Opponents of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) were expected to do well in their efforts to recall him. Few expected them to do this well.

Democrats seeking to recall Gov. Scott Walker filed more than a million signatures Tuesday, virtually guaranteeing a historic recall election against him later this year.

It would mark the first gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin history and only the third one in U.S. history. Organizers Tuesday also handed in 845,000 recall signatures against Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, as well as recall petitions against four GOP state senators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau.

The sheer number of signatures being filed against Walker — nearly as many as the total votes cast for the governor in November 2010 and about twice as many as those needed to trigger a recall election — ensure the election will be held, said officials with the state Democratic Party and United Wisconsin, the group that launched the Walker recall.

Keep in mind, the minimum number of signatures required was roughly 540,000. By collecting over 1 million signatures, Walker’s opponents have not only guaranteed a recall election, they’ve also demonstrated a level of organizational might that seemed almost impossible to pull off.

When Walker went after collective-bargaining rights — without campaigning on the issue — he apparently woke a sleeping giant.

There will be a review process to ensure the integrity of the signatures, but state Democratic Party officials said they already removed “an undisclosed number of signatures that were duplicates, illegible or seemingly fake.” With such an enormous buffer, no one on either side seriously doubts Dems will have more than enough.

There is, however, still plenty of work for the governor’s opponents to do. For one thing, they don’t have a candidate. For another, Walker is already raising an enormous amount of money.

Indeed, the Republican governor appears eager to nationalize the recall process. Walker said yesterday he was “too busy” to do interviews with reporters from Wisconsin, but he managed to find time to talk to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The point wasn’t subtle — the governor hopes far-right activists nationwide will rally behind him by, at a minimum, offering financial support.

The schedule for the recall election will be set once the signatures have been reviewed. It’s going to be a wild one.

When compared against his Republican rivals, Mitt Romney is extremely slick. After nearly 18 years as a politician, and more than five years as a near-constant presidential candidate, the former governor is clearly smoother and better prepared than his GOP opponents.

But that only tells us that he’s clearing a low bar.

Yesterday, Romney said making over $374,000 in speaking fees is “not very much” money. It was a dumb slip-up that his critics were only too eager to promote. It followed Romney suggesting elected office is only for the rich, clumsily talking about his fondness for being able to fire people, demanding that talk of economic justice be limited to “quiet rooms,” accusing those who care about income inequality of “envy,” daring Rick Perry to accept a $10,000 bet, joking about being “unemployed,” and arguing that those who slip into poverty are still middle class.

The point is not to recount the gaffes, so much as it’s to highlight Romney’s stylistic problem: for all of the guy’s polish as a slick candidate, Romney is still clumsy and gaffe-prone when he speaks his mind. As Jon Chait put it yesterday, the Republican frontrunner “has come to be defined, through a recurring series of off-the-cuff gaffes, as a callous, out-of-touch rich man.”

He has done the work of an opposition researcher on himself…. [T]he total self-portrait Romney has helped craft is utterly devastating: the scion of a wealthy executive, who helped create, and benefited from, revolutions in both the market economy and in public policy in the last three decades that favored the rich over the middle class, and who appears blithe about the gap between his privilege and the lot of most Americans.

As I’ve said before, Romney has been positively associated with “electability” because he is more electable than most of his rivals. But he is the one-eyed man in the land of the politically blind. Romney, by normal standards, is a terrible candidate. He is nowhere near as formidable as John McCain was four years before. The latest poll from PPP has his favorability rating at a miserable 35 percent positive, 53 percent negative. He may win - he probably will win if the economy dips back into recession - but he is a weak candidate who in many ways embodies the public’s distrust of his party.

I often wonder what the race for the Republican nomination would look like this year if Romney had just one credible opponent. I have a hunch his routine rhetorical missteps would be far more damaging.

The tech industry and free speech advocates have been desperately trying to generate interest in their fight against misguided efforts to combat online privacy. As of this morning, their efforts appear to be paying off in a big way.

At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, which enjoy Hollywood support, but which also threaten to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and in some cases, even undermine national security.

To help drive home the degree to which the industry takes this seriously, a variety of tech giants are launching a coordinated protest today, including a 24-hour shutdown of Wikipedia. If SOPA’s opponents wanted Americans’ attention, they’ve got it — this is literally front-page news everywhere today.

