Gotta wonder what this is all about.  Does he want to distract people from his second electoral drubbing in one week or is he taking his ball and going home?  We shall see.

Instead of the traditional election night party, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will hold a press conference after the Nevada Caucus on Saturday, raising new speculation about his future in the race.

An e-mail sent to reporters on Saturday morning set the Las Vegas press conference for 11 p.m. to midnight

Gingrich has had a rough time on the trail ahead of the Nevada Caucus, the first presidential contest in the West. Sources in or close to his campaign gave reporters incorrect information that Donald Trump would endorse Gingrich (he endorsed rival Mitt Romney). Gingrich also missed a meeting with the Silver State’s popular governor, Brian Sandoval, a Rick Perry supporter who was viewed as a possible Gingrich endorsement after Perry dropped out and endorsed the former House Speaker, according to The New York Times.

A Las Vegas Review-Journal—KLAS-TV poll released on Friday gave Romney a large 20-point lead over Gingrich heading into Saturday’s caucus.

National Journal

I couldn’t agree more with this analysis from Dick Morris:

For students of American politics, following the way the Romney campaign played Newt Gingrich in Florida is a lesson to learn and to keep. Romney’s people must have realized that Newt does best when he is positive. His bold ideas, clear vision, revolutionary insights and extraordinary perspectives resonate with voters and win him millions of supporters.

Romney, less compelling but more consistent, doesn’t need stellar debate performances or bold vision to win. The case for the former Massachusetts governor is more circumstantial: He can reach out to independents by virtue of his past apostasies on healthcare and abortion. He looks, talks and acts like a president. His record of job creation is exemplary.

But Newt needs the bold sally, the breathtaking moment of rhetorical clarity, to prevail.

So Romney’s people set out to mire Newt in negatives so he couldn’t and wouldn’t get out the positive message he needed to project to prevail. They tormented him with negative ads in Iowa. While the ads were generally accurate — the allegation about backing China’s forced-abortion policy aside — they presented only one side of the story and were stinging in their impact. Without funds, Gingrich couldn’t answer the negative ads. He fumed but watched, in impotence, as his vote share fell away.

In Spanish bullfights, the picadors torment the bull by sticking darts into his shoulders. Enraged, bleeding, frustrated and in pain, he lowers his head, snorts, paws the ground and charges straight at the matador, oblivious to the sword awaiting him behind the red cape. That’s about what Romney did to Gingrich in the January primaries.

The Hill

Mr. Morris is right.  Newt Gingrich is a higly educated, articulate man.  But he is also a man with an enormous ego and accompanying temper that he has great difficulty controlling.  As I have said in other posts, he simply does not have the temperment to go up against Barak Obama.  If he was whining about unfair treatment from Mitt Romney, he would literally self-combust against the President and his Chicago buddies.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has proven that he can not only dish it out with the best of them, but can take it as well and he can do so without losing his head.  He has shown, as Mr. Morris points out, “consistency” through out the campaign and “he looks, talks and acts like a president.”  He has also demonstrated a strong committment to traditional family values which the hard right values.  Mitt Romney’s “apostasies” are in the past.  In FL, Newt Gingrich proved that he hasn’t really changed all that much from his inconsistent, fiery, ego induced gaffe filled career and that turned voters off.

It’s come to this…

Romney’s little joke suggests that he understands that his most glaring weakness may be his lack of a poetic flaw, a useful element in a politician’s essential task of connecting with other human beings. Romney’s perfect hair and perfect family, his abstinence from petty vices (alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine), and his relentless good cheer invite easy caricature (Wedding Cake Man) and somehow further distance him from ordinary Americans. Gingrich, ever able to turn flaws into virtues, touched on this last week, when he said that his own obvious imperfections, such as his past infidelities, may actually have helped him with evangelicals in South Carolina. “It may make me more normal,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect.”

Newsweek

Just how sad a comment is this on today’s society?  Someone who not only talks about family values but actually strives to live them in his own life and has apparently successfully taught his children the same values is now abnormal and suspect behavior?  Are Newsweek and Mr. Gingrich actually serious in suggesting that a Presidential candidate needs a couple of divorces under his/her belt to be “normal?”

