There’s been a running debate in our reader emails today over whether Newt Gingrich is more than just your latest also-ran presidential candidate making their high-octane suborbital flight on the polling charts. TPM Reader EA made the point earlier that Newt is quite a different thing from Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain, who by any measure other than the 2012 presidential cycle are basically jokes. So too with Rick Perry. Yes, he’s run a state for a decade. But he’s never been all that popular even in Texas. And as we’ve seen, he wasn’t ready for the national spotlight. Whatever you think of him, Newt Gingrich has been on the national political stage for almost 35 years. And he held, albeit briefly, one of the highest offices in the land. Read More
Does Newt Gingrich have one of those congressional ‘insider trading’ problems?
Cain campaign explains Libya ‘oops’ moment: “He was on about four hours of sleep.”
Heading into a tough reelection fight against Democrat Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is endorsing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee Richard Cordray and bucking his party to call for an up or down vote.
Remember too that the CFPB is the agency that is the brainchild of his probable Democratic opponent, Warren.
Oh this ain’t pretty. Herman Cain sat down with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this afternoon. And it just didn’t go well at all. Particularly on Libya: I “Got All This Stuff Twirling Around In My Head.” More than the ‘full Perry’ it’s right up there with Sarah Palin’s tour du force interview with Charlie Gibson. Watch.
Brian Beutler points out that SuperCommittee Republicans have suddenly started “no commenting” questions about whether they’ll support tax hikes as part of a debt deal.
Just watch this video. Not much more to say than that. It’s time lapse images of Earth from space. Watch.
Can Mitt match up? Or can Gingrich outdo him at every turn on the cartoonish over the top rhetoric that Republican primary voters eat up like Doritos or super salty nachos?