already invaded, in a “non-violent” manner, by the established Negro ‘Center’.” Rothbard explored ways to stop “the negro revolution:” his words are worth quoting in full. There are two ways by which it might be crippled and defeated. First, the retaliatory creation of a white counter-revolutionary mass movement, equally determined and militant. In short, by the re-creation of the kind of Ku Klux Klan that smashed Reconstruction and the Negro movement in the late 19th century. Since whites are in the majority, they have the capacity to do this if they have the will. But the will, in my opinion, is gone; this is not the 19th century, nor even the 1920’s. White opinion, as we have seen, has drastically shifted from racism to egalitarianism; even the Southern whites, particularly the educated leadership, concede the broad merit of the Negro cause; and, finally, mob action no longer has respectability in our society. There have been attempts, to be sure, at mass counter-revolutionary white action: the Ku Klux leader in Georgia told a rally that “we must fight poison with poison,” armed conflict between white and Negro mobs has broken out in Cambridge, Maryland, and white hoodlums have repeatedly assaulted Negro pickets in the Bronx. But all this is a feeble replica of the kind of white action that would be necessary to defeat the revolution; and it seems almost impossible for action to be generated on the required scale. … Not surprisingly, the Von Mises Institute he founded and ran is allied with the “League of the South,” which views the Civil War as a crisis over state’s rights and calls for an independent southern republic and wants, yes, “to return to a sound currency” based in gold. The League of the South laments the fact that “aliens” now govern the former Confederacy. It wants to return rule to the heirs of the “Anglo-Celtic tradition.” Rothbard and the Von Mises Institute similarly describe the Civil War as an unjust intervention, and claim slavery would have vanished on its own. The North, they argue, created racism in what had been a benign natural hierarchy That sounds pretty nasty. But Ace has lots more . For example, to quote Ace himself: Another thing I don’t believe is that Ron Paul’s thick-as-thieves relationship with fringe lunatic crank and Truther Alex Jones is just some kind of coincidence, given that Paul can’t seem to stay away from the ghastly paranoid Here’s Alex Jones following around Michele Malkin, shouting at her for being a “neocon” (he has referred to her as a “monster” and “Marxist”). One of his little goon squad there shouts “Kill Michelle Malkin!” When I say Alex Jones is Truther, I don’t mean he flirts with it. I mean he says the United States government loaded the buildings with explosives and detonated them. And that’s not even the craziest thing he believes. He happens to believe that this is just one of many attacks on citizens by the global cabal that runs the world. But continue at the link . It’s pretty devastating all around, and it needed to be said. And some bonus video:
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Taking Ron Paul Seriously
AP – Ah, Christmas traditions: colored lights, mistletoe and criticisms of a president’s vacation plans.
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Some say Romney’s poke at Obama’s golf is old news
(AP)
At Los Angeles Times , ” Herman Cain’s supporters shocked by campaign’s end “: Reporting from Atlanta— Kerry Hobbs was one of the many Herman Cain supporters who absorbed the festive vibe at the candidate’s newly opened Georgia headquarters Saturday and couldn’t believe that the candidate would be showing up just to drop out. There was bunting and barbecue and blaring pop music. A sign-up sheet for volunteers. Herman Cain golf shirts going for $50. Policy pamphlets for free. And hundreds of people who had gathered in the parking lot of this suburban Atlanta retail strip, to support their unconventional and beloved candidate despite the gaffes and the accusations that had waylaid his campaign. “I really want him to stay in,” said Hobbs, 39, a registered nurse from Norcross, Ga., who put herself through school as a single mom. “If he’s going to lose, let him lose fairly—because the people like another person’s policies. Don’t let him lose over a character assassination.” Also at Atlanta Journal-Constitution , ” Cain’s reaction to allegations concerned some supporters .” And more from Pagan Temple , ” The Cain Train Wreck-We Just Couldn’t Keep From Watching It .”
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Supporters Shocked by Herman Cain’s Exit
Sen. Scott Brown found himself in some deep water recently when he made a casual joke about his Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren not taking her clothes off to pay for school. He got a chance to redeem himself at Wednesday night’s “Funniest Celebrity in Washington” where he was asked, along with a handful of other politicos and national news media types, to perform stand-up comedy. Brown declined to do a whole routine, but did offer up the ceremonial opening joke. Before he did his thing we spotted him drinking a Bud Light. We asked if he was nervous. He said he wasn’t. And actually, the joke wasn’t bad. The set up: While boarding a plane back home from D.C to Boston last week, he helped an elderly woman stow her luggage away. She thanked him and asked if he was “that handsome politician from Massachusetts.” Scott replied, “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.” She said, “It’s nice to meet you too, Gov. Romney .” Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) also performed. Before taking the stage, he told THE BLAZE that “everything will be fine” because “when you’re standing in front of a bunch of soldiers that are cold, wet and hungry and mad at you for some odd reason, there were a few times I’ve had to tell a few jokes.” (West served in the Army for more than 20 years.) He added that his two daughters called him and warned him not to embarrass them. Most of his routine made fun of being a black conservative in Washington. He said it feels like “being on National Geographic.” A couple other noteworthy performers and their best joke: President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist : “When midgets play miniature golf, do they know?” Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.): “Pepper spray is ‘essentially’ a food product like Rick Santorum is ‘essentially’ a presidential candidate.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.): He called the GOP primary “The Gong Show.” “Funniest Celebrity in Washington” is hosted each year to benefit ” Susan G. Komen for the Cure,” which donates money to breast cancer research.
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‘Handsome’ Sen. Scott Brown jokes he was mistaken for Romney