The next question, of course, is whether SOPA is actually going anywhere. As we discussed over the weekend, sponsors of the House and Senate bills ran into fierce and unexpected opposition, largely derailing their legislative plans. The White House didn’t issue a veto threat, per se, but the administration’s chief technology officials concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The statement added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.” The White House’s position left SOPA and PIPA, at least in their current form, effectively dead.

The news for proponents of the bills wasn’t much better on the other end of Capitol Hill. House Republican leaders signaled that SOPA probably won’t even reach the floor for a vote and would have to undergo significant changes before it proceeds.

And yet, some are forging ahead anyway.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) vowed to push forward with his controversial anti-piracy bill on Tuesday as popular websites prepared to go dark in protest. […]

Smith dismissed Wikipedia’s blackout as a “publicity stunt” and said his committee would continue the markup of SOPA in February.

Markup or no markup, if House GOP leaders don’t intend to bring the bill to the floor, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) the bill isn’t moving, Smith is just spinning his wheels. For that matter, a committee push in February only gives opponents more time to rally against it, and over the last several weeks, SOPA critics are the ones with all the momentum.

The state of play in the Senate is a little different — a PIPA vote is likely next Tuesday — but even in the upper chamber, the bill is quickly losing friends. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) announced his opposition yesterday, and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a former co-sponsor of PIPA, is also now against it.

Politico characterized the bills as being “on life support,” with passage “in serious doubt.” There’s talk of trying to improve the legislation to satisfy critics’ concerns, but Politico added that both sides are “pessimistic that there will be a palatable compromise any time soon.”

Update: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who had also supported PIPA, announced his opposition to the bill this morning.

Today’s edition of quick hits:

* The more ambitious, the better: “The Obama administration has signaled to allies that it will take a more aggressive role this year in protecting homeowners from foreclosure, a posture that fits with Obama’s populist campaign stance.”

* Taking a stand: “Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing are planning to black out their services Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act by showing users the bill’s effect on Web companies. These companies object to language in the bills, which are aimed at stopping online piracy on foreign Web sites, that grant the U.S. government the right to block entire Web sites with copyright-infringing content on them from the Internet. Wikipedia will block all of its English-language pages — the first time since the encyclopedia’s 2001 launch that it has ever restricted access to those pages as a form of protest.”

* For now, skipping a confirmation fight: “President Obama on Tuesday appointed Jeffrey Zients as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Zients replaces Jack Lew, who is leaving his post as budget director to become White House chief of staff.”

* I’m delighted to see the A.G. leading on this issue: “Attorney General Eric Holder used Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on the anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birthday Monday to emphasize the Obama administration’s dedication to protecting the American people from discriminatory voting practices.”

* Sensible financial reforms: “The largest banks must show how they would break up their assets if they were in danger of failing, under a rule approved Tuesday…. The FDIC also proposed a separate rule that would require banks with more than $10 billion in assets to conduct annual stress tests.”

* Marriage equality on the move: “The bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Washington State is notable not just for the boldness of its ambition or for the fact that it was proposed by Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat whose last memorable remarks on the issue placed her firmly in the not-yet camp. What is also striking is that some of the legislators sponsoring the measure can recall earlier debates — held years ago and sometimes only internally — in which they were certain they would oppose such a law.”

* Romney’s support for for-profit colleges warrants additional scrutiny.

* Steve M. makes the case that Rep. Allen West’s (R-Fla.) concerns about the “race card” are, at a minimum, ironic.

* Hoping to demonstrate to Bernie Goldberg that he knows the difference between Ice Cube and Ice-T, Bill O’Reilly insisted last night, “I’m a brother, man. You can’t be doing that to me.”

* And a Rick Santorum staffer actually believes that it would be wrong for a woman to serve as president because it’s against “God’s highest desire” and “his biblically expressed will.” It’s the 21st century. I just thought I’d mention.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign released a new television ad overnight, which has caused a bit of a stir in Republican circles. Here’s the 30-second spot, which will begin airing in South Carolina as early as today:

For those who can’t watch clips online, the ad, called “Easy Answer,” features the following script:

“Obama supported the Wall Street bailouts. So did Romney.

“Obama gave us radical Obamacare that was based on Romneycare.

“Obama’s a liberal on social issues. Romney once bragged he’s even more liberal than Ted Kennedy on social issues.

