"Serial Hypocrisy"

Este web ad producido por la campaña de Ron Paul retrata a Newt Gingrich como un esbirro de la industria sanitaria y de los gigantes hipotecarios.

El video no se emitirá en televisión, pero la gente de Ron Paul pretende enviarlo a votantes de todo el país a través de su lista de direcciones de correo electrónico.

PPP: Gingrich le saca 30 puntos (!) a Romney en Florida

Public Policy Polling:

Newt Gingrich's momentum is continuing to build, and he now leads Mitt Romney by over 25 points in both Florida and Montana.

In Florida Gingrich is at 47% to 17% for Romney, 15% for Herman Cain, 5% for Ron Paul, 4% for Michele Bachmann, 3% for Jon Huntsman, 2% for Rick Perry, 1% for Rick Santorum, and 0% for Gary Johnson.



In Montana Gingrich is at 37% to 12% for Paul, 11% for Romney, 10% for Bachmann and Cain, 5% for Perry, 3% for Huntsman, and 1% for Johnson and Santorum.

These two states really exemplify one of the key emerging trends in the Republican race- Gingrich isn't just rising, Romney's also falling. His 17% in Florida is down 13 points from 30% when we polled the state in late September. His 11% in Montana is down 11 points from 22% when we polled the state in June.

(...) The biggest reason for Newt Gingrich's rise is that he's picked up the voters of Herman Cain and Rick Perry as their campaigns have fallen apart. But these numbers make it pretty clear he's doing more than that- some of Mitt Romney's '25%' is starting to fall off and move toward Newt as well.

Confirma lo que ya señalaba la encuesta de InsiderAdvantage.

De momento no hay retirada

Interrogado sobre si piensa continuar con la campaña después de un mitin en West Chester, Ohio, Herman Cain se ha limitado a decir que están haciendo una "reevaluación" de la campaña.

Rasmussen: Gingrich es competitivo en la general

Rasmussen:

The Newt Gingrich surge has moved him to the top of the polls in Iowa, big gains in New Hampshire and now a two-point edge over President Obama in a hypothetical general election match-up.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds Gingrich attracting 45% of the vote while President Obama earns support from 43%. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Last week, Gingrich trailed the president by six. Two weeks ago, he was down by twelve.

(...) The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 28-29, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

"The Right Answer"

El segundo anuncio de tv de Romney presenta al candidato como el empresario conservador que tiene las soluciones para reactivar la economía.

Se emitirá en New Hampshire.

GOBERNADOR ROMNEY: "He pasado toda mi vida en el sector privado. He competido con compañías de todo el mundo. He aprendido algo sobre cómo es que la economía crece. No vamos a equilibrar el presupuesto pretendiendo símplemente retirar los desperdicios. Vamos a tener que recortar el gasto. Y yo estoy a favor de recortar el gasto, limitar el gasto federal al 20% o menos del Producto Interior Bruto, y de tener una enmienda de presupuesto equilibrado. La respuesta apropiada para América es parar la expansión del gobierno federal e iniciar el crecimiento del sector privado."

Unas primarias con tiempo para arrepentirse

Nate Silver:

In 2012, however, New Hampshire’s primary (on Jan. 10) and Super Tuesday (on March 6) are a full eight weeks apart. Some states, of course, vote in between. Nevertheless, there will not be a lot of action at the ballot booth between the Jan. 31 Florida primary and the Michigan and Arizona primaries on Feb. 28.

Although victories in Iowa and New Hampshire often produce a lot of momentum for a candidate, leading to a chain reaction wherein the winner continues to perform well in subsequent states, there is some evidence that the momentum has a sell-by date. One such example was in 1980, when George H.W. Bush upset Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Bush, who had been well behind Mr. Reagan in New Hampshire polls, surged after his Iowa victory, eventually leading Mr. Reagan in several surveys. But there was an unusually large gap between Iowa and New Hampshire that year — 36 days — leaving Mr. Reagan with plenty of time to recover. He was able to win New Hampshire by a commanding margin, 50 percent to 23 percent, and had a fairly easy path to the nomination from there.

So say, for instance, that Newt Gingrich wins Iowa, just gets over the top in New Hampshire and wins there as well, and then also goes on to win South Carolina and Florida. Or say that Mr. Gingrich loses New Hampshire narrowly but nevertheless wins South Carolina and Florida: that would still be enough for him to be declared the “winner” of the early-voting states. Either of these outcomes seem plausible at this point.

If we had a more compact nominating calendar, like in 2008, Mr. Gingrich would seem to be an enormous favorite at that point. Rarely if ever have the early states rendered a clear verdict and that candidate failed to capture the nomination. (The closest thing to an exception was the Democratic nomination of 1972, when Edmund S. Muskie won Iowa and New Hampshire but George McGovern won the nomination. But Iowa and New Hampshire were given less attention then than they get now, and Mr. Muskie’s performance was viewed as disappointing relative to expectations.)

This year, however, a candidate like Mitt Romney would have more time to regroup after an early setback. I’m not just picking Mr. Romney’s name out of a hat. It seems that the candidate who could benefit the most is one who had stronger “fundamentals,” like fund-raising, campaign infrastructure and institutional support, which could potentially outlast transient swings in polling. That describes Mr. Romney better than it does someone like Mr. Gingrich, who does not perform well in these areas.

The long gap in the nomination calendar could also give Republicans more time to contemplate how their nominee might perform against President Obama, a comparison that might not help Mr. Gingrich. Put another way, there would be more time for the party and its voters to develop “buyer’s remorse” over their apparent nominee. The news media — which has some incentives to keep the horse race going — might play along, applying more scrutiny to him while seeking out any sign of hope that Mr. Romney’s campaign was still alive.

To be clear, this would not be Mr. Romney’s preferred path to the nomination. If party elites seemed to want to overturn the will of the voters, their intervention might not be successful — and it could tear the party’s base apart in the process. So to have any chance, Mr. Romney would have to perform credibly well in the early states even if he didn’t win most of them. He’d also want to avoid a strong performance from a candidate like Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who has similar credentials to Mr. Romney and who could compete with him for the remaining sliver of the party’s establishment’s support. But if Mr. Romney passed these tests, he could still be viable.

¿Un nuevo Newt?

The Fix:

Newt Gingrich isn’t the most likely candidate for a political transformation. He’s been in and out of elected office for more than three decades, building a reputation as a gifted but often undisciplined politician.

And yet, a look at Gingrich’s campaign over the past few weeks suggests that the former House speaker is working to correct the mistakes he made earlier in the presidential race, mistakes that led to the departure of almost his entire senior staff in June.

“Newt as a political strategist has no competitors,” said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich confidante who left as part of the mass staff departures. “I think it was his former advisors, myself included, who have learned the lesson that Newt might actually know what he is doing.”

Criticized then for his alleged lack of willingness to travel to early primary states, Gingrich now has a schedule larded with stops in the states that will kick off the presidential vote in January.

