“Unbelievable and Hilarious.  Newt Gingrich has actually won the South Carolina Primary.”

Words spoken by a man, the only person he is speaking it to beside himself is someone who appears to be his son, oh about eleven years of age.

Which is not to say the eleven year old son might not be interested.  Probably is.  Just that he probably doesn’t know the full story of just who Newt Gingrich is, and why it would be unbelievable and hilarious.  He might have a good idea, perhaps.

And with that, one edges an ounce a doubt on Mitt Romney’s inevitability.  Just a tad.  Comedy gold is found in the news reports — as an endorsement by Chuck Norris figures in the explanation for Newt’s big win.

Meanwhile, the other big news.  Ron Paul collapses into fourth.  Yeah, it’s a state strong in military tradition, and so Paul is best off in the West and not the South, but… it looks like he reached his peak.

Behold!  A rather tedious observation from David Brooks.

I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.
I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

Rick Santorum is ginning up for the anti-Romney slot.

“He said, ‘We don’t need a Jesus candidate. We need an economic candidate,’ ” Santorum recalled later, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. “And my answer to that was, ‘We always need a Jesus candidate, right?’ “ […]

Though there’s apparently some inevitability from the “Team Jesus” contingency.  That they’re just tossing their splot for Jesus as a fling.

The mission of this “emergency meeting” is to unite behind one true-blue religious conservative for the Republican nomination. Fischer says evangelicals are desperate to defeat President Obama. But he does not believe former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — whom they distrust on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage — can generate the passion to do that.

And yet, Land says: “Before we marry the guy next door, don’t you think we ought to have a fling with a tall dark stranger and see if he can support us in the manner to which we’d like to be accustomed? And if he can’t, we can always marry the steady beau who lives next door.”

Huh.  Yes.  I just gnabbed this from the Stephen Colbert Show.

I guess Team Jesus is now dividing themselves over Gingrich and Santorum, in their bid to fend off Romney.  And what’s left is a desperate Perry taking this tact to appeal to this voting bloc.

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry on Sunday accused the Obamaadministration of “over-the-top rhetoric” and “disdain for the military” in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. […]
Perry said the Marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges.
“Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that’s what’s occurred here,” Perry told CNN’s State of the Union.

Ugh.
Mitt Romney is, of course, going to have a double hard time with evangelical voters due to not only his Mormon religion, but his Scientology-related reading taste.

And one more thought: In 1992– when Jerry Brown playing the role of Ron Paul in 2012, I guess… Eugene McCarthy won a heaping healthy slice of the Florida primary vote, and thus ended up in a Democratic Party debate, where he… well… entertained himself by doodling and declaring a War on President Bush’s syntax, with Clinton and Brown diverting their eyes as much as they could.  We can hope Stephen Colbert does… something… in a Republican Primary.

Hm.

The New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office corrected vote totals in the New Hampshire primary and openly gay candidate Fred Karger received 485 votes to Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s 347. The original vote tally had Karger trailing Bachmann, who dropped out of the race after her last-place finish in Iowa, by three votes.

And thus the obligatory tweet from Fred Karger.

I will point out they both barely beat Barack Obama, at 283 votes.

We’re in a good deal of wrangling to get Rick Perry into the debate under their Debate rules.

If you average 7, 7 and 6, you get 6.67. And across the board, in polling methodology, you round up to get to the next digit. And so even if you were to insist – even if someone were to insist that we use CBS’s non-traditional methodology, in which case Governor Perry gets a 6, with the other two polls in which he is listed as 7, average to 6.67, yielding a 7.

MM hm.  It’s all in the rounding.

Curiously enough I’ve been seeing reports that Rick Perry was “practically beaten” by Buddy Roemer.  This is insane, as we see here.

Perry grabbed 1,735 votes in the Granite State, almost doubling the 920 votes received by Roemer, who had been perceived as the front-runner (in the Roemer household).

Roemer has been on the war-path against Perry for some time now.

“If Perry, who polls below me in New Hampshire, is invited to the debate,” read a Tweet this afternoon from @BuddyRoemer, “the blatant, systematic attempt to silence me will be set in stone.”

