Quotes of the day

“It is striking to me that in 2012 there is broad based popular angst against Wall Street and Washington and the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a multi-millionaire scion of the Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party whose closest encounters with the common man are accidentally touching one of the many hired hands in one of the many rooms of one of his many mansions. But then many of the DC-NYC Republican ‘conservatives’ who support Romney are the same, only coming into contact with regular people when they are served their breakfast by a steward in the first class car on the Acela Express.

“Neither Romney nor the Washington GOP crowd who loves him have very much at all in common with fly over country conservatives who see the GOP and Democrats both as out to lunch tools of K-Street and Wall Street. The party that could lead a conservative, populist campaign against Wall Street and Barack Obama, the former getting fat off the latter, will instead nominate a guy more at home on Wall Street than Main Street.

“And enough conservatives will be cheerleaders and rally around him that by November of 2012 the ideological underpinnings of the modern American conservative movement will be coming apart.

“I’m starting to think I need to walk it back on my rejection of Jon Huntsman. Because I’m starting to think even he would be more faithful in his conservative convictions than Mitt Romney.”

“Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls—from near zero to the third slot in several polls—should come as no surprise to people who have been watching the Republican debates, now drawing television viewers as never before. The former speaker has stood out at these forums, the debater whose audiences seem to hang on his words and on a flow of thought rich in substance, a world apart from the usual that the political season brings.

“‘Substance’ is too cold a word, perhaps, for the intense feeling that candidate Gingrich delivers so coolly in debates. Too cold too, no doubt, to describe the reactions of his listeners, visible on the faces of the crowds attending these forums—in their expressions, caught on C-SPAN’s cameras, in the speed with which their desultory politeness disappears once a Gingrich talk begins. Their disengagement—the tendency to look around the room, chat with their neighbors—vanishes. The room is on high alert…

“Whoever his competitors are in Iowa and beyond, Mr. Gingrich faces a hard fight for the nomination. His greatest asset lies in his capacity to speak to Americans as he has done, with such potency, during the Republican debates. No candidate in the field comes close to his talent for connection. There’s no underestimating the importance of such a power in the presidential election ahead, or any other one.

“His rise in the polls suggests that more and more Republicans are absorbing that fact, along with the possibility that Mr. Gingrich’s qualifications all ’round could well make him the most formidable contender for the contest with Barack Obama.”

“Gingrich often says he is running an unconventional campaign. Republicans here in Iowa would probably agree, since they don’t see him all that much at traditional stump events. But most have no idea just how unconventional the Gingrich campaign really is.

“On this day, Gingrich’s plan is to integrate his longtime interest in health issues, and in particular brain research, into his appeal to voters. In an interview after the session, Gingrich says he wants to reach ‘everybody who’s worried about Alzheimer’s — and over 55 years of age, it is a more common fear than cancer.’ Here in Iowa, the organization Iowa Against Alzheimer’s estimates there are 69,000 people over the age of 65 with the disease. Take their spouses and children and relatives and friends, and add other people so far unaffected by the disease but worried about it — take all of them, and you’ve got a very large group. They vote, and Gingrich wants to reach them…

“Whatever Gingrich is doing these days, it’s working. Thanks in part to impressive performances in several GOP debates, he is moving up in the polls, both nationally and in key early states. He’s raising money again after a meltdown — a massive staff defection and damaging stories about big-spending habits at Tiffany — that nearly killed his campaign a few months ago. And voters appear to appreciate his sticking with it. In discussions across Iowa in the last week, it is striking how many voters volunteer Gingrich’s name as someone they’re finding more and more appealing. If either of the current frontrunners, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney, were to falter, Gingrich is in a position to benefit greatly.

“And he’s doing it his own way. What other candidate would take a large part of a critical day to talk science when the campaign trail beckons, with local officials to meet and hands to shake? ‘We’ll see if it works,’ Gingrich says with a laugh. ‘It’s a great experiment.’”

Click the image to watch.

Via the Daily Caller.

“Yes RT @pahana2 @Bret_Baier Is it true that Gov. Romney has declined the invite to Center Seat?”

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