This week alone, he is scheduled to two days in Florida, three in South Carolina and another two in Iowa.

Lambasted for wandering badly off message on a weekly — if not daily — basis, Gingrich has been remarkably disciplined of late.

Take his response to reports Tuesday that businessman Herman Cain was reassessing his candidacy. “I have no comment on Mr. Cain,” said Gingrich. “He has to do what he thinks is best.” Restrained — and smart — given that Gingrich is open to criticism due to his own acknowledged extramarital affair in the late 1990s.

“He’s been remarkably different, disciplined, and on-message,” said one senior party strategist who has closely followed Gingrich’s career. “There are a lot of people regretting not helping him sooner, and his bandwagon now runneth over.”

Several people who have known Gingrich for years insist his dedication to the campaign trail and message discipline are nothing new.

“His critics have accused him of a lack of discipline, but you don’t achieve what he accomplished in his speakership without focus and discipline,” said former Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Walker, who is supporting Gingrich.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who is neutral in the presidential race, said that Gingrich was “rusty” at the start of the campaign due to the fact that he hadn’t been an active candidate in more than a decade. “What we are seeing now is not a new Newt; it is the old Newt re-emerging,” added Cole.

The challenge for Gingrich is whether he can keep up what looks like the turning of a political leaf.

While Walker — and other Gingrich allies — highlight the discipline that led Gingrich to the speakership, they tend to gloss over the fact that he was pushed out of leadership (and Congress) just four years after he took over.

Gingrich has shown a knack for reinventing himself in his past political lives. But he has always returned back to the old Newt — the brilliant but deeply flawed candidate who can’t manage to stay on top.

The 34 days left before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses will test whether Gingrich has really matured as a candidate or whether this is just the latest boom-and-bust episode in a political life that has been defined by them.

Perry en Fox & Friends

InsiderAdvantage: Gingrich 41%, Romney 17% en Florida

Encuesta de InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research:

Newt Gingrich is the current favorite in Florida’s Jan. 31 Republican presidential primary, picking up supporters who fled Herman Cain to claim 41 percent in a poll conducted Tuesday night for the Florida Times-Union.

Gingrich has as much support as the next four candidates combined in the telephone survey of 513 registered voters who say they’re likely to cast ballots in the primary. The poll, conducted by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research, has a margin of error of 4 percent.

(...) The Times-Union poll was the first conducted in Florida since the woman claiming the affair broadcast her story on television. In it, Cain drops to third place with 13 percent, behind Mitt Romney’s 17. No other candidate is in double digits.

“I am totally shocked by these numbers,” said pollster Matt Towery, CEO of InsiderAdvantage. “Newt Gingrich is winning nearly 50 percent of the independent vote, but more importantly, the Republican vote which makes up the vast majority of the Florida Republican primary.”

Cain holds just 12 percent of Republicans and only 3 percent of independents.

“I have not seen a lead this large, this late in a Republican presidential primary season since I have been polling,” said Towery, who notes that his firm has never missed identifying the winner in Florida’s statewide contests.

Gingrich’s skeleton’s may be the reason women voters remain his weakest demographic group. Yet, he still gets 33 percent of them to Romney’s 17. With males, Gingrich commands 50 percent to Romney’s 18.

Bachmann en The Situation Room (CNN)

Gingrich en Bluffton, Carolina del Sur

Gingrich reta a Obama en tono desafiante porque sabe que resuena en el electorado republicano.

Dice que está preparado para responder a cualquier difamación y promete que obligará a Obama a rendir cuentas si trata de ganar la reelección con una campaña negativa.

Su mensaje al GOP es claro: yo soy el tipo más duro al que Obama se haya enfrentado nunca.

Romney en Tampa, Florida

Perry en Derry, New Hampshire

Perry en On The Record (Fox News)

Santorum en On The Record (Fox News)

Romney en Special Report (Fox News)

Joe Arpaio oficializa su apoyo a Perry (video)

Esta mañana en Amherst, New Hampshire.

Rasmussen: Romney 34%, Gingrich 24% en NH

Rasmussen:

What a difference a month makes in the race for the Republican nomination. In September, Rick Perry was leading in Iowa and running second in New Hampshire. In October, Herman Cain took the lead in Iowa and was running second in New Hampshire. Now, it’s Newt Gingrich’s turn.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary voters in New Hampshire shows former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on top at 34%, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 24%. This is the first survey of New Hampshire Primary voters conducted since the Manchester Union Leader endorsed Gingrich.

El resto del pelotón: Ron Paul 14%, Huntsman 11%, Cain 5%, Bachmann 2%, Perry 2%, Santorum 1%.

En el anterior sondeo de Rasmussen en NH estaban: Romney 41%, Gingrich 8%.

Rumor: Cain podría retirarse mañana

Según Larry Sinclair:

Sources who have inside access to Herman Cain have informed us that Cain will drop out of the GOP Presidential Primary Race by tomorrow afternoon.

Herman Cain está reconsiderando su campaña

National Review:

In a conference call this morning, Herman Cain told his senior staff that he is “reassessing” whether to remain in the race. He will make his final decision “over the next several days.”

National Review was on the call. It lasted five minutes.

“Obviously, you’re all aware of this recent firestorm that hit the news yesterday,” Cain began, his voice somber. “First thing I want to do is say to you what I have said publicly: I deny those charges, unequivocally. Secondly, I have known this lady for a number of years. And thirdly, I have been attempting to help her financially because she was out of work and destitute, desperate. So, thinking that she was a friend — and I have helped many friends — I now know that she wasn’t the friend that I thought she was. But it was a just a friendship relationship.”

“That being said, obviously, this is cause for reassessment,” he continued. “As you know, during the summer we had to make some reassessments based upon our financial situation. We were able to hang in there; we reassessed the situation and kept on going. We also did a reassessment after the Iowa straw poll and we made another reassessment after the Florida straw poll. When the previous two accusations, false accusations, came about, we made another assessment. The way we handled those was, we continued on with our schedule. We made an assessment about what was going to happen to our support. But our supporters, and even some folks that we didn’t have as supporters, they stood with us, and they showed it not only in terms of their verbal support, they showed it in terms of their dollars.”

“Now, with this latest one, we have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or not they would be able to support us going forth,” Cain said.

“Over the next several days, we are going to continue with the schedule as usual,” he said. “I’ve got a major speech tonight at Hillsdale College on national security and foreign policy, and I will deliver it with vim, vigor, and enthusiasm. And then tomorrow we’ve got some media appearances scheduled. So we’re going to continue until we complete our assessment over the next several days.”

“But if a decision is made, different than to plow ahead, you all will be the first to know,” he said. “So until that time, I want to continue to thank you all for your support, thank you for your prayers. It’s taken an emotional toll, but the people in the audience tonight will never know it.”

Romney hace triplete cubano-americano

El Gobernador Romney ha recibido hoy el apoyo de los tres políticos más representativos del exilio cubano-americano de Miami en las últimas dos décadas: los hermanos Diaz-Balart y la Congresista Ileana Ros Lehtinen.