Y’know.  As we hurtle toward the Romney nomination —
— And I half wonder if the current onslaught about Bain isn’t so much a final dash for votes as a tacit attempt to establish Romney’s conservative credentials —
I ponder the “Next in Line” question.  Famously, the Republicans are noted for “always nominating the Next In Line”, beginning with Dewey bequeathing the title from Willkie.  Goldwater was the only bugalobo in the set up.  For 2012, the “Next In Line” would either be Romney or Palin (Huckabee didn’t count.)  But Romney is going to have to put forth a “new face” and go against the grain of the trend of vice presidential selections capping their careers off — Cheney and Biden — because Gingrich and Santorum have exhausted careers for “Next In Line” status, and Huntsman has not done well enough for the title…

… And the person who is coming in second in delegation counts is Ron Paul, who has an obvious “Bush”-like lineage to bequeath to Rand Paul… but the Paul’s aren’t taking over the Establishment’s reign.  Not second in line for even Mike Huckabee’s reasons, except moreso.
Comical though Paul’s letter may be.

“We urge Ron Paul’s opponents who have been unsuccessfully trying to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney to unite by getting out of the race and uniting behind Paul’s candidacy.”
Hm.  Well there’s this.

Glenn Beck Says ‘Solid’ Ron Paul Could Be Candidate, Just Needs To Escape ‘Crazy’ Supporters.

So he’s got that going.

Hm.

Arrow first came to public attention in 2000 after scaling a U.S. Forestry building in downtown Portland where he lived on a nine-inch ledge for 11 days. In 2008, he plead guilty to arson.

Yes.

KOIN reports the tree climber was environmental activist Tre Arrow. He was saying, “Portland, will you love and respect the trees?” When he climbed down he said the Occupy movement should include the earth in its demands.

And.

Firefighters were called at about 4:25 p.m. to the house, where a man later identified as Arrow had climbed up the tree. Once it was determined that he wasn’t suicidal or in danger, firefighters left about an hour and 15 minutes later.
“Our No. 1 priority is safety,” said Chief Dan Buckner. “Once we determined the man was not suicidal we did not want to take any action that could cause harm to him or to firefighters.”
The owner of the property gave permission for Arrow to be in the tree.

And, here’s the news as it was breaking.

Officials said they are keeping an eye on the situation in case they are needed again.

Sigh.

The great thing about the Internet — the story gets more developments.

Some of you may know that I hold the position of clerk of our Quaker meeting. It’s a two-year term, the job gets passed around, and in our egalitarian spiritual community, no one makes much of it.
But on occasion I’m reminded that, whether I like it or not, I’m the go-to guy.
Like last night when I got the phone call from Officer Gilbert of the Portland Police department.
“Mr. Seifert, I understand you are the person responsible for the Quaker meeting house here on Stark Street? Is that right?”
“Yes, I am the person responsible,” I conceded with a hint of hesitation and foreboding. “Tell me what this is about, officer,” I invited as visions of disaster bubbled up in my brain. […]

It takes about 20 minutes to get from my house to the meetinghouse. That was enough time to gather my thoughts and run scenarios through my mind.
What if we have this guy in our tree for days? What if the crowd grows and “Occupies” our backyard? What if the chanting and yelling continue disturbing the neighbors in what the media would call a “normally quiet residential neighborhood.”
When I arrived I found pretty much what I imagined. It was a vision from the evening news. Flashing police lights. Squawk box commands. Barricades.
It was also an arcade for a media carnival complete with earnest correspondents and trucks equipped to broadcast “LIVE on the scene!” “Up-to-the-minute Action News.” […]
As for the Occupy folks, I told them that our meeting had formally supported the Occupy movement and that I, in fact, was a member of Occupy’s “Faith/Spirit” Spoke (or committee) They seemed duly impressed.
They were also impressed, and probably surprised, that I told them it was fine for them to stay. Perhaps they saw the absurdity of the “Occupy” movement’s occupying part of itself.

Or, you know… occupying a tree.
And is this the right place Tre Arrow’s for the message about trees?  Considering…

“He’s a Massachusetts Moderate” …

… Actually this is a reasonably decent comment from Newt Gingrich.  He could call Mitt Romney a “Massachusetts Liberal”, and his voting base wouldn’t do a second take, but words have meaning anyway.

Down to Ron Paul.  Who’s “blowing his attempt” at Second...

If Paul blows it, I know what to blame: The odd final day of his campaign. In Iowa, Ron and Rand Paul closed out the caucus campaign with a daylong “whistle-stop” tour of cities and college towns — Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Des Moines, etc. Yesterday in New Hampshire, Paul’s schedule went like this.
– Early morning restaurant visit ruined by overwhelming media presence.
– Late morning invite-only town hall with home-schoolers, heavily infiltrated by Massachusetts tourists.
– Afternoon visit to a Timberland facility.

