Here’s something that no one is talking about concerning tonight’s primaries: In my homestate of Missouri Prop C, the first legislative challenge to Obamacare exempting Missourians from Obamacare penalities, passed by 3-1 in every single county except Kansas City and St. Louis City. Rick Santorum took every single county in Missouri. Missourians don’t like mandates. Missourians, like folks from MN and CO, don’t like being strong-armed into the falsehood of “electable inevitability.”

That’s what we’ve been sold for the past six months. Tonight inevitability was rejected in three states.

Numerous talking heads discounted the “beauty contests,” especially Missouri’s, which holds a separate caucus for its 52 delegates in March due to state-level silliness. Coincidentally, these are the same folks, Karl Rove and Company, who seem to save their most favorable comments for Romney. Iowa was important until it was realized Santorum won. South Carolina didn’t matter because hey, they were all bigots and hillbillies. Only the states that went Romney seemed to count.

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When the South Carolina primary results revealed a blowout victory for Gingrich, Romney supporters and the Establishment Apology Brigade responded by borrowing progressives’s talking points against the tea party. That a sizable chunk of tea partiers, independents, and women voted for Newt Gingrich doesn’t make them “racists,” as I have heard suggested, or “bitter clingers,” or any other pejorative favored by progressives and suddenly subtly adopted by establishment types.

I know and respect many of these individuals and I don’t begrudge them their passionate support of the candidate in whom they believe; rather, I disagree with their chosen tactics in attempting to undermine their opposition’s support.

We spent three-and-a-half years protesting for limited government and were called nazis, racists, bigots, etc. by progressives, many of them sitting lawmakers. The above-mentioned apologists were right with us in denouncing such tactics. Now suddenly they’re echoing them simply because the majority of grassroots do not share their choice of primary candidate? Their strategy is to browbeat and verbally abuse grassroots into lining up behind an uncertain and not “inevitable” candidate? Isn’t that what progressives have been doing to grassroots for the past several years? We were called racists and “bitter clingers” for not supporting Obama. Are we now suggested racists and “bitter clingers” because we don’t support Romney? How does that work?

Let me put it another way: it wasn’t OK to call tea partiers “racists and hillbillies” when they opposed Obama’s big government, but it is OK to call tea partiers “racists and hillbillies” when they oppose the establishment’s pick for primary candidate?

What sort of bass-ackwards logic is this?

The South Carolina results have more to do with a repudiation of Romney than a widespread preference for Gingrich as a candidate. This isn’t to say that there aren’t any tea partiers who support Gingrich–to the contrary. There is simply a general, “damn the man” sentiment when it concerns the GOP establishment, and it’s of the establishment’s own doing.

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If you didn’t watch tonight’s debate, let me sum it up for you: Why English as the official language in US? Your Thoughts on Terri Schiavo? When was America last great? Also, the Bush tax cuts didn’t work, explain to us why.’

Gingrich, who is usually good at rejecting false premises in questioning, punted and responded “it would have been worse without them.” Really?

… in May 2003 Congress accelerated the tax cuts to make them effective immediately. In addition to reducing marginal income tax rates, Congress also lowered the tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

It was at this point that economic growth took off. From May 2003 until December 2007 (when the recession caused by the global financial meltdown occurred) the economy created 8.1 million jobs, or 145,000 a month. By comparison, after the beginning of the 2001 recession and before the 2003 tax cuts, the economy was losing 103,000 jobs a month.

Bush tax cuts spurred growth and additionally stifled unemployment at 5.2% in the years following 9/11. Yes they worked. Gingrich should have answered better and the moderator asking the question should have been mocked on stage for presenting a presupposition as a legitimate, beyond reproach question.

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This morning on our CNN panel Will Cain and I discussed the “angry Newt narrative.” The question centered around Peggy Noonan’s latest column wherein she calls Gingrich an “angry little attack muffin“:

Right now Mr. Romney’s taking a beating. He’s everyone’s target, and in a way that speaks of something beyond the usual campaign ferocity. There’s something else going on, a taunting: “If you’re so inevitable how come I’m not afraid of you?” Newt Gingrich, angry little attack muffin, called Mr. Romney a liar.

This is why it has taken Republicans until New Hampshire to vet their leading candidate (and they didn’t vet him in 2008, either): criticize Mitt Romney and you’re called a meanie. Most of the people I’ve witnessed using this argument have been in politics longer than I’ve been alive, so unless the landscape has changed recently and I missed the memo, politics is still a bloodsport. No one is calling Romney an “angry little muffin” for doing exactly what Gingrich is doing; the difference is that Romney has a frillion groups and admirers doing it for him so he can keep his mitts clean and appear above the fray. If the tactic seems familiar, it’s because Barack Obama is famous for it. I’m not comparing Obama to Romney, just simply pointing out that they happen to share more in common besides health care.

The base is crying out for someone, anyone in this primary to stop pretending that Romney doesn’t have the gubernatorial record that he has. Those who pretend it doesn’t exist only kneecap themselves. They criticize ads from primary opponents which address Romney’s record. Instead of asking “Is this what the oppo will look like?” they howl over Gingrich quoting a NYT article.

Most media, and even the candidates themselves, coddle Romney at every debate and behave as though less offensive baggage from other candidates is somehow worse than socialized health care at the state level. I may have had my differences with Gingrich on different issues before, but this much I know: he’s not auditioning for a VP job in the event of a still uncertain Romney nomination.

Newt Gingrich is doing what the GOP would do, if they were smart, and testing the mettle of these candidates before the Obama machine does with good ol’ fashioned primary politics.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman/Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is feeling the heat from a formidable opponent, Republican Karen Harrington, in her battle to keep Florida’s 20th Congressional District seat.