El acto ha tenido lugar en la compañía Conchita Foods de Miami-Dade.

A poco más de un mes para que empiecen las votaciones, Romney sigue manteniendo un perfil bajo y extremadamente prudente, evitando al máximo la exposición pública. Florida es el único de los primeros estados en votar que tiene previsto visitar esta semana.

Joe Arpaio oficializa su apoyo a Perry

The Daily Caller:

Confirming the weekend’s reporting, on Tuesday “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio, endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president at a diner in Amherst, New Hampshire.

“The federal government has failed on border crime and border enforcement, and no candidate for president has done more to secure the border than Governor Rick Perry,” Arpaio wrote in a statement. “I have been watching Governor Perry and Texas closely and know his border surge operations with state, local and federal law enforcement officials have helped shut down the illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people.”

While the federal government has failed, according to the Arizona sheriff, Perry is the guy who can right the wrongs on the border.

“I’m endorsing Rick Perry because we need a tough-on-crime president who will champion and fund full-time border security operations from Brownsville[, Texas] to San Diego,” he said. “Governor Perry has a superior border security record and plan to make our border and our nation safer.”

Por qué Christie gusta tanto a los republicanos

Por cosas como esta.

GOBERNADOR CHRISTIE: "Me cabreó mucho este fin de semana escuchar la interpretación de la administración sobre el fracaso del supercomité y que, 'el Presidente sabía que este estaba condenado al fracaso y que por eso no se involucró.' Bien, entonces, ¿para qué diablos te estamos pagando? 'Como está condenado al fracaso, ¿no me voy a involucrar?' ¿Qué has estado haciendo, exactamente?

Si quería volver a presentarse al Senado otra vez y ser sólo uno entre cien, estoy seguro de que podría haber sido reelegido una y otra vez en Illinois. Pero cuando eres Presidente, eres único en Washington."

InsiderAdvantage: Gingrich se escapa en IA y SC, y se acerca a Romney en NH

Encuesta de InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research:

Newt Gingrich has taken a commanding lead in the South Caro­lina Republican primary, with more than twice the support of Mitt Romney or Herman Cain, according to a poll conducted Monday evening for The Augusta Chronicle.

Gingrich, a former congressman from Georgia, has 38 percent, followed by 15 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Cain, a Georgia native, had 13 percent.

No other candidate reached double digits in the telephone survey conducted Monday night among 519 registered voters who say they’re likely to vote in the state’s GOP primary. InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research conducted the poll, and it has a 4 percent margin of error.

“Gingrich has consolidated a substantial lead among those who consider themselves Republicans, which are the more long-time GOP voters,” said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery. “The independents who had supported Cain are moving to Gingrich as well.”

The pattern is repeating itself in other early voting states, as illustrated in other polls Towery’s organization conducted Monday night.

In Iowa, Gingrich leads with 28 percent, followed by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s 13 percent and Romney’s 12 percent.

In New Hampshire, Ging­rich has 27 points to Rom­ney’s 31, putting them in a tie once the margin of error is considered.

Llamamiento de Team Obama

El comité de reelección del Presidente ha lanzado su primer anuncio de tv de 30 segundos. En él, Obama invita a sus partidarios a unirse a su "movimiento" a través de un número de teléfono y una dirección web a la que dirigirse.

En realidad es sólo una primera prueba para sondear el estado de ánimo y la disponibilidad de sus seguidores.

Cinco meses de cobertura televisiva de los candidatos

Smart Politics tiene los datos:

If Republican primary voters are to be accused of still searching for the "anti-Romney," the same can certainly be said of the broadcast media as they cover the various arcs of the presidential campaign.

For although the former Massachusetts governor has ranked consistently at or near the top of the national polls throughout his candidacy, on a week-to-week basis Romney usually lags behind one or more of his fellow 2012 White House hopefuls in terms of media coverage.

And this has been the case dating all the way back to June.

A Smart Politics week-by-week analysis of ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and NPR broadcast media transcripts finds that since late June, Mitt Romney has been mentioned in the most reports among the 2012 Republican candidates for just four of these 22 weeks.

Which is not to say Romney has been ignored.

In fact, the perennial GOP frontrunner has been mentioned in the most news reports overall during this five-month span at 3,355 - barely edging out Rick Perry (mentioned in 3,235 reports, even though he did not announce his candidacy until the seventh week under analysis).

However, Romney has been consistently overshadowed nearly every week by one of the "anti-Romney" candidates vying for co-frontrunner status.

Rick Perry has been mentioned in the most broadcast reports for eight weeks, with Michele Bachmann on top six times, followed by Herman Cain with four and Romney with four.

These numbers contrast sharply with the amount of attention Romney has consistently commanded during the GOP debates, during which he has frequently tallied many more minutes of speaking time over the other candidates.

Bachmann was mentioned in the most media reports during the first five weeks of her candidacy (June 26-July 2, July 3-9, July 10-16, July 24-30) - with her name brought up in 626 news reports during that span compared to just 388 reports for Romney.

The next closest candidate was former Minnesota Governor (and ex-candidate) Tim Pawlenty with 230.

Romney edged Bachmann during the week of July 31-August 6, with the Minnesota Congresswoman back on top for a sixth time during the week of her Iowa Straw Poll victory (August 7-13).

Rick Perry's emergence into the Republican race on the day of the Straw Poll put a quick damper on Bachmann's momentum in the polls and - at the same time - the media coverage of her campaign.

For each of the next seven weeks through October 1st, Perry would be brought up in the largest number of broadcast reports of any candidate in the GOP field - tallying 1,297 reports compared to 1,045 for Romney and 828 for Bachmann.

No other candidate reached 500.

As the media transitioned its focus from Perry to the surging Herman Cain over the next two weeks, Romney edged out each candidate with 210 reports mentioning Romney, Cain at 202, and Perry at 194 from October 2-8, and 259 reports for Romney, 254 for Cain, and 239 for Perry from October 9-15.

With his high poll numbers (and subsequent sexual harassment scandal), Cain was the most mentioned candidate in the GOP field for four of the next five weeks: October 16-22, October 30-November 5, November 6-12, and November 13-19.

Perry enjoyed a brief resurgence to the top during the week of October 23-29 when he unveiled his economic and tax plans.

Both Perry (125) and Cain (131) dropped behind Newt Gingrich (170) during the last full week of the month, November 20-26, with Romney (184) on top for just the fourth time since late June.

A book tour has boosted Bachmann's numbers a bit, but the congresswoman remains in the fifth slot over each of the last two weeks.

But the candidate who the media has neglected the most relative to his standing in the polls is Ron Paul.

Congressman Paul has outpolled Michele Bachmann in 38 of the 61 national polls conducted during this five-month window, but Bachmann has been mentioned in twice as many reports (2,529 to 1,250) including every week under analysis.

Paul has also outpolled Gingrich 31 to 26 with four ties in these 61 surveys, with the former House Speaker receiving nine percent more coverage during these 22 weeks.

