2012 Express

By JIM RUTENBERG, February 7, 2012, New York Times

His candidacy all but dismissed just days ago, Rick Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday, an unexpected trifecta that raised fresh questions about Mitt Romney’s ability to corral conservative support.

With his triumphs, Mr. Santorum was also suddenly presenting new competition to Newt Gingrich as the chief alternative to Mr. Romney, the front-runner. Where Mr. Gingrich has won one state, South Carolina, Mr. Santorum has now won four, including Iowa.

His performance added another twist to an unruly nominating contest that has seen Republican voters veering among candidates and refusing to coalesce behind anyone. It came after Mr. Romney scored back-to-back victories in Florida and Nevada that had led to predictions that he was finally on a straight march to the nomination. READ...

Feb.2, 2012, USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) – Presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised in 2007 he would shed any investments that conflicted with Republican positions on hot-button domestic and foreign policy issues. But Romney's family trusts kept some of those holdings and repeatedly bought new ones until 2010, when they were finally sold off for more than $3 million, according to a detailed review of Romney's financial records by the Associated Press.

Recently disclosed tax returns for three family trust funds for Romney, his wife, Ann, and their adult children show scores of trades in companies whose business operations are inconsistent with Republican Party stances that Romney favors on Iran, China, stem cell research, abortion and other issues. READ...

By MACKENZIE WEINGER, Feb.01, 2012, Politico.com

With his remark Wednesday that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” Mitt Romney is getting quite the reputation for gaffes (despite mentioning in the same breath that the poor have a safety net). POLITICO looks back at 5 other much-criticized off-the-cuff comments Romney’s made this cycle that would have been better off had he put them differently:

1. “Corporations are people, my friend.” — Aug. 11, 2011, to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair.

2. “I like being able to fire people.” – Jan. 9, 2012, while speaking about holding insurance service providers accountable.

3. “I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.” — June 16, 2011, after listening to a group of unemployed Floridians talk about their difficulties find a job. READ... 

By Thomas Sowell, January 31, 2012, RCP

The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for President of the United States -- and some are not letting the facts get in their way.

Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida, on the eve of that state's primary election, is that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" as Speaker of the House of Representatives, as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money. Mitt Romney is calling on Gingrich to release "all of the records" from the House of Representatives investigation.

But the Wall Street Journal of January 28, 2012 reported that these records -- 1,280 pages of them -- are already publicly available on-line. Although Speaker Gingrich decided not to take on the task of fighting the charge from his political enemies in 1997, the Internal Revenue Service conducted its own investigation which, two years later, exonerated Gingrich from the charges. His resignation was not due to those charges and occurred much later. READ...

By Ramesh Ponnuru, Jan 30, 2012, Bloomberg

Newt Gingrich, as is his wont, has started a controversy. President Barack Obama, Gingrich has said, is the “best food-stamp president in American history.” And: “He will always prefer a food-stamp economy to a paycheck economy.”

In one town-hall appearance in New Hampshire, Gingrich said he would be happy to address a convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to explain that “the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

The resulting furor has highlighted what Gingrich got wrong. But Gingrich isn’t wrong to be troubled by the extraordinary growth of the federal food-stamp program.

Liberals have taken Gingrich to be promoting and exploiting racist sentiments. In their view, he is insinuating to white voters that a black president is handing out money to idle blacks because he is hostile to working for a living. READ...

By Amy Woods, Jan. 27,  2012, NewsMax.com

On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh highlighted an article in The American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord that picked apart and called misleading Elliot Abrams’ article in National Review about Newt Gingrich.

The article prompted Limbaugh to conclude Abrams must have been “spoon-fed” the material about Gingrich’s after-hours speeches on the House floor in the 1980s by rival Mitt Romney’s campaign. READ...