Right Pundits

Some of you thought I was joking a while back when I wrote about the Newt Gingrich Great American Zoo Tour of 2012. On Friday, while visiting the zoo in St. Louis, Missouri, Newt Gingrich was bitten by a penguin! Don′t worry, both Newt and the penguin are doing just fine. Well, the penguin is, that′s for sure! Newt, on the other hand, admitted this weekend that he is now the underdog, though not necessarily because penguins are biting him. The state of the Gingrich presidential campaign is a sad one, with money woes so deep that Newt is now selling his donor lists to anybody with $26,000. Most of the national polls have him well behind Mitt Romney, with at best just 12% of support from Republican voters.

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The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting that Rick Santorum’s polling in his home state of Pennsylvania has slipped to just a two-point lead.

With four weeks to go before the Penn. Primary, Santorum is nearly tied with Mitt Romney and his numbers are “slipping rapidly” the paper reports.

The poll of 505 registered Republican voters, conducted March 20-25 in conjunction with the Tribune-Review and other media outlets, shows Santorum clinging to a small lead over Romney, 30 percent to 28 percent, within the poll’s 4.2 percent margin of error.

Previous polls showed Santorum leading Romney with a 15-point advantage.
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I suppose it is only fitting that I, the #1 supporter of Newt Gingrich on this blog, write the epitaph for his presidential campaign. Yes, the fat lady has sung her song. No, Newt′s not getting out just yet. He still intends to soldier on until the National Republican Convention in Tampa this August. But the Gingrich campaign has turned from a presidential race to the 2012 Great American Zoo Tour. Yesterday it was reported that the ′print media′ has pulled all of their reporters from both the Gingrich and Ron Paul campaigns. Today we learn that the lack of money has forced Newt Gingrich to charge $50 for those who want a photo taken with him.

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With a Romney win in Obama’s backyard and with his lead in the delegate count mounting, the media drumbeat that “Mr. Inevitability” is back. At least as far as NBC is concerned, the state of Chicago… uh, I mean Illinois… shows that Republicans are starting to come to his side in this primary.

Certainly if Rick Santorum loses Pennsylvania about a month from now, there is no hope for him. But, there are some other primaries in between that will hurt Team Rick just as bad should he lose them. But even if he does win, many cannot see him getting enough delegates to pass Romney.
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Newt Gingrich was in Illinois on a campaign swing for the state’s upcoming March 20 primary when the president called Republicans members of the “Flat Earth Society” for opposing his wild-eyed, outlandish ideas on wind, solar and “algae” power. I was at a small early afternoon event of perhaps as many as 25 people when Newt directly addressed the president’s taunts.

Earlier that morning Obama made his comments at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland. He even went so far as to attack “one of my predecessors,” Rutherford B. Hayes who Obama quotes as saying that telephones are great but “who would want to use them”? “This is why he isn’t on Mount Rushmore,” Obama quipped. But Hayes was hardly a Luddite in the White House. For instance, on May 10th 1877 Hayes was the first president to install a telephone in the White House, so who knows what Obama is rambling about?

For his part, Newt is ridiculing Obama’s failures on energy.
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Barack Obama may not be happy as he starts a 5-fund raiser swing on news of higher gas and consumer prices. The Labor Department offered some good news yesterday that new unemployment filings fell 14,000 last week, but the Federal Reserve today issued the new Core CPI Rate. The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% in February, the highest, one-month jump since April, 2011, mainly due to higher gas prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In a speech yesterday in Maryland, Obama weighed on once again on how much he is doing in regards to oil and gasoline prices. But while he talks about wind, solar and algae, the price at the pump continues to increase.

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Well, looks like Newt Gingrich’s failure to take at least one southern state in his “southern strategy” was one loss too many for Newt’s big money guy, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. News is Adelson has written his last check to the Newtster.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post notes that on MSNBC last night, New York Times writer John Harwood said that Adelson was finished donating to Team Newt and when double checking with the leader of the Newt-supporting super PAC, Rick Tyler agreed that fundraising was going to be difficult going forward.

So, with Newt so far back in the pack, why is he still going at this point? It seems obvious that he wants to keep Romney under the delegate threshold and force a brokered convention.
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Rick Santorum was the big winner last night, winning both the 2012 Alabama and Mississippi primaries. The election results showed a close fought battle in both Dixie states. In Alabama, Santorum won with 34.5%, with Newt Gingrich in second with 29.3%, Mitt Romney in a close third with 29% and Ron Paul last with 5%. The Mississippi primary results had Santorum winning with 32.9%, Gingrich in 2nd with 31.3%, Romney again in 3rd with 30.3% and Paul still in last place with just 4.4% of the vote. Romney had a better time in Hawaii where he easily won with 45.4%, Santorum in second with 25.3%, Paul in 3rd with 18.3% and Gingrich with just 11%. The percentages for the caucus in American Samoa have yet to be reported, but Romney is expected to win there as well, given only 70 Republicans actually caucused. Have to wonder why Samoa gets 9 convention delegates with just 70 Republicans who cannot even vote in the November election?

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