“Why would we ever vote for someone who is just like Obama? When we can unite around Rick Santorum — and beat Obama.”

It’s obviously a pretty straightforward spot, hitting the Republican frontrunner on some of his intra-party weaknesses. Indeed, these are the kind of points many of us expected to be important in the race of the GOP nomination all along.

And therein lies the point: where has this ad been? It’s the kind of campaign commercial I would have expected to see in heavy rotation in, say, September and October.

Instead we’re seeing it in mid-January — after Romney locked up control of the race, and built up double-digit leads in South Carolina and Florida.

There’s nothing wrong with the ad; it’s relatively honest (by Republican campaign standards) and hits Romney on some key points. But like the religious right deciding to get organized after the process has largely been decided, I really don’t know why Romney’s rivals decided to wait until it was too late.

We’ve gotten a fairly good look at the kind of policy agenda Mitt Romney will pursue if elected. It’s not terribly ambitious — certainly nothing on par with “saving the soul of America” — and it’s even less creative.

The basic pitch is straightforward: more tax cuts for the wealthy, free rein for Wall Street, and with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, taking health coverage away from millions.

But there’s more to it once we factor in the brutal cuts to public spending Romney is promising voters he’d implement. Jonathan Cohn took a closer look at one of my favorite subjects: spending caps. Cohn makes the case that they make Romney’s plan even more offensive that Paul Ryan’s budget plan.

Romney has vowed that, by 2016, he would cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product while maintaining defense spending at 4 percent of GDP. That means he would limit all non-defense spending to 16 percent of GDP.

The latest Congressional Budget Office projection suggests that GDP in 2016 will be $19.1 trillion. Sixteen percent of that is about $3.1 trillion. But, based on CBO figures, non-defense spending will be about $3.6 trillion in 2016. So to meet his goals, Romney would have to cut non-defense federal spending in 2016 by roughly $500 billion. […]

Taking half a trillion dollars out of $3.6 trillion works out to a 14 percent reduction. (To be precise, it would be 14.1 percent.) Applied equally to all non-defense spending, that would mean approximately $130 billion less for Social Security and about $90 billion less for Medicare, just in 2016 alone.

If Romney exempts Medicare and Social Security from his budget hatchet — and he might — that would mean at least 25% cuts for literally everything else outside the Pentagon budget. What would that include? You name it — law enforcement, infrastructure, medical research, environmental protections, food stamps, student loans, etc.

And as Jonathan noted, these brutal cuts would be “in addition to the automatic cuts already set to take effect in January, 2013, now that the deficit super-committee has failed to reach a consensus.”

There’s a word to describe budget plans like this: “radical.”

This isn’t a Bush-like agenda; it’s much more right-wing. And for those “banking on the re-flip,” it’s worth remembering, as Jonathan Bernstein explained in the Monthly’s new print edition, presidential candidates tend to pursue the agendas they present to voters during the campaign. If Romney wins, he’ll think he has a mandate to push these crushing cuts to public investments and the safety net.

As recently as a few days ago, the former governor was assuring voters, “I’m concerned about the poor in this country. We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can’t help themselves.” What he neglected to mention was his plan to tear that safety net to shreds.

Much of the political establishment still considers Romney one of the “moderates” of the Republican presidential field. By general temperament, that might make some degree of sense. But temperament is irrelevant when compared to platforms — and one look at Romney’s budget plan makes clear there’s nothing moderate about this guy’s agenda.

The conservative Washington Times published an interesting analysis this week, concluding that this Congress has “set a record for legislative futility by accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in history.”

It’s not surprising, then, that public is not at all pleased.

Lawmakers will return to Washington on Tuesday to begin an election-year work session with low expectations for any significant legislative action, while also receiving low approval ratings for themselves.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a new high — 84 percent of Americans — disapproving of the job Congress is doing, with almost two-thirds saying they “disapprove strongly.” Just 13 percent of Americans approve of how things are going after the 112th Congress’s first year of action, solidifying an unprecedented level of public disgust that has both sides worried about their positions less than 10 months before voters decide their fates.

Wait, there’s more.

Only 11% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling its job, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll released Monday.

That’s a new record for this measure on a CNN survey; the previous all-time low approval rating for Congress was 14%, set in August, at the very end of the debt ceiling debate which resulted in an unpopular agreement between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. The poll indicates that 86% say they disapprove of how Congress is handling its duties.

“Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much, but they both agree that Congress is doing a lousy job,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

There’s ample polling evidence to suggest that while Congress, as an institution, has never been popular, we’re currently suffering through the least popular Congress ever.

It’s certainly understandable that voters were frustrated going into the 2010 midterms, and hoped conditions would improve just as soon as they elected dozens of unhinged, right-wing Republican lawmakers. But since that time, every major pollster has seen Congress’ approval rating drop to levels unseen since the dawn of modern polling.

It’s a case of buyers’ remorse on a rather grand scale.

It’d be fairly easy for Congress to improve its reputation — it could, for example, pass some bills that enjoy broad national support — but so long as there’s a Republican majority in the House, that’s not an option.

And so the question isn’t when Congress will become more popular, but rather, how low can it go?

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you could go back to March 1, 2009, when the global economy is on the brink of collapse. The White House’s Recovery Act had just been signed into law, but the investments hadn’t even begun, and President Obama, still unpacking, did not yet have his full economic team in place.

Then imagine a Republican arguing, “Mr. President, the economy has lost 726,000 jobs on your watch, and we’re blaming you for the losses.”

Would any serious person find this fair or reasonable? Of course not. And yet, it’s the basis for the Romney campaign’s entire economic critique of the Obama administration.

As you may have heard, David Axelrod and Eric Fehrnstrom exchanged a series of angry tweets yesterday, debating recent economic trends. The Obama campaign strategist pointed to a chart that will look very familiar to readers of this blog. The Romney aide was unmoved.

“Sometimes you don’t need a picture to tell a story. The numbers speak for themselves — 1.7 million jobs lost under Obama.”

Well, for those interested in the truth, numbers don’t always speak for themselves — serious people want a sense of context in order to better understand the meaning of the numbers.

The argument between Fehrnstrom and Axelrod really comes down to one straightforward question: who deserves the blame for the job losses in the early months of 2009? It’s really as simple as that.

For Romney and his team, the clock started on Feb. 1, 2009, just 11 days after the Obama inauguration. Every job lost on Feb. 1, 2009, counts against the president, as does every subsequent job loss. Period. Full Stop.

And when you go by this measure, Obama is in the hole 1.66 million jobs (though that figure has shrunk every month for over a year).

But then there’s a less ridiculous count. Obama took office when the global financial system was on the brink of collapse, inheriting a recession that began a year before his inauguration, looking at an economy in free-fall. A fair count would say the job losses from early 2009 couldn’t possibly be blamed on Obama, since he’d just gotten there, and the crisis wasn’t his fault.

Romney and Fehrnstrom say the clock starts on Feb. 1, 2009, but if you move the start date to July 1, 2009 — arguing, in effect, that Obama’s first five months shouldn’t be counted against him since he was dealing with a crisis that was not of his making — the economy has added over 1.4 million jobs. Looking only at the private sector, it’s 1.97 million jobs.

And if we said Obama shouldn’t be blamed for 2009 at all, the economy has added 2.58 million jobs overall, and over 3 million in the private sector.

That’s not spin; it’s arithmetic. Those numbers “speak for themselves.”

So, what it’s going to be, political world? Does Obama get the blame for job losses that occurred before his policies had a chance to take effect? A fair analysis makes this obvious.

The political significance of Mitt Romney’s hidden tax returns almost certainly has to do with his tax rates. The Republican frontrunner has been reluctant to admit he pays much lower tax rates than middle-class workers, despite the vast wealth he made during his vulture-capitalist career.

It was noteworthy, then, that Romney managed to tell the truth this morning. “What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15% rate than anything,” Romney said. “My last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past.”

The politics of this are awful for the likely GOP nominee. Working families probably won’t be amused to learn Romney — the guy who got rich laying people off, and has been a professional candidate for the last six years — pays a lower tax rate than they do. They’ll be even less pleased to know Romney, if elected president, will fight to keep it this way, even when he calls for tax increases on those struggling most.

What’s more, while Romney’s candor was a change of pace this morning, as Paul Krugman and Jamison Foser explained earlier, we still need to see those tax returns.

But Romney said something else at the same event that’s worth remembering.

Mr. Romney added: “And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

In fact, in the most recent year, Mr. Romney made $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees, at an average of $41,592 per speech, according to his public financial disclosure reports.