Paul has even polled ahead of Rick Perry five times and tied him in three other surveys.

Since late June Paul has never received more than the fourth most coverage in a single week among the 2012 White House hopefuls, falling to 5th four times, to 6th six times, to 7th three times, to 8th once, and to 9th once.

Una escena retrospectiva

6 de mayo, 1987: el Senador Gary Hart, gran favorito para la nominación demócrata de 1988 y para la elección general, se vio obligado a convocar una rueda de prensa después de un acto de campaña en New Hampshire para responder a un reportaje de The Miami Herald que le acusaba de pasar los fines de semana con una joven de 29 años en su casa de Washington DC mientras su mujer estaba en Colorado.

En el dramático encuentro con periodistas, el candidato afirmó ser "víctima de un montaje" para hundirle y calificó de tramposas y falsas las informaciones. "¿He cometido un error poniéndome en circunstancias que podían dar motivo a malas interpretaciones? ¿He hecho algo amoral? En absoluto."

"¿Ha cometido alguna vez adulterio?", le preguntó el reportero Paul Taylor de The Washington Post. "No creo que esa sea una pregunta justa", respondió Hart, y siguió, "no voy a entrar en un debate sobre la definición teológica de lo que constituye adulterio..."



La presión sobre el candidato se volvió inaguantable en pocas horas. The Miami Herald respondió con una editorial que llamaba "mentiroso" a Hart poniendo en evidencia las contradicciones de su versión, se revelaron detalles sobre un reciente crucero de Hart con esta chica en las Bahamas, y salieron nuevas informaciones que señalaban que las aventuras del Senador fuera del matrimonio se remontaban a 15 años atrás.

Hart tomó la decisión de tirar la toalla unos días después, cuando The Washington Post le presentó en privado pruebas de más relaciones que iban a salir si seguía en la campaña.

Canceló todos sus actos en New Hampshire y voló a Denver, Colorado, para anunciar, desafiante, que se retiraba de la carrera presidencial. Criticó a los periodistas por dedicarse a diseccionarlo y culpó al sistema político de reducir el papel de la prensa al de cazador y a los candidatos a simples presas.

"He cometido errores, quizá grandes, pero no malos, porque soy humano."

Cain volvió a negar su relación con Ginger White

The Daily Caller:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain told supporters at a fundraising event Monday night that fresh allegations that he had an extended 13-year affair with a woman in Georgia are untrue.

Washington, D.C. attorney Mary Brett, who attended the event, told The Daily Caller that Cain swore to supporters that if he had a Bible, he’d put his hand on it and vow that the allegations are false.

(...) In a statement released by the Cain campaign, spokesman J.D. Gordon said, “Detractors are trying once again to derail the Cain Train with more accusations of past events that never happened. The Cain campaign is not surprised that another female accuser has come forward due to the fact that earlier allegations were unable to force Herman Cain to drop his presidential bid to renew America.”

But a separate statement from Cain’s attorney, Lin Wood, to WAGA-TV raised eyebrows as it did not deny the affair and rather said, “this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults — a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public.”

“No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life,” Wood said. “The public’s right to know and the media’s right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one’s bedroom door.”

On Monday night, several reporters waited for Cain to depart the hotel after the fundraiser. While his Secret Service detail and staff members were seen walking in and out of the hotel, The Daily Caller did not see Cain leave.

Huntsman en Merrimack, New Hampshire

Durante un town hall meeting, habló de la deuda y la pérdida de confianza de los americanos en las instituciones de poder.

Gingrich en Charleston, Carolina del Sur

En un town hall meeting organizado por el Congresista Tim Scott.



Continúa: Parte 2 / Parte 3 / Parte 4

Gingrich en The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News)

Gingrich en John King USA (CNN)

Habla sobre inmigración.



Sobre Romney.

Ginger White, supuesta amante de Herman Cain

Se llama Ginger White, es empresaria en Atlanta, y afirma haber mantenido una aventura amorosa de 13 años con Herman Cain.

"No era algo complicado. Yo sabía que él estaba casado. Y también sabía que estaba metida en una relación muy inapropiada."

Al parecer, esta mujer ha facilitado a una filial de la Fox de Atlanta registros telefónicos que muestran 61 llamadas y mensajes de texto de un número que dice que es del móvil personal del candidato.

Georgia Woman Claims 13-Year Affair with Herman Cain: MyFoxATLANTA.com

El hombre que salvó a Reagan

El agente retirado del Servicio Secreto, Jerry Parr, ha visitado el museo Henry Ford con la CNN para hacer una reconstrucción de cómo salvó la vida del Presidente Reagan en 1981.

"Ya estamos otra vez"

Es la respuesta de Cain a una información que saldrá en un canal de tv de Atlanta, según la cual, el candidato ha mantenido una relación amorosa de 13 años con una mujer local.

Herman Cain sigue a su bola

Chuck Todd (NBC) en twitter:

Just 36 days until the Iowa caucuses and where's @thehermancain on 11/30: doing a bus tour of Ohio; that state's primary is in June.

Joe McQuaid en America's Newsroom (Fox News)

El editor del Union Leader explica su apoyo a Gingrich.

National Poll Position: Gingrich 32%, Romney 23%

Poll Position:

Una escena retrospectiva

Pat Buchanan se dirige a sus seguidores en Nashua en la víspera de la primaria de New Hampshire de 1996. Con el apoyo del Union Leader y con la oposición al NAFTA (Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte) como tema central de su campaña, el populista Buchanan causará un tremendo shock en el GOP y en el mundo de los negocios afín al partido, cuando al día siguiente derrote por escasos 3,000 votos al favorito Bob Dole.

Faltan 5 semanas para que todo empiece

First Read:

*** Five weeks to go: Here’s where we stand in the GOP presidential race with five weeks (36 days!!!) to go until the Iowa caucuses: 1) Mitt Romney remains the overall favorite -- with his money, campaign staff, and poll position -- but he hasn’t been able to pull away from the field, and he’s a TV ad away from being all-in in Iowa; 2) Newt Gingrich, fresh off from his New Hampshire Union Leader endorsement, has emerged as the latest Romney alternative, but the question is whether he can survive the next 36 days; (none of the OTHER anti-Romneys has lasted longer); 3) Rick Perry’s campaign appears stuck in neutral, though he did receive an endorsement from controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio; 4) Ron Paul keeps on doing his thing, and is enlisting college students to help out his Iowa ground game; 5) Herman Cain is trying to bounce back from his foreign-policy stumbles and those sexual-harassment allegations; and 6) with all the twists and turns that we’ve seen so far, the next five weeks (and beyond) promise to be a wild ride. Bottom line: We don’t know how Romney is denied the nomination, but we also don’t know how he gets there, yet.

Récord de visitas presidenciales a estados decisivos

The Wall Street Journal:

When President Barack Obama jets to Scranton, Pa., Wednesday to promote his jobs package, he'll log his 56th event in a presidential battleground state this year, putting him well ahead of President George W. Bush's record-breaking swing-state travel in 2003.