Not only that, but some in the press have expressed some serious concern that Mitt Romney is a – gasp! – full tithe payer.  This makes him even “weirder” apparently.  Only in the Left-wing media could obeying a commandment be viewed as suspicious behavior.  Yikes!  Can there be any doubt now that there is now and has been for many years now, a concerted effort to undermine and destroy the traditional family unit?  I was surprised enough by the author’s statement but then Mr. Gingrich’s claim that his infidelity to two previous wives made him “more normal” and more electable is a stunner to say the least.

Just to be clear here, my understanding of what the author and Mr. Gingrich are saying is: a man who has been married to his high-school sweetheart for over 30 years, has a happy family with children and grand children who love him, who doesn’t smoke, drink, swear, cheat on his taxes or wife, pays a faithful tithe as the Bible commands and is “relentlessly cheerful,” is abnormal?  Are we really that far gone as a society?  And if we are, shouldn’t we be doing something about it?  Like, say, voting for someone who takes Family Values seriously for a change?  I know the Left has certainly gone down the “bad is good/good is bad” road but are we to follow them as Newt seems to have done?  As for me and my not so perfect family, its nice to know that at least someone is doing it right and I look forward to voting for someone who doesn’t just talk the talk but walks the walk.

No, its not exactly the same thing as we are experiencing now between Newt and Mitt but, it does remind us that Ronald Reagan never took himself too seriously (unlike a certain former Speaker of the House) as evidenced by his invitation to Mr. Rickles to perform at his inaugural.  Besides, its good to lighten things up from time to time.  That and I’m a big Don Rickles fan.

I, along with other Conservatives, have been quite dismayed over the last few weeks by the tactics of some Republican candidates in their quest to achieve the nomination of their party to run against Barak Obama. I was taken aback by Newt Gingrich’s assault on Mitt Romney’s business record which came straight out of Ted Kennedy’s 1994 campaign book and, no doubt, President Obama’s 2012 book as well. But I am even more disturbed to hear that now, some Conservatives are dismissing Mr. Gingrich’s past marital infidelities saying, in essence, “character doesn’t matter, we just want to win.”

Let me make this clear, I believe Newt Gingrich is a highly educated man who has done great things for the Conservative movement and, given the choice of him or President Obama, I would reluctantly vote for the lesser of two evils, Mr. Gingrich. But to dismiss his infidelity to two previous wives as a matter of political expediency is both moral and political suicide. Either Conservatism stands for traditional morality or it doesn’t. If we now, after having hounded Bill Clinton from office for similar offences, wink and nod at Newt Gingrich’s behavior, are we not surrendering to the Left’s insistence that traditional morality has no place in our political process? What standing do we leave ourselves on other moral issues such as gay marriage or abortion?

I first realized that the Left held nothing for me when I observed Ted Kennedy’s behavior in the aftermath of Chappaquiddick. He insisted that the whole thing was a personal failure and that he should be forgiven for it. And, as a young kid, I thought “OK, he made this one mistake, maybe he should be forgiven.” But then, in the ensuing years and culminating with his performance in the Bork Hearings, I observed his total lack of forgiveness towards others (read Republicans) with far less lethal “personal failings.” I then came to the conclusion that the Left, since so many of them to this day insist that Mr. Kennedy did nothing unforgivable on that lonely island road, had decided that Mr. Kennedy’s politics and political viability were far more important to them than the mere life of another human being. Am I now to learn that Conservatives feel the same way about marital infidelity? Was all that was said about Bill Clinton just hot air?

Look, none of our candidates in this crop are perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, some more serious than others. Mitt Romney’s record has inconsistencies, I know. But so does Mr. Gingrich’s. So, the question becomes, which inconsistencies can we live with? Can we live with inconsistencies that are born of the politics of running for office in one of the bluest of blue states or can we live with those of someone whose failures are more personal in nature? To my mind, it is easier and preferable to deal with someone who can be persuaded to change a political opinion than it is to deal with someone who has demonstrated more than once that wedding vows, which are meant to be a sacred covenant between two people, are nothing but meaningless words. To accept such personal behavior undercuts all that Conservatives stand for and accepts the Left’s proposition that “character doesn’t matter.” Thus, in the primaries, I cannot support Newt Gingrich.

I have to agree with Bosman at Rightosphere.  I believe this is the best performance I have ever seen Mitt Romney give.  Wow!  It is quite long, but well worth watching.  If all those people who attended could spare an hour, so can we:)  Listen to how Mitt answers the question about running in 2012.  While still eluding that he is running, this is the closest he has come to indicating that he is indeed running.