There’s some dispute about the precise figure from Romney’s disclosure forms, but at a minimum, he earned $362,000 in speaking fees last year.

In Romney’s mind, that’s “not very much” money.

For a candidate already accused of being an out-of-touch elitist, unaware and unconcerned about the struggles of working families, this is clearly another “uh oh” moment.

As American Bridge joked, for most of us, “not very much” refers to money “found in the couch.” For Romney it means over $360,000.

This is the same guy who recently suggested elected office is only for the rich, thought nothing of dropping $10,000 on a bet during a debate, and considered a $1,500-a-year tax cut for the typical middle-class family to be a meaningless “band aid.”

Remember when Rachel Maddow compared Romney to Thurston Howell III? It was well grounded.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* In national polls, the new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Mitt Romney leading the field with 35%, with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum battling it out for second place. Rick Perry is the only candidate who isn’t in double digits.

* On a related note, Gallup also shows Romney with the national lead, enjoying 37% support. Santorum and Gingrich are tied for second with 14% each, followed by Paul at 12%.

* With just five days until the South Carolina primary, a new Monmouth University poll shows Romney with a double-digit lead in the Palmetto State, topping Gingrich, 33% to 22%.

* Florida’s primary will come soon after South Carolina’s, and Public Policy Polling shows Romney cruising there, too. PPP has Romney ahead of Gingrich, 41% to 26%.

* Democratic officials announced this morning that the final night of this year’s Democratic National Convention will feature President Obama speaking at Bank of America stadium, the 74,000-seat stadium where the NFL’s Carolina Panthers play.

* Virginia’s U.S. Senate race got a little more interesting this week, with Bob Marshall, one of the most right-wing voices in Virginia’s House of Delegates, announcing he’ll run against former Sen. George Allen in the Republican primary.

* The Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity will invest roughly $8.4 million to buy television ads, hoping to persuade the public to care about the Solyndra “controversy.”

* In Indiana, Sen. Dick Lugar (R) is going on the air this week, hoping to beat back a far-right primary challenge. State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, Lugar’s opponent, is launching TV ads of his own.

* And Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of Congress’ most ridiculous members, told local reporters last week that he’s open to running as VP on the Republican Party’s 2012 ticket, if the eventual nominee is interested.

When it comes to extending unemployment benefits, congressional Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in demanding a series of “reforms.” GOP officials are eyeing a new system that would cut eligibility, require high-school degrees, and allow drug tests. By most measures, the ideas are misguided, offensive, and in some cases, both.

But in last night’s debate, Rick Santorum went a step further, arguing that jobless Americans should be cut off from aid faster, and adding this head-scratcher:

“What we should do, is have it just like welfare. Give it to the states, put a time limit. In the case of welfare, it was 40 weeks. Give flexibility to the states to operate those programs and even in unemployment, I mean, you can have as we did on welfare, have some sort of either work requirement or job training required as a condition. We’re not doing people any favors by keeping them on unemployment insurance for a long period of time.” [emphasis added]

So, in Santorum’s mind, it makes sense to require the unemployed to be employed before receiving unemployment benefits?

If you don’t have a job, you’ll be forced to get one before you’d be eligible to receive benefits that go to those without jobs?

Mitt Romney’s private-equity firm never tried to create jobs; it simply wasn’t the point of Bain Capital’s work. The goal was to generate wealth for Romney’s investors, not create jobs. Indeed, as Romney often found, the way to maximize profit was to frequently engage in mass layoffs.

But Romney is stuck. Voters consider jobs the nation’s top issue, and Romney can’t point to his failures in Massachusetts, so he’s betting his entire campaign on one claim: he was a private-sector job-creator. If that means turning his former firm into something it’s not, so be it.

The awkwardness, and fundamental dishonesty, behind the claim leads Romney to keep changing his story. How many jobs did he “create” at Bain? It depends on when you ask him.

In October, it was “tens of thousands of jobs.”

On Jan. 3, it was “over 100,000 new jobs.”

On Jan. 11, it was back “tens of thousands jobs.”

On Jan. 13, it was down to “thousands of jobs.”

And last night, Romney started throwing around a whole new number.

“You look at places like Staples, Bright Horizons, that steel company I talked about, the Sports Authority. They alone added 120,000 jobs as of today.”