Mr. Obama's extensive travels this year have opened the president to criticism from Republicans that he is intertwining campaigning and governing at a time when he has called for bipartisanship on intractable national problems. Most of the cost is typically born by taxpayers.

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 17 of his third year in office, Bill Clinton held 40 events over 24 days in the battlegrounds of his time, according to data compiled by Brendan Doherty, a U.S. Naval Academy assistant professor who is widely viewed among political scientists as an expert on presidential travel. Over that same stretch, George W. Bush held 49 events in 34 days, drawing complaints from Democrats.

Mr. Obama has surpassed his predecessors in both categories; as of Nov. 17, he attended 54 events in 11 battleground states over 42 days. "Obama has certainly ramped up the volume," said Mr. Doherty, author of a forthcoming book called "The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign."

De tal padre...

The Washington Post:

The candidate speaks about his beacon in the incandescent terms that sons reserve for idolized fathers.

“He’s the real deal,” Mitt Romney says, his use of the present tense indicative of how his late father’s legacy lives on for him.

The lessons handed down by the mentor included everything from a near-ascetic discipline to a low-key approach for defusing skeptics’ suspicions about their religion to the political principles that would shape the younger Romney’s life.

“He has been my greatest influence,” Romney says with a soft solemnity.

A popular Michigan governor, an evolving critic of the Vietnam War and a 1968 presidential candidate who led his Republican rivals in early polls until political catastrophe struck, George Romney often brought his youngest son along while campaigning. Former advisers admit to being stunned by how much Mitt looks like their old boss, marveling over the same square jaw and the thick, swept-back hair. But the memory of their relationship is complicated nowadays in Mitt Romney’s case, because his dad was a moderate with occasionally liberal fiscal positions, and Mitt Romney is trying to convince his Republican base that he likes none of those things.

At this moment, over the telephone, he is momentarily a son making the point that he is not his father’s clone. With some of his father’s old advisers arguing that he lacks his dad’s steadfast convictions, Mitt Romney tries to turn the force of their criticism to his advantage in a bit of political jujitsu. It speaks to his campaign’s pressures, and to his skeptics’ persistent doubts about his conservative bona fides, that Romney sometimes distances himself from his father’s political philosophy.

“I’d say that my positions are not identical to those of my dad,” he explains. “I learned a lot from my dad. But I did not always agree with him.”

Nor does Romney still tout the pro-choice sentiments of his late mother, Lenore, in helping to explain the underpinnings of his own support for abortion rights during the 1990s, a position he has long since abandoned. He has settled now on an issue illustrative of a fundamental difference with his dad. “My father fought [successfully] to introduce a state income tax [to Michigan],” he says. “That’s not something I would have done. I am more conservative. But he’s the person I have admired most in political life. He’s the real deal, yes.”

McQuaid defenderá a su candidato a diario

POLITICO.com:

Patrick Griffin, another unaligned New Hampshire Republican consultant, noted the paper doesn’t hold back when it comes to advancing the interests of its chosen candidate.

“If and when Mitt attacks Newt, they will protect him,” said Griffin. “They smell blood and on top of their interest in asserting the paper’s ideology, they see this as a chance to deny Romney a coast to the nomination.”

While the endorsement itself made no mention of Romney and allowed that Gingrich was imperfect, Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid suggested Sunday that they would reprise their tradition of near-daily editorials that reiterate full-throated support for their favored candidate and equally robust opposition toward his challengers.

“I think we will be sticking with our traditional approach,” McQuaid wrote in an email.

El impacto del Union Leader

Nate Silver:

What I’ve done, therefore, is compare how the Republican candidate endorsed by The Union Leader finished in each of the past six competitive New Hampshire primaries compared with how he was polling at the time of the endorsement. By default, I use an average of all statewide polls conducted in the three weeks before the endorsement, although there were no polls within this window in the 1980 and 1996 cycles, so I use the first poll just after the endorsement instead. I do not consider races before 1980, as we have no New Hampshire polls for those years in our database.

As it happens, although only three of the six Republicans endorsed by The Union Leader during this period won their primary, all six outperformed their polling. Mr. du Pont, for instance, finished with a fairly meager 11 percent of the vote in 1988 — but this was better than his 4 percent standing in the polls at the time of the endorsement.



On average, the candidates endorsed by The Union Leader finished with 29 percent of the vote in New Hampshire — an 11-percentage-point improvement from the 18 percent they averaged in the polls when the endorsement was made.

(...) This is a pretty good sign for Mr. Gingrich. If you do take the results of the regression analysis to be tantamount to a prediction, they imply that New Hampshire could be quite close, with Mr. Romney finishing with 36 percent of the vote and Mr. Gingrich at 30 percent. What I think is fair to say is that Mr. Gingrich would at least have a shot at winning New Hampshire if he also wins Iowa, a result that could be devastating to Mr. Romney’s campaign.

Huntsman en Fox News Sunday

Sentado al calor de un fuego de chimenea.

Herman Cain en State of the Union (CNN)

Habla sobre aborto e inmigración.



Sobre economía y seguridad nacional.

Por qué es tan importante el endorsement del Union Leader

Primary Insider:

New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News, has announced it will back Newt Gingrich in the Republican presidential nominating race, according to photos provided by the former House speaker’s campaign. The endorsement appears above the fold on doorsteps across the Granite State on Sunday morning.

And it is expected to appear on the paper’s front pages for the remaining six weeks until the New Hampshire primary. Part of what makes this endorsement so powerful — arguably the most important endorsement in this early primary state — is that the publisher is a relentless and prominent advocate for the chosen candidate, regularly pasting a nod to the candidate above or below the front page fold.

(...) When the paper endorses, it goes all in.

“We endorse every damn day,” publisher Joe McQuaid told The Washington Post in 1999. “We started endorsing Reagan in 1975 and never stopped.”

In 2008, The Union Leader endorsement of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s post-Christmas rise up to, and then above, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts in statewide polls.

The paper went to bat for McCain in part by slamming Romney in a series of editorials that caused some to wonder if the paper’s endorsement this season was always out of his reach.

This year, his campaign has reportedly worked to build bridges between the candidate and the paper. Romney joined the publisher at a charity even this month; even though Romney was not on the speaking schedule, the implication was that Romney would go out of his way to woo McQuaid. “Don’t tell me I have to sit next to Joe McQuaid,” Romney joked, according to reports.

For months prior, reportedly as early as March, Romney was aided in the effort by former Gov. John H. Sununu, who arranged meetings between Romney and McQuaid.

Union Leader: Gingrich tiene experiencia, cualidades de líder, y visión

CNN nos resume lo más destacado del editorial del Union Leader:

The New Hampshire Union Leader's Sunday editorial says the former House speaker "is by no means the perfect candidate" but calls him "the best candidate who is actually running."

"Republican voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running," writes the paper's publisher, Joe McQuaid. "In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. He has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times."