The “Home schoolers” town hall is key here.  We’re rounding back to his “We’re all Austrians” declaration, which … um… reminds his liberal and independent cohorts that his raision d’tre is antiquated economic theory.

But you have to understand: Ron Paul is running now to set up his son’s presidential bids.  Which will probably have the same basic irksome “throwing the libertarianism out there” flair.

Jon Huntsman “surging” into second.  What does it mean?  Supposedly he’s running for 2016, getting the field in place for a wind shift, making his mark as the “Next Guy In line”.  It’s an odd approach we’ve succumbed to — like Mitt Romney, who’s been running for this presidential nomination since 2006, over two election cycles.  The one thing Huntsman has going for him is that he’s the only candidate who hasn’t chewed the flavor out of himself — lasting past a long time in the public eye.

Rick Santorum … continues to live in Dan Savage’s world:
Of course, it’s no mystery why Santorum’s views on gay rights get so much attention; there’s an entire Wikipedia entry with the title, “Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality.” But in New Hampshire this past week, one of the more interesting developments has been the degree to which young audience members have confronted him on the subject. Several college students in Concord last Friday pressed Santorum to justify his opposition to same-sex marriage, prompting a testy exchange in which the former senator repeatedly likened it to polygamy and that ended with loud jeers from some in the crowd. Gay marriage was also the crowd’s favorite topic at a Santorum event at a private high school, while a man in Keene demanded to know why Santorum is against allowing gays to openly serve in the military.

Rick Perry against Obama:

Perry made his claim during the Sunday morning Republican presidential debate, when asked if he considered Obama opposed to the “founding ideals” of the United States.
“I make a very proud statement and a fact that we have a president that’s a socialist.” Perry said. “I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country. So I disagree with that premise that somehow or another that President Obama reflects our founding fathers.”
And click to see the classic “Socialists Outraged” remarks.  Interestingly, Newt Gingrich — who pegs Romney as a “Moderate” as opposed to Santorum who charged him as “Massachusetts Liberal” — wrote that book on the End of America due to Obama’s Secular Socialist Conspiracy, so he has a mixed record in parsing words and labels.
Rick Perry on Mitt Romney:
“Now I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips – whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out, because [of] his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed,”
That’s his capitalist prerogative, isn’t it?  Right wing populist talk is always a little strange.

Fred Karger really burns Rick Perry here.
Buddy Roemer slams everyone and everything.

We’re in the weird racist cross-winds section of the Republican nomination fight, and they are… just weird.  In the past, candidates are accused of throwing out coded appeals.  There’s not a whole lot of veneer of subtext with these ones.:

Rick Santorum.

A few days ago, GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum put his foot in his mouth by saying “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
Santorum allegedly made the controversial comments when discussing welfare in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, but he maintained that people misheard the word “black” when he stumbled on a word.
“I looked at that, and I didn’t say that. If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of – blah – came out. And people said I said ‘black.’ I didn’t,” Santorum said while smiling away.

See?  Santorum really meant “Blah” people.  See too The Simpsons.

Newt Gingrich.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said today he is willing to go before the NAACP and urge blacks to demand paychecks, not food stamps.
Gingrich told a town hall meeting at a senior center in Plymouth, N.H., that if the NAACP invites him to its annual convention this year, he’d go there and talk about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

This is Newt Gingrich more or less doing the same thing he did to a gay voter a while back — tell him he shouldn’t vote for him.

The big storyline with the Republican nominating fight shows us a vengeful Newt Gingrich.  When he was enjoying his slot as the top Non Romney, Rush Limbaugh charged a “coordinated” anti-Gingrich blitz by the GOP Establishment.  “Frankly”, pretty well correct was Limbaugh.  It is something along the lines of the 2004 Democratic nominations unveiling of an ad blitz from “Americans for Jobs, Health Care, and Progressive Values”, a front of anti-Dean ads put together by a 527 financed by major Clinton donors.  Gingrich is currently on the war-path against Romney.  I don’t know Gingrich’s end-game: he don’t think he gonna win, do he?  But it is tough for me not to admire Gingrich for some Bitter Feeling Integrity — even if he is railing against a system that he supported.
… and probably is over-stating how much of his collapse came out of Romney’s 527s.

The Republican “Establishment”, by the way, apparently includes your Christine O’Donnell, roped in for an endorsement last month.  
Might have been a better speaker than John McCain.

In other campaign news, Ron Paul fans deploy “Manchurian Candidate” label on Huntsman.