Several weeks back, Wasserman Schultz was interviewed by the Spanish-language network Univision and was directly asked if she thought her congressional seat was “safe” in the forthcoming 2012 elections. Wasserman Schultz appeared unnerved by the question and it likely caused her to pivot back to her typical talking points and assert that the candidates running in the Republican primary in Florida’s 20th Congressional District are “very focused on the agenda of the Tea Party” and “that’s not a reflection of the values of this district.”

Screenshot. ‘Someone’ complained about the video, so our friends over at Univision asked us to take down the video. We took the video down as a courtesy.

The Shark Tank removed the video in question from its site after somebody from Wasserman Schultz’s campaign or congressional office complained to the network as a courtesy to Univision.  Fast forward a few weeks later, and lo and behold, the Politico runs a two-part story on who could have leaked the video to the Shark Tank.  Coincidence?  You be the judge. Politico: Part 1 Part 2.

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**UPDATE: Romney camp responds to Hot Air

**UPDATE II: Matt Lewis added the Romney camp’s reponse to his story but stands by his original report.

**UPDATE III: Red State’s Moe Lane has more in an update of his own: “the queue is the Romney campaign’s problem.”

“Isn’t it pretty stupid politics,” the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis asks. That’s obviously a rhetorical question, and not one motivated by sour grapes. Lewis wasn’t on the call:

As you probably heard, some Mitt Romney surrogates hosted a conference call today to attack Newt Gingrich. Because Romney is attempting to win a Republican primary — and cast Newt Gingrich as unacceptable to conservatives — you probably assume that center-right journalists or conservative bloggers got to ask some questions, right?

Wrong. Here’s the list of reporters and media outlets who were permitted to ask questions:

JOHN DICKERSON, CBS NEWS
MARK HALPERIN, TIME
LLOYD GROVE, THE DAILY BEAST
EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, TPM
DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES
PHIL RUCKER, WASHINGTON POST

DaTechGuy adds:

Stupid isn’t the word here. You are trying to make the case you are more conservative than Newt Gingrich and you not only exclude Conservatives from questions but you take questions from flipping Mother Jones and Talking Points Memo? This is an insult to every conservative news outlet, new media site and blogger out there.

And people complained about the way Herman Cain treated friends, but perhaps the Romney Campaign doesn’t consider conservatives friends.

It’s important to emphasize that it wasn’t Governor Romney himself on the phone. Still, they were his surrogates.

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Join me in watching tonight’s GOP primary debate on national security at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

I’ll be amongst those providing pre and post-debate analysis.

The info:

CNN lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer will moderate a Republican presidential debate on Tuesday, Nov. 22 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (ET) live from the historic DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

The debate, in partnership with The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), will focus on three of the most critical issues candidates will encounter during the Republican presidential nomination: national security, foreign policy and the economy. The debate falls on the eve of the deadline for the so-called congressional super committee to create a plan for at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

In addition to Blitzer, Foreign policy experts from AEI and The Heritage Foundation will pose questions to the candidates. The following eight presidential contenders will participate in the debate: Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Live coverage from DAR Constitution Hall will begin the day before the debate, on Monday, Nov. 21, and continue through the post-debate programming on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 22 to include anchors Wolf Blitzer, John King and Erin Burnett. CNN political analysts and contributors Paul Begala, Gloria Borger, Donna Brazile, David Frum, David Gergen, Ari Fleischer, and Dana Loesch will participate in coverage from the nation’s capital.

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Oh my.

But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unequivocally commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support – as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success – this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate.

[...]

Public officials who would make excellent candidates should they run on this platform include Sens. Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Mikulski or Al Franken; Reps. Joe Sestak, Maxine Waters, Raul Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Lois Capps, Jim Moran and Lynn Woolsey. Others include Jim McGovern, Marcy Kaptur, Jim McDermott or John Conyers. We should also consider popular figures outside of government. How about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Why not Rachel Maddow, Bill Moyers, Susan Sarandon or the Rev. James Forbes?

John Conyers? Rachel Maddow? Al Franken? Maxine Waters? Susan Sarandon? I sort of feel like Michael Bluth in that moment when his family makes fun of him by calling him a chicken and doing the chicken dance to which Michael responds: “Has anyone in this family ever even seen a chicken?”

Has columnist Michael Lerner ever even seen a Democratic primary? This idea is more ridiculous than anything Joe Biden could even come up with, and that’s saying a lot.

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No matter what you think of J.D. Hayworth — former Congressman, talk-show host, anti-illegal immigration hardliner and Abramoff-scarred beneficiary — one thing you’ve got to like about him is that he is mounting a primary challenge to Sen. John McCain (R, Media) in Arizona.

That would be the head RINO-in-chief and First Amendment enemy — RIP, McCain/Feingold! — who threw the election to Barack Obama in 2008 by taking everything that was interesting and/or objectionable about the former Barry Soetoro — his past, his associates, even his name — off the table and thus gave himself exactly zero chance to win. Contrary to the lefty media spin that Sarah Palin cost McCain the election, she was the only thing that stood between him and an historic, McGovern/Mondale-style wipeout.

It was as if he wanted to lose, or something.

In an electoral season that’s already shaping up to be a graveyard for incumbents — so long Evan Bayh! — will McCain be the next to go?

Or, in the return of a nightmare scenario for Republicans, will he finally cross the aisle one last time, rejoin his former buddies in the media, and give the Democrats back their 60-vote majority?  (Hey — stranger things have happened.)

What do you think?