I recently had the chance to meet some voters and share my vision for a new America. Thanks to the people of the sinful, gang-ridden, lefty-liberal, modern-day Gomorrah of Los Angeles!
Uploaded by ScottCarhoun on Dec 7, 2011
Puppet Politics piece from CNN starring Marvin E. Quasniki. 0:40-1:00 is absolutely hilarious! Also, notice that the puppet refers to the candidates as "clowns" except for Ron Paul!!! Pretty sure it is for obvious reasons (he is the only candidate that makes sense).
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) will resign from Congress this week, she announced in a video message posted Sunday.
Giffords,
the victim of a gunshot wound to the head in an attack a year ago in
her Arizona district, cited her continued work toward recovery as a
reason for stepping down from her seat.
"I have more work to do
on my recovery so to do what is best for Arizona I will step down this
week," she said in a video message posted to YouTube. "I will return and
we will work together for Arizona and this great country."
Giffords has enjoyed a remarkable recovery since being shot in a Jan. 8, 2011 incident that left six dead.
Prior
to that shooting, she had been considering a rising Democratic star,
and had been considering a bid for Senate this fall. During the course
of her recovery, she has been absent from Capitol Hill except for a
surprise return to vote in August on an agreement to raise the nation's
debt ceiling.
My fellow Americans! My bid to be the next president of the United States is underway. God bless America and God bless YouTube and Nerdist for allowing you folks to watch my official campaign announcement.
WASHINGTON
-- The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest
since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend
in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological
record have occurred since the year 2000.
NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global
surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis
that shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average
global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how
Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades
ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F
(0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.
"We know
the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting," said GISS
director James E. Hansen. "So we are continuing to see a trend toward
higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina
influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was
one of the 10 warmest years on record."
The difference between
2011 and the warmest year in the GISS record (2010) is 0.22 degrees F
(0.12 C). This underscores the emphasis scientists put on the long-term
trend of global temperature rise. Because of the large natural
variability of climate, scientists do not expect temperatures to rise
consistently year after year. However, they do expect a continuing
temperature rise over decades.
The first 11 years of the 21st
century experienced notably higher temperatures compared to the middle
and late 20th century, Hansen said. The only year from the 20th century
in the top 10 warmest years on record is 1998.
Higher
temperatures today are largely sustained by increased atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. These
gases absorb infrared radiation emitted by Earth and release that energy
into the atmosphere rather than allowing it to escape to space. As
their atmospheric concentration has increased, the amount of energy
"trapped" by these gases has led to higher temperatures.
The
carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million
in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins. By 1960, the
average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million. Today it
exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating
pace.
The temperature analysis produced at GISS is compiled from
weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the
world, satellite observations of sea surface temperature and Antarctic
research station measurements. A publicly available computer program is
used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given
month and the average temperature for the same place during 1951 to
1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis.
The resulting temperature record is very close to analyses by the Met
Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville,
N.C.
Hansen said he expects record-breaking global average
temperature in the next two to three years because solar activity is on
the upswing and the next El Nino will increase tropical Pacific
temperatures. The warmest years on record were 2005 and 2010, in a
virtual tie.
"It's always dangerous to make predictions about El
Nino, but it's safe to say we'll see one in the next three years,"
Hansen said. "It won't take a very strong El Nino to push temperatures
above 2010."
For more information on the GISS temperature analysis, visit:
Temperature Data: 1880-2011
Global temperatures have warmed significantly since 1880, the beginning of what scientists call the "modern record." At this time, the coverage provided by weather stations allowed for essentially global temperature data. As greenhouse gas emissions from energy production, industry and vehicles have increased, temperatures have climbed, most notably since the late 1970s. In this animation of temperature data from 1880-2011, reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline ..
Legenday Penn State coach, 85, leads all in college wins
Jamie Squire / Getty Images
Penn State coach Joe Paterno celebrates his 324th career win after defeating Ohio State on Oct. 27, 2001.
updated 10:18 a.m. ET Jan. 22, 2012
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Former Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who was battling lung cancer, died Sunday, his family said. He was 85.
The
winningest major college football coach of all time, Paterno was
diagnosed shortly after Penn State's Board of Trustees ousted him Nov. 9
in the aftermath of the child sex abuse charges against former
assistant Jerry Sandusky. Paterno was getting treatment since, and his
health problems were worsened when he broke his pelvis - an injury that
first cropped up when he was accidentally hit in preseason practice last
year.