This is wildly misleading. For one thing, Romney is only counting success stories, and simply choosing to ignore all of the mass layoffs. This is a bit like a coach saying his team is undefeated, just so long as you overlook the team’s losses. Or as Paul Krugman recently put it, “By that standard, everyone who’s spent a lot of time with slot machines is a big winner, since only the pluses count.”

For another, Romney is counting jobs “as of today.” He left his vulture-capitalist firm in 1999. By Romney’s reasoning, if my local Staples hires a clerk this morning, it’s evidence of his success as a “job creator,” thanks to his work more than a decade ago.

And while we’re at it, let’s also note that some of Romney’s successes came as a result of taxpayer subsidies Romney now claims to oppose, and in some instances, Bain Capital wasn’t the only private-equity firm involved with the enterprises.

I realize the dubious claims are at the very heart of Romney’s entire campaign, but there’s simply no reason for anyone to take them seriously.

Most pundits seem to agree that Newt Gingrich was the winner of last night’s debate on Fox News, and he was certainly the only candidate on the stage to get a standing ovation from the South Carolina crowd. It’s worth highlighting what garnered all the support.

Juan Williams noted that the disgraced former House Speaker has talked quite a bit about African Americans moving away from food stamps and urging black children to work as janitors. The Fox News pundit asked whether Gingrich could see why some might find this insulting. The candidate, who recently denounced child-labor laws as “truly stupid,” dismissed the charge out of hand.

“New York City pays their janitors an absurd amount of money because of the union. You could take one janitor and hire 30-some kids to work in the school for the price of one janitor, and those 30 kids would be a lot less likely to drop out. They would actually have money in their pocket. They’d learn to show up for work. They could do light janitorial duty. They could work in the cafeteria. They could work in the front office. They could work in the library. They’d be getting money, which is a good thing if you’re poor. Only the elites despise earning money.”

I’m starting to think Gingrich’s antipathy towards child-labor laws is primarily driven by his hatred of unions.

Keep in mind, in Gingrich’s model, children would start earning outside income as early as age 9. And nothing wins over voters more than the idea of firing janitors and having 9-year-old kids scrubbing school toilets.

As for the other part of the question, Gingrich added:

“…Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct, you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.”

Even if we put aside the racial subtext, Gingrich is playing a dumb game and hoping voters won’t know the difference.

The implication is that President Obama loves food stamps and wants more Americans to rely on them to “maximize dependency.” That’s ridiculous. The number of people on food stamps did go up in recent years, but that’s because there was an economic crash shortly before Obama was inaugurated. When the economy is devastated, more American families struggle and become eligible for benefits. And since the nation wants to help these families eat, the benefits are automatic. For that matter, food stamp participation was rising before Obama took office, in part because the Bush/Cheney administration “encouraged low-income people to seek aid for which they were eligible.”

If Gingrich believes food-stamp beneficiaries — nearly half of whom are children — should have less food, he should simply make the case.

Instead, he relied on cheap rhetoric, which the audience apparently loved.

In all likelihood, we won’t have Texas Gov. Rick Perry to kick around much longer. The one-time frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination is now in last place in the five-candidate field and probably won’t be a candidate much longer.

But so long as Perry’s still in the race, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how nutty he can be.

In last night’s debate, Juan Williams asked the governor whether the federal government can have a role “scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote.” Perry responded:

“I’m saying that the state of Texas is under assault by federal government. I’m saying also that South Carolina is at war with this federal government and with this administration.”

I seem to recall a time when South Carolina really was at war with the federal government, and it didn’t go especially well. For that matter, if Perry believes the Justice Department blocking voter-suppression tactics constitutes some kind of war-like aggression, he’s even more foolish than he appears.

And as it turns out, that’s not the only war Perry perceives. He added: “[T]his administration is at war against organized religion.” (It’s really not.)

When he wasn’t reflecting on imaginary domestic wars, Perry was looking broad. Later in the debate, the Texas governor said Turkey “is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists.”

For the record, Turkey is a democracy, a key U.S. ally, and a member of NATO. The country is not run by terrorists.

When this guy drops out, it’ll be bad for comedy, but almost certainly good for democracy.

Update: A leading Turkish columnist believes Perry is an “idiot.” It’s not an unreasonable observation.