While I could care less, one of the frustrating things about the Republican presidential race for pundits is that after repeatedly anointing Mitt Romney as the man who will take on President Obama, he keeps failing to beat expectations that were fairly low to begin with. And is failing to pull away from a field that even minus Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain looks like it would be right at home in the locked...

Andrew Sullivan has an intriguing post. He has seen the anti-Romney, Bain Capital film that Newt Gingrich’s camp is touting and says it’s devastating — so much so that he thinks Romney could lose: I just watched the Bain documentary featured below and being broadcast throughout South Carolina by Newt Gingrich’s SuperPac in full. It’s loaded with out-of-context quotes and heavily...

Last night: On Thursday night’s “Colbert Report,” Mr. Colbert took [his Super PAC riff] a big step further, handing control of his group to his friend and fellow host Jon Stewart so that he can legally run for president, or at least pretend to. Mr. Colbert, who has comically flirted with — and mocked the possibility of — runs for political office before, said he would form an “exploratory committee...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy WASHINGTON – Mitt Romney is running into headwinds in his own party for, of all things, being a successful capitalist. Newt Gingrich, in fact, has walked his charges back, while his Super PAC has not. The other news on Newt Gingrich is that he is now leading Mitt Romney by only 2 points. From The Hill: Romney is the favorite of...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin urges Gov. Mitt Romney to release tax returns and data that could substantiate his claims of having created 100,000 jobs as CEO of Bain Capital. Sarah Palin Calls on Mitt Romney to Release Tax Returns, Show Proof of 100K Jobs Created at Bain Capital (Wikipedia) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, AKA “Mama Grizzly,” has called for Gov. Mitt Romney to release his tax returns,...

For some reason — some will say for good reason — election time in America does not seem to bring out the best in many Americans, including this one, when it comes to negative and gloomy opinion and commentary. Thus, when The Huffington Post announced the launch of a HuffPost Good News section “devoted to positive news, happy stories and uplifting opinion and commentary” and graciously invited...

Meet fake cowboy and superPAC proprietor Foster Friess (center) This moment that Rick Santorum’s money backer is revealed is a fleeting moment. The New Hampshire Primary is this Tuesday, followed by the quadrennial South Carolina Confederate Flag controversy a week later. (Don’t laugh. It was that, far more than the “black babies” whispering campaign that doomed John McCain’s candidacy...

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com At at time when there are inklings that political opponents of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may be considering bowing to the demands of talk show (and de facto Republican Party strategist) titan Rush Limabaugh and other members of the GOP establishment on trimming criticism of Romney’s role at Bain Capital, the question is arising: is Romney indeed “inevitable”...

There surely will be a statue of Sarah Palin when the Temple of Political Chutzpah is erected. The former half-term governor and failed candidate, who never came clean about anything, says that Mitt Romney has brought his Bain Capital problems on himself by not being transparent and offering no documentation for the claim that he created 100,000 net jobs and refusing to release his tax returns. For the record,...

The GOP’s Long Sad March to the Inevitable Nominee by Tina Dupuy Republicans have a wide variety of conservative white males now vying to be their nominee. No, really. Bear with me. They have former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich summing up the worst of the ’90s GOP. Not only did he shut down the government during his tenure, he attempted to oust a president for doing what Gingrich was doing...

Even as tension over the Strait of Hormuz escalates, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is touring Latin America as a way of showing Iran has friends in the U.S. ‘backyard.’ But this tongue-in-cheek welcome to the Iranian leader by columnist Luis A. Vivanco of Ecuador’s La Hora goes to show that not everyone is buying the story. For La Hora of Ecuador, Luis A. Vivanco starts out this...

The 2008 presidential contest was marked by enthusiastic participation among the younger voter demographic (pdf), a demographic that skewed towards Obama on the Democratic side. This time ’round, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Democrats, in general, are unenthusiastic. On the GOP side, Ron Paul is polling the best of the candidates in the “younger voter” demographic, no matter how...

WASHINGTON — Thanks to Mitt Romney and such well-known socialist intellectuals as Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, the United States is about to have the big debate on the nature of modern capitalism that should have started back in 2008. The focus will be on whether some kinds of capitalism are bad for the system as a whole. As a political matter, the discussion will be a classic test of an old Karl...

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — It’s going to be mean and dispiriting, this campaign. We’ll be assailed with talk of “European socialism” and “vulture capitalism” — not “hope” and “change” — and the months between now and November will seem an eternity. There’s no use trying to gainsay or belittle Mitt Romney’s victory here Tuesday....

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Is a pullback now beginning on attacks by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and perhaps others on attacks on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for Romney’s role at Bain Capital? It sounds that way. Actually, I figured a pullback would begin once I learned that conservative talker (and Ruler of the GOP in some ways) Rush Limbaugh was blasting it. The Politico reports: Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday...

Is it the United States – and not Iran or Venezuela – that the world’s people need to worry about? According to this news account by María Lilibeth Da Corte of Venezuela’s El Universal, the arrival of Iran President Ahmadinejad in Latin America has begun with a Venezuelan ‘love fest’ of sorts, with lots of spicy language about the United States. For Venezuela’s El...

And it reflects ills far more insidious than the current GOP presidential contest. A Wall Street Journal analysis of Mitt Romney’s days at Bain Capital (1984-1999, the “greed is good” … “Bonfire of the Vanities” … pre-dot-gone era) reminds us that investment banking (and the far-too-often vaunted stock market) is simply a legalized form of gambling: The Journal analysis...

After all the demographic slicing and dicing, the final primary figures disclose one New Hampshire result pundits are ignoring: The only two candidates who unequivocally want to take us of out of Afghanistan and most of the Middle East muddle now, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, together received 39.8 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 39.6 percent. In contrast, Rick Perry, who advocates going back into Iraq,...

The Romney machine is rolling now. After barely surviving that eight-vote squeaker in Iowa, the Mittster rebounded by throttling the competition in New Hampshire. The man with the granite jaw won the Granite State with a convincing 40 percent of the vote — equal to second- and third-place finishers Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman combined. Sure, Ron Paul won the independent vote, while Huntsman snagged the...

As expected, Mitt Romney skated to victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday. In the process, he “became the first Republican to sweep the first two contests in competitive races since 1976.” NH Results from Google and AP New Hampshire was a leading indicator of who would get the nomination and possibly the White House until 1992. That’s when Bill Clinton made history by being the first presidential...

What’s a risky business to go into? Apparently one of the riskiest is to be a nuclear scientist in Iran – since yet another one has been killed: At a time of growing tension over its nuclear program and mounting belligerence toward the West, Iran reported on Wednesday that an Iranian nuclear scientist died in what was termed a “terrorist bomb blast” in northern Tehran when an unidentified motorcyclist...

That grinding sound you hear are the tectonic plates of Republican presidential politics shifting. In what direction and how far they shift may determine whether Mitt Romney has a chance of beating Barack Obama in November. That is if he can survive brutal attacks from some of his opponents. Although it was not noticeable, the shift began with the burst of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, first in New York...