Rex Early Sticking With Gingrich

Former Indiana GOP Chairman Rex Early is sticking by the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich despite recent losses to rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. A press release from the Gingrich campaign announces Early's role as Indiana State Chairman for Newt 2012. Newt 2012 Senior Advisor, Kevin Kellems said, "Rex Early is the tall oak of Indiana Republican politics- a man who is beloved statewide by Hoosiers from all walks of life for his sense of humor, his generosity and his career-long focus on strengthening the state and the party he loves." "Newt 2012 is very fortunate to have his active support and leadership."

Gingrich Upsets Romney In South Carolina

No sooner had the polls closed in South Carolina than the major news networks called Newt Gingrich the big winner in tonight's critical primary election where 25 delegates are at stake over Mitt Romney, who had led in polls by a wide margin only a week ago. The Palmetto State has a perfect record to date in picking the eventual winner of the Republican nomination. Gingrich captured 40% of the vote to Romney's 28%. Rick Santorum trailed with 17% and Ron Paul finished in fourth place with 13% of the vote. Interestingly, exit polling data showed Gingrich winning big among voters who described themselves as tea party members or evangelical Christians.

Take a deep breath. I don't for one minute think Gingrich will wind up the winner of the Republican nomination. After three tests, Romney, Santorum and Gingrich each have a victory, although Gingrich's win tonight was the largest to date for any of the candidates. In the all important delegate count, Romney is leading narrowly with 31 delegates, followed by Gingrich's 26 delegates, Paul's 10 delegates and Santorum's 8 delegates. The fact remains that, unlike the campaigns of Romney and Paul, Gingrich does not have a campaign organization or money to handle the heavy schedule of upcoming primaries and caucuses. The next primary is in Florida where Romney currently has a big lead, but as we've seen tonight, Romney's support is very soft and can be challenged. Paul and Santorum aren't competitive in Florida, and Paul's campaign says he may skip the state altogether and focus on upcoming caucus votes in Nevada and Minnesota where he believes his chances are better.

Romney still has to be considered the odds on favorite. He has the money and the organization the other campaigns, except Paul, are lacking, which is critical for any candidate to win a drawn out fight for the nomination. Having said that, Paul's campaign has to be very disappointed with his poor fourth place showing tonight. A Republican presidential candidate has to have appeal among southern voters in order to win a general election. His 13% share of the vote in South Carolina suggests he will have a tough road ahead of him in the remaining primaries in the South. What tonight's upset win for Gingrich does is give pause to many prominent Republican leaders about Romney's status as the presumptive nominee. If Gingrich is able to reverse Romney's lead in Florida as he did successfully in South Carolina, then you can expect Republican leaders across the country to view Romney as the nominee with trepidation.

Pundits are already talking about the possibility of a late entrant into the presidential race, but the reality is that it is too late because any candidate entering at this late date has already missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot in many of the upcoming primary elections. What party leaders may hope, instead, is that a drawn out nomination battle may result in no candidate having a majority of the delegates by the time the convention rolls around next summer. Because delegates are being awarded proportionally instead of the winner-take-all rules of past elections, losing candidates can still win delegates as long as they are earning a significant share of the vote in the states in which they are competing. The best hope a late entrant candidate could have is a convention where no candidate has enough delegates to win on the first ballot, in which case the nomination could be opened up to other candidates. It's been a long time since either party produced a nominee through a brokered convention. The Republican Party hasn't had a brokered convention since Thomas Dewey won the nomination in 1948.

Rove-Like Dirty Tricks Appear In South Carolina

In New Hampshire, it was the campaign of Ron Paul who was the victim of a dirty tricks operation to make it appear his campaign was behind a controversial video portraying Jon Huntsman as a "Manchurian candidate." In South Carolina, it is New Gingrich who is the victim of a dirty tricks operation sending fake e-mail messages to the state's Republican voters. One of the spoofed e-mails appeared to be a CNN Breaking News alert claiming that Gingrich's ex-wife had accused him of forcing her to get an abortion before the two were married. A second spoofed e-mail claimed to be from Gingrich himself confessing to supporters that he had once asked his ex-wife to get an abortion. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the details:

South Carolina's reputation as a haven for political dirty tricks reared its ugly head as a pair of e-mails were sent to Republican voters here claiming Newt Gingrich forced his ex-wife to have an abortion.

Gingrich told reporters that whomever sent the emails should be prosecuted and the state's House majority leader, Republican Kenny Bingham of Lexington, called on the state's attorney general to investigate.

