Newt Gingrich’s post–Nevada caucus speech included about three minutes of inspired moments about issues and ideas in his usual imaginative and intellectually robust style. So why does he not just stay with that — given that he often seems more dynamic and glib than Romney in his attacks on Obama, and not long ago gained ground despite the attacks against him? Instead, he now turns ad nauseam to the tired reasons why he loses — yes, including lots of Mormons in Nevada — and ends up as Richard Nixon not going to get kicked around any more.

But whether he knows it or not, Gingrich is becoming a caricature of petulance: no concession in Nevada, no call to Romney, no awareness that his inability to raise money at levels of a political rival or to match a competing campaign organization is not necessarily unfair. That’s politics, and Gingrich knows it. I don’t understand why he thinks now losing to Romney in 2012 is solely due to Romney’s innate deviousness in a way McCain beating Romney in 2008 was not — given that Romney was about the same in both 2008 and 2012. Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that McCain’s style and history gave him advantages over Romney’s money and hardball in ways Gingrich’s own proven liabilities apparently do not. 

Gingrich should carefully play a tape of his post–Nevada caucus performance, and then he would quickly grasp that it was little more than a litany of excuses, whining, and accusations — characterized by stream-of-conscious confessionals and rambling repetitions. And, I think, will hurt him more than anything yet in the campaign. 

Verdict? Gingrich is going to have to stop the accusations now, turn attention away from himself, stop complaining about the mechanics of the race, stick with critiquing Obama, and at least seem a good sport when he loses. Romney is wise to focus on Obama, ignore his rivals, and get prepped every day by staff who press him on his wealth, in efforts to inoculate him from self-inflicted, offhand remarks about the poor, money, class, etc. Gingrich’s stabs about a supposedly out-of-touch aristocrat are kid’s play compared to what will come from Obama’s $1 billion dollar Chicago hit team.

In his Nevada victory speech, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney vowed “defend religious liberty” and “overturned” any mandate “that tramples on our first freedom, our right to believe as we choose.”

In this past week, he published an oped on the topic, addressing the Obama administration’s mandate health insurance coverage of contraception and drugs that may work as abortifacients, violating the consciences of so many Catholic institutions and citizens.

Unquestionably, tonight’s was his most energetic victory speech. Focused as well, on the general election. He said of President Obama: He began his presidency apologizing for America, he should now be apologizing to America.

More on Twitter, @kathrynlopez.

Here is the text of his speech tonight:

Keep reading this post . . .

CNN has now released its detailed exit poll numbers. They don’t give a breakdown for the 200k+ income group (6% of the electorate), but since they release all the other groups we can estimate that amount by comparing the total vote estimate from those groups to the 55% statewide the exit poll estimates, and then seeing what he would need from the 200k+ group to get there. I won’t bore you with the math, but the answer is astounding — 80% of the 200k+ group had to have voted for Romney for the exit poll to be internally consistent. Wow.

Ed Whelan will be on C-SPAN talking about the aforementioned HHS mandate.

Romney will get close to 55% tonight in NV.

Nate said the entrance poll shows Romney getting 31 percent of the vote among those whose households made under $30,000 per year. But he won 48 percent among households between $30,000 and $50,000 per year, 58 percent among those making between $50,000 and $100,000 and 62 percent among those with six-figure incomes.

Nevada’s electorate tonight was relatively well off. As many voters today made over $100,000 per year as under $50,000, according to the entrance polls.

Earlier on the NYT site, David Jones said those making 100k a year were about 25% of the electorate.

So, do the math:

25% of the caucus goers made 100k or more * 62% for Romney = 15.5% of total vote.

50% of the caucus goers make between 50 and 100k * 58% for Romney = 29% of total vote

25% of the caucus goers make less than 50k.  If they split evenly between those making less than 30k and those making between 30 and 50k, we get

12.5% of the caucus goers make less than 30k * 31% for Romney = 4.1% of the total vote

12.5% of the caucus goers makes between 30k and 50k * 48% for Romney = 6% of the total vote.

15.5 + 29+ 10.1= 55.6%

This calculation is not very sensitive to the split between those making more or less than 30k.  If those making 30-50k are 60% of the total making less than 50k, for example, then Romney’s total vote share goes up only .2%.

John Boehner:

On January 20, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced that under President Obama’s health care law, religiously-affiliated institutions in the United States will be required to cover contraceptive benefits in all insurance policies, regardless of whether the provision of such benefits violates their religious beliefs.  I believe that with this action, the Obama administration has violated the religious freedoms of faith-based institutions across America.     

…

this mandate is not about whether or not we as citizens agree with the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Instead it is about insisting our government stay within our Constitutional boundaries.

