"Time for this feud to move back to the front burner."

A new documentary finds exactly what and who I said was happening during the primary:

The not-so-secret hero of “Caucus” is former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who plugs his way across Iowa in his Dodge pickup and an endless wardrobe of endearingly dreadful sweater vests, talking to anyone and everyone who will listen. He’s almost a Frank Capra character, a plainspoken man of principle who believes in old-fashioned politics and refuses to tell lies just to get elected. “Caucus” is in many ways the story of Santorum’s triumph, short-lived as it turned out to be: Despite polling in the low single digits in the fall of 2011, Santorum outlasts Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain and Perry and winds up in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, candidate of the GOP establishment.

Let’s be clear: I wouldn’t vote for Rick Santorum for dog-keeper if the other candidate were a dog. He’s a committed Christian conservative – actually, a Catholic conservative, a subtle but important distinction – who is forcefully opposed to abortion rights and marriage equality, and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. I do not lament the fact that he didn’t get elected to national office (and never will). But amid all the overheated anti-Obama rhetoric and wild, unfulfillable promises of the Iowa campaign, Santorum comes off as the only candidate who isn’t telling people exactly what they want to hear, and who isn’t fueling hatred for its own sake.

So, once again, the Republican Party - in it's so-called wisdom - wasted the best candidate it had going,...

 

The NYT’s exit poll data has now been updated and it’s much more in line with CNN’s numbers. Christie’s winning 48 percent of Latinos and 20 percent of blacks now, both double-digit increases from how he did in 2009. He’s also winning … 31 percent of Democrats. If the Times’s numbers hold, he should fall just shy of 60 percent,…

...Christie will have the margins he wanted among minorities. The 2016 campaign begins tomorrow.

As New Jersey's Christie Campaigns, a 2016 Strategy Emerges

Governor sees outreach to nontraditional GOP voters as national model for party

It looks like the smarter half of Dumb & Dumber acted like it:

  A key challenge for Paul if he runs would be to make himself acceptable to — if not win over — traditional Republicans. His low-key approach to the shutdown and debt limit drama could help that cause.

“He was a reasonable voice in a very difficult time for the party,” said one top national GOP strategist. “He wasn’t as strident as Cruz. When he recognized there was no real end game in sight, he recoiled. He wasn’t on the tip of the spear. I think that did him a lot of good with a lot of Republicans, a lot of conservatives.”

Even Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) — whose budding presidential campaign is predicated upon taking on Paul and the tea party wing of the GOP — had kind words for how the Kentuckian has acquitted himself.

Paul is “a gentleman,” King said. In contrast, “Ted Cruz is totally different,” he continued. “I consider him to be a demagogue. … I’d say by comparison, Sen. Paul has gotten better. I have real problems with Sen. Paul’s positions, but Ted Cruz is in a class by himself.”

So, as the low-hanging fruit of Right-Wing "intelligence," all Cruz mostly succeeded in doing is taking himself out. Which is what Paul and King should do as well - willingly. They can't win the nomination or a national election. We coalesce around Christie for the White House:

We can turn this thing around,...

 

Oh my! Peter Beinart describes what Republicans winning, via Ted Cruz, might look like:

The Washington GOP’s plummeting approval ratings may well boost the presidential prospects of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, just as the Gingrich Congress paved the way for the comparatively moderate George W. Bush. Like Bush, Christie is described as moderate because he has Democratic allies in his home state and because his rhetoric is not as harsh on cultural issues. But in the White House, Bush’s economic policies were hardly moderate. To the contrary, from taxes to social security to regulation, he governed well to the right of Ronald Reagan. Christie likely would as well. As governor, after all, he’s vetoed a hike in the minimum wage, cut the earned income tax credit, vetoed a millionaires’ tax three times and adopted basically the same attitude towards public sector unions as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful,...