(...) In the editorial, McQuaid praises Gingrich's "forward-thinking strategy" and the "positive leadership" he showed as House speaker.

"A lot of candidates say they're going to improve Washington," he writes. "Newt Gingrich has actually done that, and in this race he offers the best shot of doing it again."

Portada del Union Leader

El Union Leader apostará por Gingrich

Según Fox News:

Fox News has learned that former speaker of the U.S. House and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will receive the coveted endorsement of the highly-influential New Hampshire newspaper "The Manchester Union Leader," an endorsement Republican rival Mitt Romney has adamantly sought.

The endorsement of the conservative newspapers' editorial board places an exclamation point on Gingrich's impressive surge from has-been GOP contender to front-runner, and sets him apart as the new anti-Romney candidate amongst his competitors.

Gingrich has now fully reached a pinnacle as a front-runner. He shares this title with Romney, who has established himself as the consistent man to beat by the amorphous GOP field.

The endorsement suggests Gingrich has the potential to beat Romney in the New Hampshire primary. This "first in the nation" primary is considered to be a must-win for Romney.

El Union Leader publicará su endorsement en la portada de mañana

Lo anuncia en twitter:

Which primary candidate will get the Union Leader's endorsement? Find out in this week's NH Sunday News.

¿Quién será el afortunado?

El Union Leader de Manchester, de línea editorial conservadora, ha sido históricamente un factor de relevancia en la primaria republicana de New Hampshire.

Es el único periódico estatal capaz de llevar a un candidato tan improbable como Pat Buchanan a ganar contra pronóstico la primaria, o a un candidato insurgente como Reagan a quedar a sólo un punto de un Presidente en ejercicio como Ford. Hace cuatro años, su endorsement a McCain dinamitó definitivamente las opciones de Romney.

Los endorsements del UL en los últimos 30 años:

2008: John McCain
2000: Steve Forbes
1996: Pat Buchanan
1992: Pat Buchanan
1988: Pete du Pont
1980: Ronald Reagan
1976: Ronald Reagan
1972: John Ashbrook

David Frum se decide por Huntsman

David Frum:

I’m looking for two chief things in a candidate for 2012:

1.The temperament, judgment, deftness and largeness of spirit required in the presidential office; and

2.The creativity and intellect to respond to the global economic crisis — a crisis threatening to actually get worse if (or when) the euro implodes.

Those conditions obviously and categorically exclude the clownish Herman Cain, the daffy Ron Paul, the dim Rick Perry and the firebrand congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

A step up from those four is former U.S. senator Rick Santorum. Santorum, who is the only candidate in the race to talk about the stagnation of wages and the slowing of upward mobility in the United States. Unfortunately, Santorum — a fierce social conservative — speaks for too narrow a slice of modern America. Santorum has also never held any administrative responsibility. It’s not enough for a president to say “do this” or “do that.” Issuing the orders is the easy part. The president must ensure that “this” and “that” actually happen. If you have never had such a responsibility before, the White House is a bad place to learn — as President Obama (who also lacked any prior administrative experience) proves on a daily basis.

The Republican flavour of the month, Newt Gingrich, likewise flunks condition one. As Speaker of the House, Gingrich was notorious for his indiscipline. Where he does excel is in the use of rhetoric to divide and provoke. Take, for example, his musing last September in front of reporters: “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behaviour, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? … That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behaviour.”

(...) So that leaves us with the two governors, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Romney has the better record as an administrator. I still think that his Massachusetts health-care plan showed creative leadership on an important problem — even if he himself now declines to defend his own accomplishment.

Romney has spoken well and firmly about the need to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He has a keen understanding of the debt and financial problems of the U.S. and Europe.

Yet it’s also true that Romney has reversed so many of his positions so abruptly that voting for him is like taking a random walk. We can be sure that a Romney White House will be well-run. But what will it do? That’s anybody’s guess.

Huntsman, by contrast, has bravely challenged the Republican party’s strident, uncompromising radical style. I also like Huntsman’s willingness to re-examine the Afghanistan commitment and to focus more on the economic challenge from China. On the other hand, Huntsman’s economic platform is pure Wall Street Journal editorial page: Big tax cuts for the highest-income earners, radical cuts in retirement benefits for people now under 55. The more supple Romney has carefully avoided any such radical commitment.

The Washington, D.C., primary is set for April 3. I’ll probably cast a vote that day for Huntsman, if only to show support for a brave and independent-minded candidate — and in hope that a strong Huntsman showing will be interpreted as a call for a more modern and inclusive Republican party.

If Mitt Romney emerges as the ultimate nominee, I’ll place my hope that the Romney who enters the Oval Office will be the innovative, solutions-oriented Romney 1.0 — and not the placate-every-GOP-interest-group Romney 3.0 we’ve seen on the 2011 campaign trail.

Any other nominee would gravely test my commitment to the political party I’ve supported since I entered the United States as a college student in the fall of 1978.

Habla la gurú de las encuestas de Iowa

The Atlantic entrevista a J. Ann Selzer, que lleva un cuarto de siglo haciendo encuestas del Caucus de Iowa para el Des Moines Register.

When did you start polling the Iowa caucuses?

I came to the Des Moines Register in December of 1987. I was on their staff when it had a complete polling unit inside the newspaper. The '88 caucuses were in that February, and they had put in place a technique of trying to save some money by recontacting people from previous polls. And I said, well, let's take a look. We have fresh numbers here, we have recontacts here. We were publishing that George Bush was going to win the Republican caucuses, and I went to the editors and I said, 'I don't think that's true. I think Bob Dole is going to win.' They said, 'What?' So I showed them the data, and they said, 'What would this take to fix?' I said, 'Money.' They said, 'OK.' So I very early had a chance to prove my credibility, because Bob Dole did win the caucuses.

I understood the urge to do the recontacting, because finding likely caucus-goers is very difficult. There are not many of them. But for whatever reason that I still don't know, [the recontacts] were more inclined to be George Bush supporters. We didn't have an explanation for it, but it didn't matter -- there was distortion.

Were there other times when your data picked up things people weren't seeing?

In 2004, Kerry had just been sitting -- he was kind of like the Romney of 2004, his numbers wouldn't move. And then in our last poll we showed that surge, showed John Edwards [up], showed Howard Dean [down]. And I still keep this graph, because everybody thought Howard Dean would win. I call it the 'Howard Dean graph of doom' because he was plummeting in the final days. Edwards, if the caucus had been two or three more days out, he could have surpassed Kerry. He was the one that was on fire.

(...) Has there been a time you missed the mark?

With the caucuses, we've been very fortunate. In 2004, we had Kerry taking Iowa [in the general election] and it killed me, it just killed me. [George W. Bush won the state by less than a percentage point.] Des Moines University was my client and [current and former Iowa Gov.] Terry Branstad was president at the time, and he happened to walk by a room where I was meeting with one of his vice presidents the Thursday after the election. And he came in and he said, 'You couldn't have gotten it. You finished interviewing Friday night. The things that happened Saturday at that [Bush] rally in Sioux City, that changed the vote in the 5th District, and you couldn't have gotten it.' It took another six months for me to go, OK, I couldn't have gotten it. It still feels terrible.

