Visual source: Newseum
WaPo:
Buoyed by a series of strong debate performances, Mitt Romney is suddenly attracting new support from major donors and elected officials, some of whom had resisted his previous entreaties, as people across the GOP grow more accepting of the presidential contender as the party’s standard-bearer.
“He’s viewed as an almost inevitable candidate,” said longtime strategist Ed Rollins, who until last month managed the campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), one of Romney’s opponents. “He’s the heavy favorite.”
WSJ (subscription):
Former restaurant-industry executive Herman Cain has catapulted to the lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, as GOP voters grow disenchanted with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and remain wary of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.
The not-Romney faction, which is most of the GOP, is not going to be thrilled.
First Read:
Presidential hopeful Herman Cain admitted today on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown he made a mistake when it came to predicting the economic collapse of 2008 and the housing market crash.
Don't sweat it, Herman. it's not like the housing crash was important or anything.
Martin Feldstein:
The only real solution to plummeting home values is to permanently reduce the mortgage debt hanging over America.
National Journal on how Romney helped and hurt himself:
Unlike his populist-pleasing answer on China, Romney’s divergence on bailouts isn’t likely to prove a general-election asset. During the same exchange with Goldman, Romney stumbled. Backing a Wall Street bailout works on, well, Wall Street, but the sledding is tougher elsewhere. Romney on Tuesday became entangled in a semi-endorsement of assistance for banks and a reiteration of his opposition to assistance for the auto industry. “Should they have used the funds to bail out General Motors and Chrysler? No, that was the wrong source for that funding,” Romney said. “But this approach of saying, look, we're going to have to preserve our currency and maintain America – and our financial system is essential." Democrats pounced on the dichotomy, questioning Romney’s viability in Michigan – the state where his father was governor – for opposing the Detroit bailout.
EJ Dionne:
So let’s see: The solution to large-scale abuses of the financial system, a breakdown of the private sector, extreme economic inequality and the failure of companies and individuals to invest and create jobs is — well, to give even more money and power to very wealthy people, to disable government and to trust those who got us into the mess to get us out of it.
That’s a brief summary of the news from the Republican Party this week. It’s what Republican candidates said during the Post-Bloomberg debate Tuesday night, and it’s the signal Senate Republicans sent in voting as a bloc against President Obama’s jobs bill. Don’t just do something, stand there.