Visual source: Newseum
Jonathan Capehart:
Herman Cain, the former front runner for the Republican presidential nomination and offender of my no-slave-imagery rule for politicians, is at it again. This time he uses it to sell his dubious “9-9-9” plan.
Cain is the only African American in the Republican presidential field and he has shown time and again that he is willing to play the race card when he thinks it benefits him most. I really wish someone of stature in the Party of Lincoln would pull the former Godfather’s Pizza chief aside and tell him to cool it. But far too many in the GOP seem more interested in pointing out racists and racial slights from the left than those in its own backyard.
Richard Cohen:
Mitt Romney runs for president with the eye of a venture capitalist. He sees the profit in certain positions, discards those that are no longer profitable and moves on. He was pro-choice when it did him some good, instituted a health insurance plan that he now denounces and once supported amnesty for some illegal immigrants. Richard III offered his kingdom for a horse. Romney offers his principles for some votes in Iowa.
As a venture capitalist, Romney created jobs and he destroyed them. It was all the same to him. Only profit mattered — the end, not the means. But a shrinking middle class is going to exacerbate ethnic and racial tensions, and America is no exception to the ugly verities of human nature. Gingrich acknowledged this, saying that America would never give 11 million people the boot. Romney, provided the chance to agree, just looked the other way, his eye as always on the bottom line. In the short term, there’s no profit in moderation.
Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake:
What those numbers suggest is that Romney’s best (only?) path to the nomination is if conservatives, who seem to have decided they won’t be with him, fracture among several candidates rather than unify behind a single one.
That reality is true on the national level but equally true in early voting states like Iowa and South Carolina where Romney seems to have a solid 15 to 25 percent but hasn’t moved much beyond that number. A Bloomberg News Iowa survey showed Romney at 18 percent — bunched with Cain, Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.[...]
The latest allegations regarding Cain, when coupled with the dead-in-the-water candidacies (at least for the moment) of one-time conservative alternatives Perry and Bachmann, make it increasingly likely that Republicans looking for a Romney alternative will view Gingrich as the only viable option.
Alex Altman:
In recent weeks Gingrich has ramped up that infrastructure, hiring more than a half-dozen in-state staffers, including Andrew Hemingway, a well-regarded young state director with Tea Party ties. But his ground game and campaign coffers are still dwarfed by that of Romney, who has a home in the state and several years of steady glad-handing under his belt. In this campaign season of spurts and swoons, organization may not carry the heft it once did — it was free media, after all, that boosted Gingrich and Herman Cain while they were bypassing early states to court voters in less traditional locales. Still, his climb to second in recent polls appears to have caught many Republicans in the state by surprise. While the Union Leader endorsement was big news, Cullen says the fact that few elected Republicans in the state had publicly backed the former House Speaker is just as telling.
Dana Milbank:
When Sen. Rob Portman finished a speech and news conference on Monday afternoon about the failure of the supercommittee on which he served, I attempted to bestow a premature label on the Ohio Republican.
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President.” [...]
Democrats involved in the supercommittee tell me they’re disappointed in Portman, claiming he talked kumbaya in public but was unbending in private negotiations. They suspect he is looking out for his own ambitions, whether that means becoming the vice presidential nominee or rising into Senate leadership.
I hope he does get chosen as the vice presidential nominee. After the amateur hour that has been the GOP nominating process, the selection of a genuine grown-up such as Portman -- a longtime House member and President George W. Bush’s trade representative and budget director – would be reassuring.
William K. Reilly:
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about a third of the nation’s waters are still unhealthy. About 117 million Americans — more than a third of the population — get some or all of their drinking water from sources now lacking protection. Given the deep antipathy to regulation on Capitol Hill — the House actually approved a measure in July to strip the E.P.A. of some of its authority to enforce the Clean Water Act — Congress has been unable or unwilling to clarify the law so that progress can continue in restoring and protecting these waters.
That has left it to the E.P.A. and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to draft new rules to make clear which waterways are protected.