The final days of Paterno's Penn
State career were easily the toughest in his 61 years with the
university and 46 seasons as head football coach.
Sandusky,
a longtime defensive coordinator who was on Paterno's staff in two
national title seasons, was arrested Nov. 5 and ultimately charged with
sexually abusing a total of 10 boys over 15 years. His arrest sparked
outrage not just locally but across the nation and there were widespread
calls for Paterno to quit.
Paterno
announced late on Nov. 9 that he would retire at the end of the season
but just hours later he received a call from board vice chairman John
Surma, telling him he had been terminated as coach. By that point, a
crowd of students and media were outside the Paterno home. When news
spread that Paterno had been dumped, there was rioting in State College.
Trustees said this week they pushed
Paterno out in part because he failed a moral responsibility to report
an allegation made in 2002 against Sandusky to authorities outside the
university. They also felt he had challenged their authority and that,
as a practical matter, with all the media in town and attention to the
Sandusky case, he could no longer run the team.
Paterno
testified before the grand jury investigating Sandusky that he had
relayed to his bosses an accusation that came from graduate assistant
Mike McQueary, who said he saw Sandusky abusing a boy in the showers of
the Penn State football building.
Paterno
told the Post that he didn't know how to handle the charge, but a day
after McQueary visited him, Paterno spoke to the athletic director and
the administrator with oversight over the campus police.
Wick
Sollers, Paterno's lawyer, called the board's comments this week
self-serving and unsupported by the facts. Paterno fully reported what
he knew to the people responsible for campus investigations, Sollers
said.
"He did what he thought was right with the information he had at the time," Sollers said.
Sandusky says he is innocent and is out on bail, awaiting trial.
The
back and forth between Paterno's representative and the board reflects a
trend in recent weeks, during which Penn State alumni - and especially
former players, including Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris - have
questioned the trustees' actions and accused them of failing to give
Paterno a chance to defend himself.
Three
town halls, in Pittsburgh, suburban Philadelphia and New York City,
seemed to do little to calm the situation and dozens of candidates have
now expressed interest in running for the board, a volunteer position
that typically attracts much less interest.
While
everyone involved has said the focus should be on Sandusky's accusers
and their ordeals, the abuse scandal for Paterno put a sour ending on a
sterling career. Paterno won 409 games and took the Nittany Lions to 37
bowl games and those two national championships. More than 250 of the
players he coached went on to the NFL.
With
his thick glasses, rolled up khakis and white socks, Paterno was
synonymous with Penn State and was seen in many ways as the archetypal
football coach.
Penn State coach's storied life will forever be stained by Sandusky affair
File / AP
Penn
State coach Joe Paterno is carried off the field following the Nittany
Lions' 27-23 defeat of Georgia in the 1983 Sugar Bowl, to claim the
National Championship.
OPINION
NBCSports.com contributor
updated 10:30 a.m. ET Jan. 22, 2012
Michael Ventre
You
could see Joe Paterno’s entire career in the sad eyes of Jay Paterno,
his son and one of his assistant coaches at Penn State. When the Jerry
Sandusky matter first blew up, Jay Paterno faced interviewers not with
defiance, but rather melancholy resignation. He knew what had been, he
saw what was coming and he seemed to experience the slow onset of grief
in front of the public over his father’s fate and legacy.
Here
was one of the great names in sports, whose black-rimmed glasses were
as iconic as Bear Bryant’s houndstooth hat. Joe Paterno. He was the rare
institution who was bigger than the institution that made him. He
looked and dressed like somebody from a 1950s job interview, but he
managed to remain relevant in an increasingly capitalistic sport up to
the end.
Those who might suggest in the most
strident terms that it is unfair to put so much emphasis on Joe
Paterno’s connection to the Sandusky abomination when that was actually a
tiny speck in a long and storied career probably acknowledge that it
has to be done. He happened to be at the wheel when the program ran into
a ditch. Even he admitted later to the Washington Post that “I didn’t
know exactly how to handle it” and “I backed away” and turned it all
over to others.
But the problem was that
nobody was more powerful in State College, Pa., than Joe Paterno, who
passed away at the age of 85. So when it came time for the most powerful
man on campus to exercise that influence, he inexplicably delegated. It
was no time for a hand-off, and as a result a proud career ended in
controversy and exile.