Things happen at the very end. We have to stop polling at some point. We'll finish polling this time around Dec. 30, because Dec. 31 they're going to write the story for publication on the 1st. There's still two more days until the caucuses. So there's a lag time when things will still be happening -- I worry about that. I'm a big worrier, can you tell?

What happened in 2008, and what can we learn from it to apply to this year's caucuses?

In 2008, our final poll came out New Year's Eve night. Within half an hour both the Edwards campaign, but more vociferously the Hillary Clinton campaign, had memos out saying, 'Pay no attention to this poll. She's assumed this, she's assumed that, this is crazy, her turnout model is unlike anything we've ever seen before, she should be fired.'

I had Obama by 8 points. We had had Obama in the previous poll. But this poll also said that 60 percent were going to be first-time caucus attenders. That was high by historic standards. Forty percent were going to be independents -- that's high by historic precedent. And that afternoon one of the key people in the Clinton campaign called me up, a friend of mine, and said, 'I've always trusted your polls -- until now. I've knocked on 99 doors and I don't find this lurking Obama support.' And I said, well, tell me about the doors you've knocked on. 'Previous caucus attenders and registered Democrats.' Well, you're not going to find it there.

And so flash forward to now: What an interesting lesson to learn about Iowa. The caucuses will be what the candidates make of it.

[This year,] the national media and I think some of the candidates want Iowa to just replay what happened in 2008. Some of the candidates are in this race because they thought they could be the next Mike Huckabee. I think that's Rick Santorum, I think that's Michele Bachmann, I think that's Rick Perry to a certain extent. And I think they've misread Iowans in thinking that there would be that holdover wish for that kind of candidate. Really, times have changed, things have moved on. So I think you end up with candidates who aren't resonating because they're not talking about fiscal ideas to solve the economic problem. They're focusing on the social ideas they think Iowa caucus-goers would spark to. You have Romney not wanting to play here, you have Jon Huntsman saying he's not going to play here -- people who are potentially on the fiscal side who think they can't win in Iowa. And the data just say that's not true.

Huckabee won because he was really the only one -- he was the social conservative, and the rest fragmented the field, so he stood alone. Well, now you have all of these social conservatives who are fragmenting the field. Romney, Huntsman, had they decided to play, [could have had a good chance by mobilizing moderates].

What's different about the campaign this year?

What's different is -- and maybe this will change in the next month -- [in past cycles] you had this feeling of candidates here, kind of a pulse of their supporters, lots of public events. You felt things happening. I haven't felt that at all [this year]. You look at the number of candidate days here, it's really small. The way that they're campaigning is very different. We have all of these debates that have been very high-profile. It's a different campaign.

Only Rick Santorum is campaigning the way we would expect people to campaign. He's been to all 99 counties. He has increased his staff. He does all of these public events. It's not working for him, and you obviously have to have the right candidate for those techniques to work. But it's not working, and I think [that's] because people are really wishing for something else. People talk about these [last few elections] have been wave elections and I go, well, it's not that the electorate is swinging back and forth in such a partisan way. It's that they say, 'Not this,' 'not this,' and 'not this.' And that's why Herman Cain I think is so appealing. He's Mr. Not This.

In our Bloomberg poll we had an analysis of how many people had been contacted by each of the campaigns. Ron Paul was first, followed by Michele Bachmann. And the secondary analysis was to say, OK, if you've been touched by that campaign, who's your first choice? So we could kind of look and see the effectiveness of those touches. Santorum goes from 3 percent to 6 percent among people his campaign has touched, and that's double, but if you're a small number it's easy to double it.

Michele Bachmann gets a one-point lift [among voters her campaign has contacted]. It's not doing her any good. Who gets the lift is Gingrich. His campaign contact number is high 20s, low 30 percent. But he gets 32 percent first-choice votes among people his campaign has contacted. That's almost double the 17 percent he gets overall in the poll. That number is a very strong number for him. What [voters] have seen of him they liked, and what they have seen of other candidates didn't impress.

El 25% de Romney: ¿Síntoma de debilidad o de consistencia?

Businessweek:

With the Iowa caucuses just over a month away, Republican voters are still searching for a savior. The latest hope is Newt Gingrich, who now sits atop national polls. He’s be wise not to get too comfortable. At various points this year, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have each surged to the front. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, while never dazzling, has been strikingly consistent—if also consistently unloved. Both in Iowa and nationally, he’s holding steady with a bit less than 25 percent of the vote, strong enough to make him competitive but not enough to pull away or generate excitement, despite performing well in debates and avoiding missteps. His own party seems determined to nominate anybody but him.

That may sound like a grim verdict. It isn’t, really. While Romney will never be a messiah candidate like Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, chances are he won’t need to be. “I don’t look at his being stuck at 25 percent as a weakness,” says Steve Schmidt, chief strategist for John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign. “I see it as a show of strength in a very strange primary. As other candidates’ vote share falls away, I think he’ll get stronger.”

What about the staunch opposition to Romney, often cited on cable television and talk radio? It turns out that “Romney hatred” has been exaggerated. In a poll of Iowa and New Hampshire voters conducted for Bloomberg and released on Nov. 17, J. Ann Selzer, president of Des Moines-based Selzer & Co., sought to measure the intensity and causes of this supposed phenomenon. “We tried to identify why people hate Romney and discovered that they really don’t,” she says. “In fact, people think he’s smart, Presidential, and electable—but a significant minority don’t think he’s conservative enough. We found discomfort and unease, but not an ‘anybody but Romney’ sentiment.”

Selzer also found that, contrary to popular perception, Romney has attracted a substantial new following. Only 41 percent of Iowans who support him in the Bloomberg poll also backed him in 2008, meaning that a majority are newcomers. Many more rate him their second choice. This support has come despite Romney’s having mostly ignored Iowa, and appears to have convinced him to start competing in earnest. His first headquarters opened in Des Moines just before Thanksgiving. In New Hampshire he is well ahead, with more than twice the support of his nearest rival, Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Were he to carry both states, his national numbers would quickly improve.

Romney’s opponents could exploit his weaknesses—and he has many. Nearly half of Iowans and 40 percent of New Hampshirites believe he’ll say anything to get elected. The health-care law he signed as Massachusetts governor prompted 58 percent of likely caucus-goers to rule out supporting him. His Mormonism presents another obstacle. Asked directly, most voters claim it won’t influence their decision. But Selzer discovered that while Romney leads comfortably among Iowans who consider Mormonism “part of the Christian tradition,” he rated a distant fourth among those who consider it “something else.” Then there is the makeup of his constituencies, which include some of the least influential groups in the Republican base. The liberals and moderates strongly for him are vastly outnumbered by skeptical conservatives. He performs best among the elderly; but in Iowa the percentage of seniors planning to caucus next year has mysteriously fallen by half. That would benefit Paul—who is the most popular among younger voters—at Romney’s expense.

