Visual source: Newseum
NY Times:
Team Obama is viewing the prospect of a drawn-out Republican battle between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as an advantage to President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Strategy memo: let the Neanderthals whack each other over the head with clubs. It's Republican foreign policy in action.
WSJ (from NBC/WSJ poll):
Republican voters now heavily favor Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney as the party's nominee, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, but the poll also found deep unease with Mr. Gingrich among independents and swing voters who normally decide presidential elections.
How can anyone dislike Newtie? Everyone's got a bombastic, loud-mouthed uncle just like him, although I wouldn't want him as president. But I'd choose him over the rich guy that fires people, wouldn't you?
MSNBC:
“Romney has not caught on [with Republican voters],” says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “And Gingrich is so deeply flawed.”
“I think the Republican Party for the next four months is on the razor’s edge,” Hart adds. “Here is a year where they have a superlative opportunity to capture the White House. The question is whether they will self-destruct...
“Romney has work to do,” says McInturff, the GOP pollster. “But Newt starts in a difficult position” for the general.
I think the answer to this puzzle is fairly simple: Republican primary voters are so deeply flawed.
Maureen Dowd:
By the time he was 16, Newt Gingrich was sure of two things.
He would marry his high school geometry teacher. And he would save Western civilization.
Gingrich has moved on to younger wives. But he’s still obsessed with numbers and rescuing the planet.
Here's a number for Gingrich from the NBC/WSJ poll: 50 percent of registered voters say they would not vote for Gingrich in a general election.
WaPo:
Defending himself against charges that his own conservative credentials are suspect, Romney turned the question in Gingrich’s direction and said that it is the former House speaker who has strayed repeatedly from embracing conservative doctrine in recent years.
“He has been an extraordinarily unreliable leader in the conservative world — not 16 or 17 years ago but in the last two to three years,” Romney said. “And even during the campaign, the number of times he has moved from one spot to another has been remarkable. I think he’s shown a level of unreliability as a conservative leader today.”
I think the rich kid is having a meltdown. Well, let's see how that's working as a strategy:
Marc Thiessen:
In an effort to bring down surging front-runner Newt Gingrich, the Romney campaign has deployed a very strange choice of attack dog: former White House chief of staff John Sununu...
All of this raises a question: Has the Romney campaign lost its mind?
You can't lose what you don't have.
Eugene Robinson:
Donald Trump’s decision to call off the “debate” he was set to “moderate” means that the American political process gets to keep its last shred of dignity, at least for now.
Given the way this campaign has been developing, this should be cause for celebration throughout the land — except among the clever people who write for “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show” and late-night comedians. They must be devastated.
I know I am.
WaPo selects 40 of the best editorial cartoons of the year (see this one...).