It’s not the holiday season without the Golden Duke Awards, TPM’s annual homage to the year’s best purveyors of public corruption, outlandish behavior and The Crazy. (The awards are named in honor of Congressman-turned-inmate Randy “Duke” Cunningham. See the letter Cunningham sent our reporter Ryan Reilly last April.) This is the fifth annual installment of the Golden Dukes! (See last year’s winners here.)

Nominations are due no later than Friday, December 16, 2011.

This year’s categories are:
1. Meritorious Achievement in The Crazy
2. Best Election Gaffe
3. Most Outrageous Fib Issued By A Politician
4. Outstanding Achievement In Corruption-based Chutzpah
5. Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality
6. Best Scandal — Local Venue
7. Best Scandal — General Interest

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Facebook wants you to know that they think Newt Gingrich’s Facebook page is awesome.

Anti-gay Alabama Republican Gov candidate had secret life as inseminator of lesbians in New Zealand.

Romney unleashes Staples founder Tom Stemberg on Newt Gingrich.

It looks like Nice Newt ™ lasted about 48 hours. Behold the return of Mean Newt.

Asked this morning whether he should give back his Freddie Mac money, as Mitt Romney suggested, Newt responded: “I would just say that if Gov. Romney would like to give back all of the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, that I would be glad to listen to him.”

I really couldn’t buy the idea that Mitt Romney could be in trouble. Until I started poring over the poll numbers and looking at next month’s caucus and primary calendar. Take a look.

There’s a new poll out tonight from NBC/Marist with a lot of new data on the GOP primary race. But there’s one bit of data buried down deep in the results that caught TPM Reader GL’s eye. And it’s quite an eye-popper.

At this moment, according to this poll, President Obama is beating both Gingrich and Romney … in South Carolina. Right, that’s well-known bellwether South Carolina, home of John C. Calhoun, Strom Thurmond and a lot of other worthies but not many statewide Democrats in recent years.

The same pollster polled Mitt v. Obama back in October and had Romney by +6. Now he’s at -3 — a 9 point move. Not good for Mitt.

For obvious reasons, they didn’t even test Gingrich back then. (In the same poll, Obama beats both handily in Florida.)

No, I do not expect President Obama to be committing a lot of resources to the South Carolina race. Nor do I expect him to win there. But these are not good numbers for the GOP with a supposedly lukewarm popularity president and near catastrophic levels of unemployment.

Romney enlists Ann Coulter as new Iowa surrogate.

Members of Christian paramilitary “savior unit” charged with home invasion in Mississippi.

Mitt spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom tells TPM bet moment was “a good moment for Mitt Romney.”