….

The rule put forth by the Department of Health & Human Services must not stand.  The Obama Administration must re-evaluate this decision and reverse it.  If it does not, I believe the United States Congress, acting on behalf of the American people, will.  

Nevada tweeting @kathrynlopez tonight. 

Via Jeremy Redmon:

LAS VEGAS – Mitt Romney overwhelmingly won in several Republican caucus precincts in the northwestern part of this city Saturday morning as Newt Gingrich remained in Nevada but kept a low profile.

At Bonanza High School in Las Vegas, Romney won one precinct with 33 out of 44 votes, local Republican precinct officials confirmed. He won a second with 18 out of 27 votes. Gingrich won only a handful of votes in each of those precincts.

As Nate Silver says, “look for Romney to win and Paul to outperform.”

As NRO reported on Friday, Santorum’s advisers are committed to staying in the race. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll offers some encouragement:

In a potential Election 2012 matchup, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is at 45% while President Obama earns 44%. This is the first time in any poll that Santorum has led the president. Several other GOP challengers have led the president a single time in the polls including Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. Each man briefly held the lead while they were surging in the polls, only to fall quickly. It remains to be seen what will happen to Santorum’s support.

Terrified of the secular/modern/liberal demonstrators who made their presence known in Tahrir Square, as well as of the soccer hooligans, Mohamed Tantawi and Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces have forged a mutually beneficial relationship with the country’s Islamists, thereby blocking their joint opponents from power. Very clever — but maybe too clever by half. Here’s why:

In Egypt, which imports more than half its caloric intake, wages must keep up with the price of food or people begin to starve. Yet the country appears to be heading for a monumental financial collapse in 2012, and perhaps by the summer. If Islamists strut about as though they rule Egypt, the population will blame them and their SCAF allies – not the Tahriris – for its hunger. The anger could quickly turn ferocious. After waiting 84 years to attain legitimacy and power, the Muslim Brotherhood may find it got suckered into taking over the ship’s help just as it heads into an iceberg.

Comments:

1. A joke circulating during Hosni Mubarak’s reign (“Why hasn’t Mubarak appointed a vice president?” “Because he can’t find anyone dumber than he is”) appears to be wrong. Tantawi is even more incompetent than Mubarak.

2. Military dictatorship, which has been firmly in control of Egypt since 1952, has so badly run the country into the ground that its rule finally appears to be in jeopardy. 

My book goes back to the drawing board. I’m grateful — really well done, I think.

I’m also grateful to Karen Lugo for this fabulous review at The American Thinker.

In case I hadn’t mentioned this (ahem …) The Grand Jihad is now out in paperback, with a new foreword.

It’s not every day that someone like the U.S. Secretary of Defense forecasts an ally’s move, but this just happened when Leon Panetta said that he believes, in the paraphrasing of a Washington Post reporter, that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” Thoughts on this unusual statement:

It’s a paraphrase: For delicate statements, top officials prefer indirection and written words. It offers wiggle room and reduces tensions. Asked whether he disputed the Post report, Panetta inscrutably stated: “No, I’m just not commenting. What I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else.” (Contrast this episode with Barack Obama talking about drones in front of the cameras, an indiscretion that won him trouble, including a lawsuit from the ACLU.)

It might be disinformation: In the mirror world of nuclear diplomacy, we on the outside have almost no way of discerning wheat from chaff. Panetta could be sending a signal to Tehran as opposed to telling the truth. The same applies to other news, be it assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists or sales of ordnance to Israel. Wait a decade to learn what’s really happening now.

Tehran is determined: Iran’s supreme guide, Ali Khamenei, again confirmed that nothing and no one will impede his regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, announcing that “Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to continue our nuclear course.” I believe him. Just as the North Korean regime allowed its subject population to starve in the pursuit of nukes, so will the Iranians pay whatever price.

Israel is also determined: The Israeli leadership looks back to the Holocaust and feels the weight of its responsibility. Commenting on those top-ranking military personnel who disagree with him and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about the Iranian nuclear danger, Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak commented that “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

U.S. presidential elections: Were the Israelis to attack Iran, Obama’s response could have major electoral implications. Were he to approve or (especially) join in the attack, he would scramble the elections to his advantage. Were he to condemn the Israelis, however, he would likely pay a price. 

About what just happened with Komen … 

I’m not enough of a wonk to understand who is right on this one. As widely reported here and elsewhere, the unemployment rate fell to 8.3% — still unacceptably high, but undeniably a positive trend … if the number is legit.