As Joe Paterno would
find out as an octogenarian, life is a cruel practitioner of irony.
Sandusky is alleged to have ruined young lives by taking selfishness to a
monstrous level. Until this all broke, Paterno’s reputation was
associated with the molding of young men. His ex-players maintained an
almost fanatical reverence for him.
It
was so probably for a lot of reasons, but most of all because of his
devotion to them. College football has become a bastion of climbers.
Coaches are now major celebrities commanding unseemly sums, thanks to a
rushing river of television money that shows no signs of slowing. Many
of the more ambitious leap from job to job, from college town to college
town, padding their resumes as they seek more glory and a fatter
portfolio.
Paterno was never like that. He drew
a modest salary by the standard of major college football coaches. He
lived in a house with his family that, if it were for sale, an ordinary
person might be able to afford. He emphasized fundamentals, and had
little tolerance for the pandering that became necessary in order to
lure increasingly narcissistic recruits.
The
downside — pre-Sandusky scandal — was marked by his inability to let
go. In 2000, his Nittany Lions went 5-7. That was his first losing
season since 1988. It would have been considered acceptable except that
three of the next four were also below-.500 seasons. Grumbling turned
into heckling, and many in the Penn State community figured it was time
for the gold watch engraved with the word “emeritus.”
But
Paterno hung on, even though he became increasingly fragile with age.
The perception was that he turned over so much day-to-day coaching
responsibilities to assistants that his title of head coach was largely
ceremonial. And that crown would lie uneasy as rivals told recruits that
Paterno was headed to assisted living.
Paterno
hung in. After all, that’s what they tell football players to do,
right? Fight through adversity? Ignore pain? Discount the critics? It’s
part of the culture. For Paterno, determination was there every day. It
was on the chalkboard in his office. It was on the plate with his pasta.
It was in his DNA.
Each of his last seven were winning seasons.
There
was plenty of fodder for his detractors, as well. He had been accused
of ignoring a raft of run-ins with the law by his players over the
years, and in some cases by allegedly insisting to other school
administrators that the disciplining of his players came under his
purview, and his alone. He not-so-politely told them to butt out.
In
2006, the National Organization for Women demanded his resignation
after he made a flippant comment about a sexual abuse case involving a
Florida State player. In 2002, Penn State cornerback Anwar Phillips was
accused of sexual assault and the university suspended him for two
semesters. But before the suspension began, Paterno suited up Phillips
to play in the Capital One Bowl against Auburn.
Paterno
suffered from the disease of imperiousness. Among curmudgeons in
coaching, he achieved platinum level. He would snap at a reporter who
asked a question he didn’t feel like answering, or worse yet, a question
he didn’t think a reporter even had a right to ask.
Today’s breed of college football coach is smoother, slicker and savvier, a direct genetic link to carefully branded political candidates. Paterno was not that. He was brusque, impatient and difficult. He was insulated and suspicious, as most people with great power eventually become.
In
the end, when ugliness enshrouded Penn State, all of that worked
against him. He was the wrong personality at the wrong moment. The
entire horrible mess sideswiped him, left him dizzy and confused, then
came back and hit him head on.
Men who have
achieved greatness — and Paterno certainly is one of them — are often
remembered fondly, even if they left a stench. That’s just the way
success usually goes in America — the achievements stand out, the warts
vanish.
With Paterno, it won’t be that way.
There will be images of him on the sidelines, with white shirt and black
tie, barking orders. There will be clips of him accepting hugs from his
players after his two national titles. There will be memories of a
raucous rally the night he was fired, with irate students pledging
undying support.
But there will also be the crestfallen face of Jay Paterno, which says it all.
Republican presidential candidates former Senator Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul participate in a Republican presidential candidates debate in Charleston, South Carolina, January 19, 2012.
By The Associated Press
Mitt Romney perpetuated one unsubstantiated claim, about his record at Bain Capital, and more or less corrected himself on another, about President Barack Obama's health care law, in the latest Republican presidential debate. Vote: Should a candidate's private life be open for scrutiny?
His rivals flubbed history, Newt Gingrich blaming a Democratic president for a jobless rate he never had, and Ron Paul painting an idyllic picture of life before Medicare that did not reflect deprivations of that time.