The first e-mail, made to look like an official CNN breaking news alert, claimed Marianne Gingrich, the candidate's second ex-wife, alleged he "forced her to abort a pregnancy conceived during the affair that preceeded her marriage to Gingrich," according to a copy of the message obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

CNN acknowledged the email on air Friday, but said the network did not send it out.

The AJC also obtained a copy of a second fake e-mail sent to Gingrich supporters that appears to be a message from Gingrich confessing to the charge. It features Gingrich's graphics and even has an "unsubscribe" option that makes it appear real.

A Gingrich spokesman confirmed that the e-mails are fake . . .

The state has a history of these types of shenanigans. In the 2000 GOP primary, U.S. Sen. John McCain was hit by last-minute anonymous smears that helped deliver the state, and the nomination, to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

These last minute smear campaigns are straight out of the Karl Rove play book. The Jon Huntsman video helped stall Paul's surge in the New Hampshire primary where he finished a distant second behind Romney after getting within striking distance of Romney in the Granite State according to some polls taken shortly after the Iowa caucus. Polls taken in the Palmetto State in recent days have shown a surge in support for Gingrich, who is now leading Romney according to polls released the last couple of days after trailing him by double-digits as recently as a week ago. You have to look at the Romney campaign as being behind these smear efforts in both cases. Karl Rove is backing Romney, although he claims he is not working directly for his campaign so he can pretend to be an objective paid political consultant for Fox News, which has operated as an extension of the Romney campaign the past couple of months.

UPDATE: The Daily Caller has more details on the origins of the e-mails:

The email’s graphics included a message claiming that it was “paid for by Newt 2012.” The sender substituted the number “1” in “2012” with a lowercase letter L.

The email originated from the phony Internet domain “newt20l2.org,” which uses the same letter-for-number substitution. The domain was registered shortly after 11 a.m. eastern time on Friday morning, according to records available online. The owner used Domains By Proxy, a division of the Internet registrar GoDaddy that allows anonymous registration and guarantees its customers’ privacy.

The fake email was sent roughly four hours later.

Todd Kincannon, a South Carolina lawyer and former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, received the email at 3:11 p.m. Kincannon told The Daily Caller that he firmly believes the email is a concentrated effort from the campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to squelch Gingrich’s surge.

“If I were on a jury, there would be no doubt in my mind that Romney did it,” he said. “I mean, the circumstantial evidence is there. Romney’s the person who’s trying to stop Newt.”

“Ron Paul wouldn’t do it,” Kincannon told TheDC. “Paul wants Newt to win. Paul thinks he’s got a shot at a brokered convention. I don’t think the Santorum people would do it. It’s just not their style. But it is definitely the Romney people’s style.”

GOP Presidential Candidates Prove They Aren't Cut Throat Like Obama

Barack Obama once told his supporters that if your opponent brings a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. He meant it. Obama won his two elective offices in Illinois prior to running for president by default. When he ran for the state sentate, he hired a team of lawyers to challenge the petitions filed by the long-time respected incumbent, Alice Palmer, and got her, along with every other primary opponent he faced, tossed from the primary election ballot for deficiencies in their petitions. As we now know, Obama's campaign forged its way onto the Indiana ballot. But for hundreds of forged signatures, he would have never made the Indiana ballot in 2008 and could well have lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton as a consequence of that misstep.

When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, his political guru David Axelrod, former political editor for the Chicago Tribune, convinced his former employer to go to court to get the divorce records of a self-financed candidate polls showed winning the primary race. Damning, but unproven allegations by his ex-wife, contained in the documents sunk his campaign. Facing another self-financed attractive candidate in the general election, Axelrod got his newspaper buddies to unseal that opponent's divorce records containing unproven allegations made by his ex-wife, forcing him to leave the race when party leaders decided they didn't want to even make an attempt to defend the first-time candidate. Obama wound up facing a carpetbagger, loser candidate, Alan Keyes, who even the state GOP chairman refused to support.

It's quite a different story in Illinois today where the Republican presidential candidates faced tough filing requirements in order to make the ballot. Gathering enough signatures to get the candidate's name on the ballot is only half the battle. Each candidate must also field a slate of delegate candidates that run separately in each of the state's 18 congressional districts. The delegate slates in each district  must have a minimum of 600 signatures on their petitions to secure a spot on the ballot in every district statewide. Without the delegate candidates, it makes no difference how many votes a candidate receives in the popular vote. Only the winning delegates pledged to support a chosen candidate get to cast the votes that matter at the national nominating convention. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich each filed petitions to field a full slate of delegate candidates in the 18 congressional districts. Rick Santorum only managed to file petitions for delegate slates in 14 of the districts, and of the 14, only 4 contained the minimum 600 petition signatures.