The best news for Romney is that no one has been able to turn these vulnerabilities against him. Even in the debates, the other candidates have largely gone after each other. In the unlikely event that Gingrich or someone else does take aim, Romney is still well positioned to withstand the attack. “Presidential campaigns end when they run out of money,” Schmidt says. Money—and luck—may be Romney’s greatest assets. From his policies to his poll numbers, little about him sets Republican hearts alight. But for now, 25 percent could be a good enough number, and Romney a good enough candidate, to end up with the nomination.

(...) As the Bloomberg poll makes clear, even Romney’s detractors acknowledge his competence. In fact, the only issue upon which Republicans more readily agree is whether Obama deserves a second term. Both answers are good news for Romney.

El Mejor Hombre

Un poco de cine.

'El mejor hombre' (1964) de Franklin J. Schaffner.

William Russell (Henry Fonda) y Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson) son dos candidatos que luchan por la nominación presidencial de un partido sin especificar (el demócrata) en una convención abierta.

Hay paralelismos con la vida real: el veterano y reflexivo William Russell está inspirado en Adlai Stevenson; Joe Cantwell es una especie de joven y ambicioso Richard Nixon; el ex Presidente por cuyo endorsement luchan ambos candidatos está cosntruido a imagen y semejanza de Harry Truman; y el hermano y campaign manager de Cantwell es un guiño a Bobby Kennedy, que fue campaign manager de su hermano en 1960.

Podéis descargar la película completa en español gratuitamente en este enlace, pulsando en el botón Descarga Normal.

¿Hacia una convención abierta? (II)

Jonathan Bernstein refuta la tesis de la convención abierta:

The good news is that we're finally past the "new candidate will jump in" season. The bad news is that we're now entering prime "we'll get a brokered convention" season. So as long as we keep getting these arguments, I might as well keep knocking them down. Don't worry, there won't be a deadlocked convention. Not going to happen. Really, truly.

The latest is from Howard Megdal over at Salon (via Goddard). It's based, to a large degree, on a complete misunderstanding of the latest reform to the nomination process, which claims that Republican delegates in early states will be apportioned by proportional representation. But that reform, or at least that interpretation of it, is simply a myth, as Josh Putnam has explained. Only some delegates in early states will be chosen using p.r. A lot of them will still be winner-take-all -- not by state, but by congressional district. Meglal uses Missouri as an example, but in fact only half of Missouri's delegates will be chosen by p.r.

Megdal also puts a lot of weight on the possibility that winnowing won't work this time around. Of course, that ignores the fact that the field has already been winnowed. But of the remaining candidates, only Ron Paul has a seriously dedicated base that gives him the capacity to keep going and taking a non-trivial share of the vote after the earlier states without having any chance to win. Megdal says that "The same will be true for Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry if they stay in the race — and the latter has plenty of cash still on hand." But that's just not how it works. Bachmann, of course, has already tanked in the polls; how is she going to revive after getting drubbed in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina? As for Perry, the cash on hand helps keep him viable in Iowa, but he's going to spend it all, and won't raise a cent more unless he starts showing something for it.

One more thing. Megdal supposes that a deadlocked convention would automatically turn to a blemish-free Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, or John Thune, who would exit the convention with momentum to spare and an easy path to victory. This is wrong on both counts. First of all, there are no brokers; most delegates are loyal to the candidate who they were chosen to vote for, and aren't likely to go along with the Bush or Thune plan. Chaos is a far more likely outcome.

And then, post-convention? A totally unprepared candidate chosen in a back-room deal would suddenly have to face the national press in full campaign mode. It's not impossible that could work out well, but ask Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, and others how it's worked out. Oh, if you think they were just the wrong people, look at what happened to nomination contest overnight hits such as Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann in this cycle, or a long list of others going back at least to Gary Hart in 1984 and John Anderson in 1980. About the best you can say is that it doesn't always end in complete disaster.

At any rate, it's not going to come to that. I increasingly think that the contest will be over by South Carolina, and could well be essentially decided sooner than that, but regardless of that there's just nothing at all so far in this cycle to indicate that there's a reasonable chance of a deadlocked convention.

Habla el peluquero de Romney

The New York Times:

Nobody has a more complicated and intimate relationship with Mr. Romney’s hair than the man who has styled it for more than two decades, a barrel-chested, bald Italian immigrant named Leon de Magistris.

For years, Mr. de Magistris said in an interview, he has tried to persuade Mr. Romney, 64, to loosen up his look by tousling his meticulous mane.

“I will tell him to mess it up a little bit,” said Mr. de Magistris, 69. “I said to him, ‘Let it be more natural.’ ”

The suggestion has not gone over well. “He wants a look that is very controlled,” Mr. de Magistris said. “He is a very controlled man. The hair goes with the man.”

Mr. Romney’s is a restrained, classic look: short at the neck, neat on the sides and swept back off the forehead. “It is not something stylish,” Mr. de Magistris noted. “It is clean and conservative.”

The cut is so recognizable that men in this well-heeled suburb of Boston ask for it by name. “The Mitt,” they whisper to Mr. de Magistris from the red vinyl chairs in his upscale salon, Leon & Co., a few blocks from the sprawling home where Mr. Romney raised his family.

Mr. de Magistris, who gave Mr. Romney a $70 trim three weeks ago, agreed to share some of the secrets behind his most famous client’s coiffure in between haircuts the other day.

No, he said, Mr. Romney does not color his hair. Any such artificial enhancement, Mr. de Magistris said, “is not — what do you call it? — in his DNA.”

Despite holding its shape under all but the most extreme conditions, it is gel and mousse-free. “I don’t put any product in there,” he avowed.

And there is this: Sometimes, during long spells on the campaign trail, Mr. Romney trims his own hair, much to the dismay of his stylist. “It doesn’t make me happy,” Mr. de Magistris said, “but what can I do?”

Despite his reservations about Mr. Romney’s ultraconservative look, Mr. de Magistris is extremely protective of the former Massachusetts governor.

A few weeks ago, when he tuned in to watch a Republican presidential debate, he was startled to see that somebody else had cut Mr. Romney’s hair.

“It was just O.K.,” Mr. de Magistris said. “It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great.”

He paused. “It was not as nice as it would have been if I’d done it,” he concluded.

Mr. de Magistris began cutting Mr. Romney’s hair at the suggestion of the governor’s wife, Ann, a longtime client. Before that, Mr. de Magistris said, Mrs. Romney had occasionally trimmed her husband’s hair at home, despite the family’s growing wealth from Bain Capital, the private equity business that Mr. Romney founded and ran.

Mr. Romney quickly took to Mr. de Magistris: between snips, the men bonded over their passion for politics and their large broods of sons (Mr. Romney has five; Mr. de Magistris has four).

“We talk about everything but hair,” Mr. de Magistris said.