A look at some of the claims in the debate Thursday night and how they compare with the facts:
ROMNEY: "We started a number of businesses; four in particular created 120,000 jobs, as of today. We started them years ago. They've grown — grown well beyond the time I was there to 120,000 people that have been employed by those enterprises. ... Those that have been documented to have lost jobs, lost about 10,000 jobs. So (120,000 less 10,000) means that we created something over 100,000 jobs."
THE FACTS: Romney now has acknowledged the negative side of the ledger from his years with Bain Capital, but hardly laid out the full story. His claim to have created more than 100,000 jobs in the private sector as a venture capitalist remains unsupported.
Romney mentioned four successful investments in companies that now employ some 120,000 people, having grown since he was involved in them a decade or ago or longer. From that, he subtracted the number of jobs that he said are known to have been lost at certain other companies.
What's missing is anything close to a complete list of winners and losers — and the bottom line on jobs. Bain under Romney invested in scores of private companies that don't have the obligation of big publicly traded corporations to disclose finances. Romney acknowledged that he was using current employment figures for the four companies, not the number of jobs they had when he left Bain Capital, yet took credit for them in his analysis.
GINGRICH: "Under Jimmy Carter, we had the wrong laws, the wrong regulations, the wrong leadership, and we killed jobs. We had inflation. We went to 10.8 percent unemployment. Under Ronald Reagan, we had the right job — the right laws, the right regulators, the right leadership. We created 16 million new jobs."
THE FACTS: Sure, inflation was bad and gas lines long, but under Carter's presidency unemployment never topped 7.8 percent. The unemployment rate did reach 10.8 percent, but not until November 1982, nearly two years into Reagan's first term.
Most economists attribute the jobless increase to a sharp rise in interest rates engineered by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in an ultimately successful effort to choke off inflation. Unemployment began to fall in 1983 and dropped to 7.2 percent in November 1984, when Reagan easily won re-election.
The economy did add 16 million jobs during Reagan's 1981-1989 presidency. Gingrich's assertion that "we created" them may have left the impression that he was a key figure in that growth. Although Gingrich was first elected to the House in 1978, his first Republican leadership position, as minority whip, began when Reagan left office, in 1989.
PAUL: "I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early '60s, before we had any government (health care). It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care. But Medicare and Medicaid came in and it just expanded."
THE FACTS: Before Medicare was created in the mid-1960s, only about half of the elderly had private insurance for hospital care, and they were facing rising costs for those policies on their fixed incomes. Medicare was hugely contentious at the time, seen by many doctors as a socialist takeover, but few argued that the status quo could be maintained.
A Health, Education and Welfare Department report to Congress in 1959, during the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower, took no position on what the federal government should do but stated "a larger proportion of the aged than of other persons must turn to public assistance for payment of their medical bills or rely on 'free' care from hospitals and physicians."
Paul advocates a return to an era when doctors would treat the needy for free. But even in the old days, charity came with a cost. Research from the pre-Medicare era shows that the cost of free care was transferred to paying customers and the insurance industry.
ROMNEY: "I could have stayed in Detroit, like him, and gotten pulled up in the car company. I went off on my own. I didn't inherit money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard, the American way."
THE FACTS: It's true there's no evidence Romney's wealthy family gave him a trust fund, or helped him secure a job at Bain Capital, where he would ultimately make his fortune. But it's not entirely the case that his success is wholly the result of his own hard work.
Romney's father, George, was an automobile industry CEO and a Michigan governor. He paid for Mitt to attend the Cranbrook School, a private boarding school in the Detroit area. The education didn't hurt Romney's ability to get into Harvard, where he earned law and business degrees in 1975.
While Romney appears to have gotten a job at Bain out of college on his own, the Boston Globe book "The Real Romney" reports that Romney's parents helped him and his wife buy their first home when he was in his early 20s.
On Thursday night, the Romney campaign did not dispute the finding that Romney's parents helped pay for that house, in the Boston suburb of Belmont.
ROMNEY: "The executive order is a beginning process. It's one thing, but it doesn't completely eliminate Obamacare. ... We have to go after a complete repeal. And that's going to have to have to happen with a House and a Senate, hopefully, that are Republican."