So the Republican sharks managing the opposing campaigns could smell the blood in the water. Would they go in for the kill? No. Each of the campaigns reached a pact not to challenge each other's candidate petitions. Santorum's campaign released the following statement:

Leadership from the Romney campaign (Dan Rutherford), Gingrich campaign (Bruce Hansen and Nick Provenzano), Paul campaign (Chris Younce) and Santorum campaign (Al Salvi and Jon Zahm) have agreed today to withdraw all petition challenges in Illinois against one another’s statewide and delegate petitions.

What is it they say? Nice guys finish last. Obama believes it and lives it.

Gingrich's College Teaching Records Disclosed, Where Are Obama's Records?

I don't get it. No bit of information is left undisclosed when it comes to other presidential candidates. Rick Perry's grade transcripts from Texas A&M were publicly disclosed. Oodles of information about Mitt Romney has surfaced over the years from his years at Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts or while heading up the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Even the opposition research file the 2008 campaign of John McCain prepared four years ago on Romney is out there for all to read and absorb. Every unproven, uncharged accusation of marital infidelity or sexual harassment allegation against Herman Cain was thoroughly discussed in an effort to force him out of the race. Armies of reporters descended on Alaska to unearth every piece of dirt they could possibly find, mostly unproven, to ensure Sarah Palin had no future in politics. And now the Wall Street Journal shares the personnel file of Newt Gingrich from his days of teaching at West Georgia College, which provides more insight into the man than one might initially think. It's a good read I highly recommend.

You can find out just about anything you want to know about any of the major presidential candidates, past and present with one exception. Virtually no documented historical information about Barack Obama is accessible to the public. Want to see Barack Obama's college transcripts from Occidental, Columbia or Harvard? Off limits. What exactly did Obama do at his first job out of college at Business International? It's any one's guess. How about anything he wrote as either editor of the Harvard Law Review or as a constitutional law instructor at the University of Chicago? Not a single piece of writing exists bearing his name. How about a copy of his Illinois law admissions records? No way. Want to see any of his records from his service in the Illinois Senate? Sorry, they were all destroyed. I really would like to hear a presidential historian explain why it is acceptable that so much about this man who occupies the highest office in the land remains under lock and key or totally shrouded in mystery. The only thing we have are ghost-written auto-biographies that completely fabricate his biographical narrative to fit his political ambitions and aims.

Romney's Big Win In New Hampshire Pleases New World Order

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the American people will have an echo not a choice in this year's presidential race. Mitt Romney, a billionaire insider who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who has absolutely nothing in common with ordinary Americans, is poised to put the GOP presidential nomination in the bag barely before the race has started. Romney's win tonight with 38% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary mirrors the large victory the Granite State gave to prior GOP nominees, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and John McCain. Ron Paul finished second with 24% ahead of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who finished third with 17% of the vote. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum finished fourth and fifth with about 10% of the vote each. Texas Gov. Rick Perry struggled to get a mere 1% of the vote.

The next primary is South Carolina where Romney had looked weak, but the continued collapse of Gingrich's campaign has seen his large lead disappear with the rise of Rick Santorum. Still, Romney is beating both candidates in the latest polls in South Carolina. Paul is performing badly in South Carolina and has no plans to compete in the Florida primary, the largest primary state ahead on the calendar. Nobody in the field seems positioned to challenge Romney in Florida, a winner take all state that will give the victor 51 delegates. Perry's campaign is over for all practical purposes. Jon Huntsman, who like Romney is a super wealthy Mormon with little in common with the American people, learned today that he won't be on the ballot in several large states, including Arizona, Illinois and Virginia. He built his entire campaign on pulling an upset in New Hampshire, spending more time there than any other candidate, and finished no better than a distant third. Rick Santorum is proving to be a flash in the pan for good reason. He has no national organization or money to compete as a serious candidate, aside from being dead wrong on most of the issues.

As I predicted last week, there is really only one candidate, Ron Paul, who has the money and organization to go the distance against Romney. The GOP establishment, however, has been pulling out all the stops to destroy Paul at its own peril. The Huntsman "Manchurian Candidate" video created by a Karl Rove-like operative within the GOP establishment, worked as intended to stop Paul's momentum in New Hampshire dead in its tracks and to allow Huntsman to double his support over the past week from the single digits to his 17% showing, while preserving Romney's big lead. Middle Americans have no reason to turn to someone like Romney as an alternative to the failed policies of Obama. He has managed to be on all sides of an issue depending on the place and time his political ambitions took him. There is absolutely no enthusiasm at all within the party for his candidacy, and he carries more baggage than any GOP nominee in recent memory. If you had told me a few months ago the GOP was going to deliberately throw the 2012 presidential race, I would have said you were crazy. Today, I'm convinced that is exactly what is transpiring before our very eyes.

