It's Friday afternoon. The House GOP leaders read the political tea leaves (or maybe it's more accurate to say they had the tea leaves flung in their faces) and engineered a vote to pass the 2 month extension of the tax cuts, postponing the real fight over how to fund a longer range extension. Obama has already signed it into law. Everybody is getting out of town for the holidays.
True to his odious form, Newt has criticized the bill that 2 days ago he said the House should pass. Meanwhile, his campaign coyly promises that they are just waiting "to unleash" Callista as a campaigner. I'm not sure that's such a good idea -- for Newt, that is. It will just remind everyone she was his mistress for years while he was still married to #2.
Romney has refused to release his income tax returns but has promised all college students that, if he is president, they will have a job when they graduate. With his wealth, he could afford to create the jobs, personally; but, in fact, he made his name in business by closing failing companies and eliminating jobs. And both his GOP opponents and the Obama campaign are going after him.
Ron Paul is in trouble for some newsletters that went out in his name in 1987 that have racist and anti-gay language. He has denied he wrote them or even read them, but evidence is coming out that he commented favorablty on the newsletter back then.
Rick Santorum received the endorsement from Bob Vander Plaats, the head of a prominent evangelical group in Iowa. Now there are allegations that Vander Plaats was shopping around the endorsement, supposedly asking for money to pay for publicizing the endorsement, if he gave it. The truth is probably somewhere between practical talk of how to publicize the endorsement and outright buying the endorsement. The facts are murky at this point; but it's said that he talked with more than one campaign about money, and one source's mention of $1 million as the asking price does seem excessive for stamps and tv spots in Iowa. And talking to several different ones about money before you announce your endorsement sounds suspicious.
[Added later: In all fairness, both Santorum and Vander Plaats say that there was no request for money. S. says VP did talk about needing money to publicize his endorsement, but there was no request for S. to raise the money. And there is also no clear evidence that any other campaigns were approached. So take the above with a few grains of NaCl.]
And Perry and Bachmann? They're soldiering on, with no prospects of winning. But Iowa is going to be between Romney and Paul, with Gingrich holding on in third.
Nate Silver's latest predictions of who will win Iowa: Paul 40% (down from 52% two days ago), Romney 38% (up from 28%), Gingrich 13% (same). So it's still volatile between Romney and Paul.
And that's the week that was. Unless something big breaks, I'll take a break for the Christmas weekend. Have a happy . . .
Ralph
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So Newt failed to meet the requirements to get on the ballot in Virginia. They don't seem especially onerous to me: gather 10,000 valid signatures. Newt's team got about 11,500, but many of them were apparently invalidated.
ReplyDeleteNewt is characteristically blaming the "failed system." Let's remember that Newt has been a resident of the state of Virginia for more than 10 years (no, he is not "from Georgia;" he just lived here when he had a teaching job).
To me, if the state you live in cannot come up with enough volunteers to gather 10,000 signatures out of a population of 8,000,000, then why should the state put you on the ballot?
To show how little his campaign knows about running a national campaign, they first said they would mount an intensive write-in campaign -- then found out write-ins are not allowed in Virginia.
Newt may be Mr. Smart (or Smarty Pants -- take your pick), but his campaign is not being run by smart people, or else its so thinly staffed that they can't get the basics done.
And here's what makes Newt, Newt, in all his grandiosity. I still like "cosmic egotism."
ReplyDeleteNot content to whine about "the system" shutting him out, he had to liken this "setback" to "December 1941."
Newt is comparing his not getting on the ballot in Virginia to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and starting World War II????
Come on -- that's a bit much, even for His Specialness.