THE FACTS: With that statement, Romney essentially corrected his repeated suggestions in early debates and speeches that he would eliminate President Barack Obama's health care law with a stroke of the pen on his first day in office — a power no president has.
In one variation of the claim, he had vowed in a Sept. 7 debate that on Day One, he would sign an executive order "granting a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states." This, despite the fact that the law lays out an onerous process for letting individual states off the hook from its requirements, and that process cannot begin until 2017.
Now he acknowledges the political reality that a Republican president would need Republican control of Congress to have a strong shot at repealing the law.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley leave a news conference in Gilbert, South Carolina, January 20, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Jim Young
By Samuel P. Jacobs
MARION, South Carolina | Fri Jan 20, 2012 4:06pm EST
(Reuters) - Amid the flurry of campaigning before Saturday's South Carolina Republican presidential primary, not a single candidate has shown up in Marion County, a sleepy rural stretch that represents the bottom of the U.S. economy. Unemployment in the county stands at a staggering 17.3 percent, the highest rate in a state battered hard by the recession. Manufacturing, textile and tobacco jobs have been steadily leaving Marion for decades and now more than 2,000 of the county's 33,000 residents are looking for work, according to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Marion County is located in what has become known as the "corridor of shame" - an impoverished stretch of South Carolina along Interstate 95 - and has stood still even as Republican Governor Nikki Haley aggressively lures companies to the state. Her efforts last year brought announcements of new or expanded operations in the state from Boeing, BMW and TD Banknorth. Haley, who has endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race, is proud of the growth. "In a nation struggling economically," she said in a recent interview, "South Carolina is winning." But Marion County, which sits along the site of a proposed interstate highway, has scored few wins. Its population is stagnant in a state that has seen a 67 percent increase in population in 30 years. Without jobs, officials say, it is hard to attract new people and younger residents are anxious to flee. Rodney Berry, mayor of the town of Marion and executive director of business development in the county, says two things hold the county back. Roads need work, something residents feel acutely when they travel to more prosperous neighboring counties, and the county has built its hopes around completion of the new interstate highway. It also suffers from the perception that the available workforce is uneducated. Thirteen percent of residents have bachelor's degrees, little more than half the average in South Carolina statewide. "Plain and simple," Berry said. "A lot of people need some help." SOLIDLY DEMOCRATIC Politically, Marion County has long been a Democratic Party stronghold in a Republican state. It is majority African-American and in 2008 its voters solidly backed Barack Obama. They are poised to back Obama's re-election. Obama visited the county in 2007 and raised its problems as a campaign issue. Republican Newt Gingrich picked up the theme, referring to the "corridor of shame" in campaign appearances and criticizing the Obama administration's outreach to low-income communities. But none of the Republican contenders ventured into Marion when they gathered 50 miles away in the popular tourist town of Myrtle Beach for a Monday debate. Myrtle Beach is in Horry County, which has fared much better in the tough economy. Marion County's other neighbor, Florence, last year saw major manufacturing companies arrive, including the job-listing site Monster.Com, food-maker Heinz, and car-maker Honda. "You'd think we'd be primed for great growth," Berry said. "But we are so different than the two big counties we are nestled between. We do think often that we are the forgotten people." Adding to the pain, Marion County is about to lose its influential Democratic congressman, James Clyburn, through redistricting. A Republican may take the seat, leading Berry to worry that his county will be even more forgotten. LIFE GOES BY Rita Hennecey, who has lived here since 1953, watches the slow pace of progress with her friends from a table at Dry Dock, a popular gathering place along Highway 76. "Marion used be known as a pretty little city on the way to the beach," she said after church one recent Sunday. "You would never have dreamed it would be this way." Hennecey and her friends can recount the town's history, its namesake Revolutionary General Francis Marion, known as the "Swamp Fox," and the tobacco farms and textile plants that once supported a thriving economy. But they can just as easily recall the names of the now-gone companies that once made candy, clothes and Coke bottles. When Russell Stover, the area's largest employer, left town in 2000, nearly 1,200 jobs went with it. That story has been repeated over and over. In May, car-parts manufacturer Inteva closed its plant, putting 42 people out of work. "It used to be busy on Main Street," said Lucia Atkinson, who has lived in the area for more than 70 years. Her husband was mayor for 18 years. "It was filled with four or five groceries and four filling stations. They sold ladies dresses and furniture." Today, a quarter of the stores on Main Street are vacant. As mayor, Berry finds himself fielding phone calls from residents who need help with electric bills or organizing collections to put chicken, grits, and rice onto families' tables. More than a quarter of the people live below the poverty line. "When you hear the news every month, Marion County is the highest unemployment," Berry said. "Emotionally, it takes a toll on folks. It's become engrained in our minds to some degree ... It just starts to permeate your mind and body that maybe we can't." But he and others try to be optimistic. Over the years, folks here have faced and conquered adversity many times before. "We are very resilient people," he said. (Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Bill Trott)
(Reuters) - Newt Gingrich jolted the Republican presidential race on Saturday with a convincing come-from-behind victory in South Carolina, where voters rejected frontrunner Mitt Romney's pitch that he is the best bet to fix a broken economy and defeat President Barack Obama.
Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina Republican primary, capping off a remarkable comeback for his presidential bid that reshapes the trajectory of the battle for the GOP nomination.
Based on exit polls and early returns, NBC News projects Gingrich as the winner of the primary, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will finish second.
The results mark the end of a tumultuous week in politics that saw Gingrich erase and then overcome the lead Romney had in the Palmetto State following his victory in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary. Gingrich came on strong in the closing days of the campaign, looking to rally under his banner the many conservatives unwilling to get behind Romney, who had sought to posture himself as the eventual nominee.
The results upset the conventional wisdom in the race, which had set expectations for Romney to score a knockout blow against his competitors with a win in the Palmetto State. Gingrich’s victory reshapes the race, at a minimum extending the primary contest through the Jan. 31 primary in Florida, which appears set to feature a pitched battle between Romney and Gingrich. VIEW full South Carolina primary results
"We're now three contests into a long primary season ... We've still got a long way to go, and a lot of work to do," Romney said in remarks shortly after 8 p.m., in which he previewed the line of attacks he'll use against Gingrich in Florida.
Gingrich, Romney said, had joined President Obama in launching a "frontal assault on free enterprise," referencing the ex-speaker's attack on Romney's record at Bain Capital.
"Those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against us tomorrow," Romney said. "If Republican leaders want to join this president in demonizing success...then they're not going to be fit to be our nominee."
After finishing second in the South Carolina primary, Mitt Romney says the race is "getting even more interesting," and tells the crowd, "there is so much worth fighting."
Gingrich's performance in South Carolina was driven in thanks to late deciders, who broke decisively in his direction in the last few days of the campaign. That stretch saw two debate performances by Gingrich, on Monday and Thursday nights. Almost two-thirds of voters said the debates were an important factor in their decision, and Gingrich won about half of them.
More broadly, core elements of the GOP base in South Carolina – conservatives, Tea Party supporters and evangelical Christians – broke for Gingrich. And the former speaker even edged Romney in two important constituencies for the former Massachusetts governor: voters who said electability in November was their most important concern in a nominee, and voters who said the economy was their top issue.
The South Carolina results underscore Romney’s lingering inability to overcome skepticism from conservatives about electing him as their standard-bearer against Obama this fall. RELATED: Conservatives, evangelical Christians rebuff Romney in South Carolina
Gingrich had erased Romney’s lead by abandoning his previous pledge to wage a “relentlessly positive” campaign. The former speaker eventually embraced a strategy of drawing strong contrasts with Romney and benefited from the negative advertising run on his behalf by a super PAC – a practice Gingrich loudly denounced in Iowa, where he saw his poll numbers collapse amid attacks by a pro-Romney super PAC.
“I hope to win S.C.” Gingrich said Friday night in Orangeburg, “God willing we'll win, and tomorrow night will be very interesting and then Florida will be even more interesting and I'm sure you'll want to come with us.”
His victory provides, if nothing else, a symbolic imprimatur; the winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the nomination in each Republican primary since the contest’s inception in 1980.
Voters headed to the polls in stormy conditions throughout most of the Palmetto State that could hold down turnout in some areas. County election officials reported light turnout in some areas, and heavier than expected voter rolls in other areas.
The South Carolina results capped one of the most tumultuous weeks in the presidential campaign thus far, a week that saw the veneer of inevitability the Romney campaign had built for itself erode by the end.