Iowa Caucus Disappoints

It looks like the only real winner in Iowa tonight is Rick Santorum, the candidate with the least money, a virtually non-existent campaign organization and a remarkably naive view of the world. He's sharing the top honors tonight with Mitt Romney with each getting about 25% of the vote. Presumably, the religious fanatics came out to support Santorum just like they did Mike Huckabee four years ago. A win or close second in Iowa does little to move Santorum's campaign forward. With no money and no campaign apparatus, he will likely fail to make the ballot or field delegate slates in some of the upcoming states. Only Romney, Paul and Perry have the money and organization it takes to run a national campaign. Even Perry failed to make the ballot in Virginia with plenty of money and a large campaign staff, and he finished a disappointing fifth tonight behind Gingrich's 13% share of the vote with only about 10% of the vote. Romney is doing no better in Iowa this year than he did four years ago when he lost to Huckabee after spending $10 million and receiving only a quarter of the vote. Paul improved his numbers substantially but finished a disappointing third place with about 22% of the vote.

The first primary in New Hampshire is just around the corner. Mitt Romney is way out front there according to the latest polls with Ron Paul in a distant second place. As happened to his campaign in Iowa, Gingrich's New Hampshire effort has collapsed even with the endorsement of the Manchester Union-Leader. Earlier polls showed Gingrich running well ahead in South Carolina and Florida, but his lead will most certainly dissipate rapidly in the coming weeks as he struggles to raise money and operate without a campaign organization. At least he has some staff. Santorum has virtually no staff to compete anywhere close to the level Huckabee competed in 2008. What this means is that the only alternative candidate that has both the money, organization and strength to go head-to-head with Romney is Ron Paul. The establishment Republican and media attacks on him have made it difficult for him to break out though.

After all of the bluster, Iowa produced only 25 delegates tonight. The New Hampshire primary produces even fewer delegates with only 16 at stake there. Thirty-one delegates are at stake in the South Carolina primary and 91 are at stake in Florida, which will be the real pivotal contests in the coming weeks. It takes 1,245 delegates to win the nomination. Reading the tea leaves, it's probably a pretty safe bet that this race will be over after Florida with Romney the overwhelming favorite to win the race. Bachman is probably out after tonight. Gingrich will be through after a dismal showing in New Hampshire. Perry will hang on until at least South Carolina in hopes of picking up Gingrich's support, but I have my doubts he can get his act together to mount a credible campaign. Santorum's fifteen minutes of fame end tonight in Iowa. Paul will stay in the race for the long haul. He'll have a chance to shine when he gets to the point of going head-to-head with Romney, but it will probably be too little too late.

UPDATE: The final vote count show Mitt Romney a winner by a mere 8 votes out of more than 122,000 votes cast. Bachmann has scheduled a press conference for later this morning where she is expected to announce she is dropping out of the race. Rick Perry has returned to Texas to reconsider whether he should move ahead. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is looking like the dog who chased a car he didn't expect to catch and then didn't know what to do with it when he got his teeth snagged in the bumper.

Des Moines Register Predictably Endorses Romney In Iowa Caucus

A Gannett-owned newspaper by definition represents the establishment so it comes as no surprise that the Des Moines Register, which gave us Dennis Ryerson at the Star, would endorse former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in next month's Iowa caucus, the first test in the 2012 GOP presidential race. "Sobriety, wisdom and judgment" are the key words the editorial staff chose in offering their endorsement to Romney. Other candidates in the field "pandered to extremes with attacks on the courts and sermons on Christian values." Romney is "very smart" because he came from a super rich family and earned a degree from Harvard. He also "offers smart and well-reasoned alternatives rather than simply to swing a wrecking ball in Washington's direction" so says the newspaper's editors. The editors dismiss Newt Gingrich as "an undisciplined partisan who would alienate, not unite." As for Ron Paul, they say his "libertarian ideology would lead to economic chaos and isolationism, neither of which this nation can afford." Really? The last four years haven't been an exercise in total economic chaos? What planet are they living on? And we really can afford the policy of playing policeman to the world and continue spending trillions of dollars fighting undeclared wars that never end? What a bunch of clueless nitwits.