In this piece, Mark Halperin gives a fairly accurate assessment of Romney as the “front-runner for 2012″ GOP nomination and the most prepared to go against Obama.

In a party that has often picked its presidential nominees by primogeniture, Mitt Romney is now the front-runner for 2012 and presumably will hold on to that status for the foreseeable future. “No Apology,” however, is not a classic candidate-in-­waiting book, since it lacks the standard treacly dose of intimate anecdotes meant to reveal the politician’s softer side. Instead, even the few personal stories featured in its pages are intended to illustrate Romney’s ideology and policy ­preferences.

Romney, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, writes in the introduction that “this book gives me a chance to say more than I did during my campaign” about the issues that are important to him. As a candidate, he explains, he felt limited by the rigid formats of debates and advertisements. Romney’s bigger campaign problems may well have been his failure to settle on a consistent message and his constant struggle to escape both the caricature of him as a flip-flopper and the suspicions surrounding his Mormonism. Romney deals not a whit with either his well-earned reputation for moving right on critical issues or the unique political challenges his Mormon faith represents. If he runs again, he will have to address both matters. It is striking that he chose not to do so here.

Despite his emphasis on policy, Romney offers no major new proposals, and often merely lists the pros and cons of the leading options for tackling some of the thorniest issues facing the country. But the book will be helpful to those unfamiliar with Romney’s worldview and starched style, his impressive business background and strong family bonds. “No Apology” resonates with Romney’s voice and manner, including his corny sense of humor, blunt patriotism and strait-laced formality. “I am optimistic about America’s future,” he writes, “because I’ve seen the heart of the American people.” That he neglects to put forward significant new ideas is due in part to his old-­fashioned instincts. He longs to restore many aspects of American life he remembers from childhood and believes that the solutions are already out there, just waiting for a competent conservative president to implement them.

The Romney who emerges from “No Apology” is the version some of his advisers hoped to promote in 2008: a steady, smart technocrat with a record of accomplishment in the private sector and a history of working across party lines. Taking a cue from George W. Bush’s successful 2000 strategy, Romney now plays down the divisive social matters that tripped him up before, saying that the best course on issues like abortion and gay marriage might be just “to agree to disagree.”

The book’s title is drawn in large part from the conservative complaint that the current occupant of the Oval Office, in both words and attitude, is too quick to place blame on America. Throughout the book, Romney uses rhetoric clearly intended to woo the Fox News-Rush Limbaugh wing of the party, a group at present drawn to the magnetic Sarah Palin. “It is an extraor­dinary moment we are in,” Romney writes, “when an American president is eager to note all of America’s failings, real and perceived, and reluctant to speak out in defense of American values and America’s contributions to the freedoms enjoyed around the globe.”

Romney’s primary worry is that America will become “the France of the 21st century — still a great country, but no longer the world’s leading nation.” He scores President Obama for what he casts as a failure to be sufficiently tough with China, Russia, terrorists and terrorist states, and for what he views as a host of misguided economic policies. Some of the book reads like an accessible lecture for bright college students, although Romney has a habit of repeating certain buzzwords to irksome effect. He may make no apology, but Romney’s readers might require one for this typical turn of phrase: “America is freedom, and freedom must be strong.”

But the principal theme in the book is Romney’s censure of Barack Obama, leveled in a less caustic fashion than Rove’s, but still an overarching assault. He avoids personal attacks on the president but says that one of Obama’s “presuppositions is that America is in a state of inevitable decline” and that his policies are “the most harmful to the future generations of America.” Even if Romney is not the Republican standard-bearer in 2012, he has formulated a sharp argument against the incumbent and, more than any other would-be challenger thus far, has laid down a clear road map for his party when things get rolling next year.

Read the full article here.

This is indeed an endorsement, is it not?  It is not a “campaign season” endorsement, but it is absolutely an endorsement nonetheless.  Scott Brown knows Mitt Romney’s abilities having worked close with him in Massachusetts.  It will be interesting to see how much media attention is given to this endorsement so early on.

From the Associated Press 4 hours ago:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Scott Brown says he thinks former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified to be president but right now he’s supporting former Gov. Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican nomination.

As for his own ambitions, he say “absolutely in 2012″ he’s ruling out any run for the presidency. And in an NBC interview Friday, Brown said “I’m not even going to jump” at a question about whether he would seek the presidency later on.

