Things You Might Not Have Heard

++Rudy Guiliani and Dick Cheney believe Newt is the candidate most capable of beating President Obama. Apparently ,according to a PPP/Daily Kos poll, so do the majority of Republicans.

++ Christian Broadcasting Network has on a show explaining why Newt has such support among evangelicals. New York Times' columnist Ross Douhut pleaded with conservative Christians to think about this from an outsider's perspective. What does this do to the young and people you want to influence.

++Newt took the Traditional Marriage Pledge supported by the Iowa Christian Right. He came out against same-sex marriage, which he had campaigned against in California and actually funded ads against in Iowa. And he also pledge fidelity to his current bridge Callista.

++Bryan Fisher of the American Family Association is going nuts over the rise of Newt. The Evangelical Christian has come out for anyone but Newt or Mitt. It's nice to see him going on rampages that are not aimed at President Obama.

++Right-wing shock joke Michael Savage offered Newt $1 million if he would drop out of the race. Savage believes Newt is calamitous for conservatives, Republicans and all partiotic Americans.

++Glenn Beck has gone ape over Newt accusing him as being as progressive as President Obama and saying that the Tea Party, who is now backing Gingrich by large numbers, must be racist because the only difference between the two men is the color of their skin. This provoked Andrew Breibart, who has a grudge again Beck anyway, to say to Beck," You're a Liar and a Coward. You are Dead to Me."

++Glenn Beck is now saying he would support Ron Paul as a third party candidate against either newt or President Obama.

++Andrew Breibart was engaged in another flap when he resigned from GOProud's board, when the gay Republican group outed one of Rick Perry's campaign managers after the anti-gay Rick Perry ad.

++The Donald says that Romney's fall in the polls and Newt's rise is because Newt is going to show up to Trump's debate, while Mitt refused. I know it is strange to say but the Trump debate might be more illuminating than the others. Mike Huckabee's odd Forum turned out to be more interesting than the dozen or so debates on the various networks.

++A case in point. Few people on planet Earth know that Newt debated Jon Huntsman at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire yesterday. The audio feed to the Washington Post was miserable but the snippets people could hear were actually interesting. Jon Huntsman did not believe we should have gotten involved in Libya because there were no national interests there (I disagree) but we should be directly involved in Syria because of its relationship to Iran. Huntsman also argued that we should withdraw our troops from Afghanistan now because we have achieved all our objectives. Huntsman came prepared with debating points and was more disciplined than Newt ,who actually did huntsman a favor. Newt said that our relationship with China was the most important foreign policy issue and said that if we can manage it than this would be a beneficial cooperation. That is in sharp contrast to Romney's bellicose stance on China, which Huntsman previously had suggested had a business origin. Newt also wants regime change in Iran and said that Iran was the most serious threat to the United States. And both men laughed at Mitt's $10,000 bet, which is now Youtubed to death with ads galore.

++John Huntsman has said he is not interested in running as an independent because he is a lifelong Republican. Christie Whitman, the former Governor of New Jersey, had been trying to amount a campaign to get Huntsman to run.

++Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe fame says the Republican establishment absolutely will not, will not accept Newt as the nominee. Call Nate Silver!

++Ron Paul has doubled down on his attacks on Newt with an ad "Serial Hypocrisy", which now is being criticized for all its inaccuracies.

++The Des Moines Register says that Newt's surge is premature. They said he polled at 37% when Cain dropped out but now they are getting about 24% from their respondents.

++All of this is making President Obama seem even more presidential. Steve Kroft took a wack at Obama on 60 Minutes on not getting Congress to cooperate with him, his so-called class warfare, and the state of the economy. Obama did well and countered the various accusations. But I got a queasy feeling from the debate since Obama expressed his confidence in the American people in almost the same terms he did before the 2010 elections.

++If you want the serious Republican falacies, check out Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly for the past few days. But here we like the goofy acts of our House.

++The House pass a bill to prohibit millionaires from receiving food stamps. Now remember Newt claims that people receiving foodstamps are trading them in for vacations in Hawaii. So maybe this was aimed to prohibit this practice.

++The House proposed--I don't know whether it passed--the Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony Bill to prohibit federally funded abortions according to either race or sex. The sponsors of the bill said they were trying to prevent a China-like policy in the United States. Of course, since the Hyde Amendment there has been a blanket ban on any federal funds to abortion.

++The House also banned the EPA from measuring pollution from dust on farms, something it had no intention of doing.

++Attorney General Eric Holder fnally weighed in on the voter suppression efforts in the various states, saying that there is no evidence that voter fraud is a major problem anywhere in the United States. Actually, recent investigations by Republicans in New Mexico and Wisconsin actually showed that voter fraud was a miniscule part of 1%. In other words, it didn't even make the standard of computer error.