John Podhoretz on Gingrich in the New York Post today. “[Republican primary voters] know him mainly from Fox News.”

From a funny story in Politico that I missed while traveling: “He’s going to blow up at some point, and I’m just hoping it comes before he gets the nomination,” said one unaligned Republican insider, who has worked with presidential campaigns before. “I’m waiting for him to say, ‘Literally, I’m the smartest guy to ever run for president,’ “

Click here to read more

Well the punditry has pretty much come down to determining that Republican choices are Gingrich or Romney. Here’s the big Kahuna of Conservative Commentary on that very subject.

In my quest to avoid voting for Romney I have pretty much picked through the remainders of announced candidates this year. In that piece I ruled out Perry and Huntsman and my criticisms are only more justified now. The best candidate for my money left early. In that piece I dismissed Bachman as unelectable and so she remains. I left Herman Cain before he claimed to be a man who, unbeknownst to his wife, paid the monthly bills of a woman he never slept with. Newt is not my guy either. Paul is obviously not for me.

But I never came back to Rick Santorum.

Click here to read more

Scottsdale, AZ–Even as he continues to fight off challenges from an ever-changing troop of “flavor of the week” candidates, Mitt Romney’s organization appears to be gaining the type of support it most needs to win primaries–the support of conservative legislators.

Here, as the American Legislative Exchange Council (where I’m a policy advisor) holds its “States and Nation Policy Summit” at a resort in the Phoenix’s super-suburb of Scottsdale, Romney’s name is on everybody’s lips. And this means a lot.

Click here to read more

American elections are always hotly contested, and 2012 already conforms to type. Yet Mitt Romney at least is opening the contest by acknowledging the realities faced by President Obama in 2009:

{Y]ou were dealt a hard hand. You came into office in the midst of an economic crisis that was not of your making. You were asked to face great challenges and to solve difficult problems. The tasks before you would have taxed the abilities of any new president.

Click here to read more

Although I’m hardly optimistic that he’ll take the presidency, there’s every reason to think that Mitt Romney is going win the Republican nomination and attract the votes of his own party members.

Thus, while I would still bet on Obama to win reelection, I disagree with David Frum‘s contention that Romney’s current level of support in his own party ought to be a topic of concern.

Click here to read more

In my column for CNN, I discuss how the Tea Party will react to the different possible outcomes of the 2012 election:

A new CNN poll finds that about half of Republicans sympathize with the tea party movement. The other half either remain aloof or (5%) even express hostility.

That second group of Republicans has received remarkably little media attention this cycle. Yet their man — Mitt Romney — has held steady in first or second place for the past three years. Meanwhile tea party Republicans have bounced from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to (now) Herman Cain, transfixing the media every time they lose faith in one messiah and search for another.

Yet sooner or later, the tea party Republicans must converge on a single choice. When they do, they will present the non-tea party Republicans with a troubling menu of possibilities.

Click here to read more

The campaign for the Republican nomination for President now gets serious. A variety of polls indicate that Texas Gov. Rick Perry currently has the lead.

Perry’s surge has drawn a range of reactions—fear from his fellow GOP contenders, scorn from the “Progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, and ambivalence from establishment Republicans. Should they all be worried?

Click here to read more

Here’s a brief biography of two candidates:

One of them presided over arguably the best business climate in the nation, so good that Forbes magazine ranked it as the best state for business and careers. As governor, he enacted free-market health care reforms, balanced the budget, and thus far is the most public advocate of the Ryan plan to reduce long-term entitlement spending.

Click here to read more

First Read offers the following view of possible chaos in the Republican presidential primary calendar:

According to Republicans monitoring this subject, there are two different timeline scenarios. The first is the RNC-sanctioned February start date: Iowa goes Feb. 6, New Hampshire Feb. 14, Nevada, Feb. 18, South Carolina Feb. 28, and Super Tuesday is March 6. The second is the more chaotic January (or even December) start date: States like Arizona and Florida — risking losing half their delegates and other penalties — set their primaries early, pushing Iowa, New Hampshire, and other states into January or earlier.

Click here to read more

In my column for CNN, I explain why Rick Perry’s record on job is both his greatest strength and weakness:

Gov. Rick Perry enters the presidential race with one big advantage and one big impediment. The advantage: his record of job creation in Texas. His impediment? His record of job creation in Texas.

Through two years of weak economic recovery, Texas has led the nation in job creation. Of all the jobs created in the United States since 2009, 38% have been created in Texas.

But if Texas has created many jobs, it has failed to create good jobs. Many of the jobs created since 2009 pay only minimum wage, and Texas, along with Mississippi, has the highest percentage of minimum wage workers in the U.S.

Click here to read more