Brown said, “I’ve been here three months … and I’m very focused on doing my job.” Asked if he regretted bolting the Republican caucus recently to support Democrats on a jobs bill, he said, “I don’t really care. .. I’m going to be the independent person I have always been.”

I remind those who keep up with the Presidential polling, and to inform those who do not, Huckabee was leading in all the PPP polls just a few months ago….until the cop slayings occurred as a result of the clemency he granted.  Romney’s poll numbers have actually risen since, 1. He launched his book tour, and 2. Since Obamacare became too close to reality.  The latter indicates that Obamacare being passed actually helps Mitt Romney, even with Conservatives.   Why would this be?  Well, may I suggest that despite what the critics (Mitt haters) say, the MA health care plan is actually Conservative oriented?

Public Policy Polling asks 400 Republican Primary voters: If the Republican candidates for President in 2012 were Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney who would you vote for?

~Spencer Iacono

Poll Source: Public Policy Polling, April 19, 2010 (PDF Press Release)

Mitt talks about the things he believes in when it comes to health care and points out differences between MA health care and Obamacare.  Although there are some similarities, those things that are similar are things that Republicans in the house and Senate were okay with.  The differences are stark and when one really dives in to understanding them, they find that one is a socialist plan and one is a Conservative free marketing plan without a “Public Option.”

There are obvious similarities between Obamacare and what you did in Massachusetts. Do you acknowledge that what you did in Massachusetts has become a model for nation under Obama, whether you wanted it to or not?

And there you have it: the primaries may be more than two years away but he’s already in prime talking point form.

I can’t speak for what the president has done. I don’t know what he looks at… If what was done at the state level, they applied at the federal level, they made a mistake. It was not designed for the nation.

I stand for the things I believe in. I don’t know what the politics are of it.

Jonathan Gruber advised both you and Obama on health care. He told me that you are “the one person who deserves the most credit for the national plan we ended up with.” Is that a title you’re willing to accept?

[Laughs.] I think you’ve already heard my answer on that.

Do you think the Republicans in Congress made a mistake by using Obama’s desire for Republican votes as leverage to align the plan more closely with conservative views? For political reasons, he was almost desperate at first to get bipartisan support for the bill.

I think what President Obama wanted was Republicans to vote for an extremely ideologically big-government plan. And Republicans weren’t going to do that….

But he was elected president, right? Wasn’t there room within those negotiations for Republicans to push his plan to the right if they chose to play ball?

Republicans put forward several pieces of legislation to reform health care, and those were rejected by the president in favor of the Pelosi-Reid plan.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote the following: “We do know that the gap between [Obama's plan] and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.” Is it fair to say that the new national plan has conservative roots, even if you disagree with it being imposed on a national level?

Let’s see, I can’t think of a great metaphor. Maybe Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: they both have two arms and two legs, but they’re very different creatures…there’s simply an enormous difference when you have one plan that imposes massive tax hikes and another that does not. [There's] a huge difference with a plan that dramatically cuts Medicare Advantage and one that does not impose a new burden on senior citizens.

Those are real differences, but aren’t they measures designed to control costs and pay for the plan? The president’s plan has cost controls that the Massachusetts plan didn’t need–tax increases on people earning over $200,000 a year, reductions in wasteful Medicare spending. In Massachusetts, you could just repurpose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to pay for it. But that doesn’t work on the national level. So it seems a little disingenuous to call the Democrats fiscally irresponsible, then criticize the parts of the plan that are designed to make it fiscally responsible.

But you see, we go back to the initial premise. I reject the idea of a federal mandate imposed on states and individuals. If you open the door to the federal government, then it leads to all sorts of unattractive elements, such as raising taxes and cutting Medicare. If instead one said at the federal level, “We’re going to give resource flexibility to states to use money they’re already receiving as a way to help the poor buy insurance,” that says, “All right, we’re using funds that have already been allocated, we’re letting states create their own plans, and we’ll see how that works. And we’ll learn from the experience.” That’s the idea of states as the laboratories of democracy. What we’ve gotten into by opening the door to a federally imposed plan is the creation of the Mr. Hyde monster.

Obviously concerned how this might play with GOP audiences when the presidential primary season rolls around, Romney stuck to the PR script and struck a stoic pose:

Many political pundits believe that the passage of Obama’s health-care plan and the related animosity among Republicans toward what you did in Massachusetts has greatly diminished your chances of winning the Republican nomination if you run for president in 2012.

I stand for the things I believe in. I don’t know what the politics are of it.

Original article here.