Recertified results in the Iowa caucuses found that he had actually lost the contest by a handful of votes to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. And Romney has fought to withstand some of the most intense scrutiny he’s faced during the campaign; critics have assailed his private equity career and demanded Romney release his tax returns – demands which only reached a fever pitch after Romney estimated he pays an effective rate of 15 percent of his income in taxes.
Moreover, Romney’s performance in South Carolina will speak volumes about his fractious relationship with movement conservatives. He’s struggled at times to break through a ceiling on his support from those voters, who are skeptical of Romney’s past conversion on abortion rights and his embrace of authorship of a health care law as governor that closely resembles Obama’s 2010 reform law.
Romney had largely stuck to message in South Carolina, where he’s campaigned since winning Jan. 10’s New Hampshire primary, by keeping his focus on Obama and posturing himself more as a presumptive nominee.
But in an acknowledgement of Gingrich’s late push, the Romney campaign has also revived the attacks on the former speaker they used to great effect in Iowa to tamp down Gingrich’s December surge.
“Let's have him describe his relationships in Washington,” Romney said Saturday in Greenville, turning up the heat on Gingrich and highlighting the ex-speaker’s work on behalf of troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac. “If people think Washington is the answer, if people think someone who spent the great majority of their life in Washington, I'll be surprised."
Romney’s campaign appears poised to make that argument even more sharply in Florida. They circulated a “flashback” video on Saturday reminding voters of the ethics investigation Gingrich had faced during his speakership.
Nonetheless, the fact that Gingrich has arrived at the precipice of political resurrection – again – this cycle is itself remarkable.
Political observers had questioned when, not if, he would drop out after suffering missteps at the outset of his campaign that led to the defection of virtually all of his top staff last June. But Gingrich stuck with it and climbed to the top of the polls in Iowa, only to see his numbers implode again after weathering attacks from super PACs and Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign.
In South Carolina, the former speaker has been aided by a variety of factors contributing to his potential comeback. He’s scored major points with voters with a couple of strong debate performances this week, particularly by way of launching acerbic attacks on the media. His angry refusal to answer allegations made by an ex-wife topped headlines coming out of a debate on Thursday – the same day that saw Texas Gov. Rick Perry drop his own campaign and endorse Gingrich.
GOP candidate Rick Santorum talks about the state of the race and reaffirms that he wants to be the voice for those people in America that don't have one in government
The winnowed field (Jon Huntsman also ended his campaign and endorsed Romney), only reduced the number of candidates threatening to divide the anti-Romney vote in South Carolina.
Santorum, crowned the winner of the Iowa caucuses upon further review of the vote totals, had doggedly criticized both Romney and Gingrich in hopes of rallying conservatives behind his unflashy, if consistent, record.
"Three states, three winners -- what a great country," he said in remarks Saturday evening, vowing to continue his campaign through Florida and subsequent nominating contests.
The Romney campaign is hoping that contest, which awards all of the delegates to its winner, features a primary closed to registered Republicans in a large swing state, will be its firewall. It’s a more expensive campaign to wage because of its multiple, expensive media markets, and is seen as a test of organizational strength.
Romney’s advantage there is one of the reasons the Paul campaign, which is polling third in South Carolina, at 16 percent, in a NBC News-Marist poll earlier this week, has elected to skip the next battle in Florida in favor of focusing on caucuses.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrives
at the Finance Ministry to meet Japan's Finance Minister Jun Azumi in
Tokyo January 12, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai
WASHINGTON |
Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:35pm EST
(Reuters) - The Treasury on Tuesday
started dipping into federal pension funds in order to give the Obama
administration more credit to pay government bills. "I will be unable to invest
fully" the federal employees retirement system fund beginning Tuesday,
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter to Democratic and
Republican leaders in Congress.
The
House of Representatives is expected to vote on Wednesday on the Obama
administration's request to raise the country's legal debt limit to
$16.394 trillion.
However, unless
the lower chamber and the Senate are able to shore up enough votes to
block the White House request, the debt limit will be increased by $1.2
trillion next Friday and a repeat of last year's debt ceiling debacle
will be averted.
Geithner said
Treasury started suspending reinvestments in a federal pension fund
known as the G-Fund -- a tool Treasury has had to employ six times over
the past 20 years in order to keep the country below the statutory debt
limit.
The Treasury Department has
already tapped another seldom-used fund in order to allow the government
to continue borrowing without running afoul of the country's laws.
(Reporting By Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish)