A number of administration detractors, however, say the books are being cooked. They say if you look closely at the numbers, millions of unemployed are no longer being counted because they’re statistically considered to be no longer in the workforce — no longer looking for employment. Specifically on that score, it is said that the labor participation rate (the number of people employed as against the total population) just fell by by 0.3%, and that just last month, the labor force declined by a staggering 1.2 million people.

At The American Spectator’s blog, the excellent Ross Kaminsky — who is no Obama fan — cautions against making too much of these numbers. Reading the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, he says the decline in the labor force is mostly explained by a once-a-decade statistical adjustment, upward, in the size of the population, based on the 2010 census.

Hopefully, the many Cornerites who follow this stuff closer than I do can shed some light. If the books are being cooked, that’s a big deal and we should be screaming about it. But Mr. Kaminsky is surely right that we should also not be trying to make something out of nothing — if, indeed, it is nothing. 

In my syndicated column this week, I take a break from politics to ask: Just who are the happiest wives in America?

(Hint: Ann Romney, Karen Santorum, and Carol Paul are all examples.)

Not long ago, we were told by our intelligence services that Iran was not really building a bomb and that such rumors were the stuff of neo-con conspiracists and more cooked and partisan data. Iran, we rubes were additionally lectured, did not work with al-Qaeda, given that Sunnis and Shiites hated infidels more than each other. And the idea that it would conduct covert operations inside the U.S. was surely more Bush-Cheney scarifying. A new outreach/reset instead would lead to “face-to-face” negotiations, now that swaggering George Bush had left and laureate Barack Obama had reminded the Iranians of his Nobel Prize and non-traditional post-racial heritage. Popular unrest in the streets of Teheran in 2009 was either non-authentic and going nowhere, or at least not properly our right to encourage — given Obama’s careful reach-out to the theocracy, and his deep knowledge of the long and contorted history of U.S. interventions into Iranian internal affairs. Rather than worry about a supposed Iranian bomb, we might try instead to envision the Middle East from the Iranian perspective, hemmed in as it was by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and aware that other potentially hostile states like Israel and Pakistan were nuclear. In any case, a sophisticated reach-out deal with Putin’s Russia would result in behind-the scenes help to stop Iranian nuclear ambitions. Barring that, there was no real reason to believe that a nuclear Iran was not subject to traditional laws of deterrence. And even if the crisis deepened, a new commitment to U.N. multilateralism would engage the U.N. Security Council in the sort of collective action so sorely lacking during the derelict Bush administration.

I think all that has gone the way of the new embassy in Damascus, the breakthrough with the Palestinians, the Putin reset, and our South American initiatives with Chávez, etc. and so we are left with a rather different U.S. policy: Iran is now a danger; we want the Gulf states to pump more oil and find alternative routes of delivery, building the sort of pipelines that we won’t in the U.S., where new federal oil leases are more likely cancelled than granted.

Where are we now? After computer viruses, assassinations, and sanctions, I think we are reduced to the Secretary of Defense not only unwisely publicly predicting an Israeli strike, but even more unwisely offering likely dates of such a mission. Substitute Cheney or Rumsfeld for Panetta, and there would be global outrage at these remarks. All this suggests that the Obama policy is more or less to be summed up by, let Israel do it on Monday, and then on Tuesday we will express “grave concern” and “deep regret” over such a “unilateral” escalation in tensions, as we breathe a sigh of relief and blame the troublesome Israelis once more for stirring up war in the region.

An update on the silencing of the chaplains post from earlier: A spokesman for the Army tells National Review Online:

the Army became aware of the Archbishop’s letter last Friday (Jan. 27) and was concerned that the letter contained language that might be misunderstood in a military setting. The Army asked that the letter not be read from the pulpit.  Instead, the letter would have been referenced in announcements and made available in the back of the chapel for the faithful, if they wished, as they departed after the Mass.  The Army greatly appreciates the Archbishop’s consideration of the military’s perspective and is satisfied with the resolution upon which they agreed.

I mentioned earlier this week that Marco Rubio delivered a beautiful speech at a Susan B. Anthony List event this week, one that goes straight to the potential vice-presidential vetting file. But more than that, he expressed an urgency and issued a challenge. These are shameful years, 39 years of legal abortion, and history, he contended, will see it that way. The choice is ours: Do we want to be a moral beacon or not, protecting the fundamental right of life. Video is now up on the Susan B. Anthony List website. 

The Susan G. Komen foundation succumbed today to a relentless barrage of political bullying, a fact that is not only sad news for those who cherish the sanctity and dignity of all life, but also for all of us who believe that a private philanthropic organization shouldn’t be subjected to such harassment.

That the Komen foundation apologized for its decision to halt contributions to Planned Parenthood is another illustration that political correctness is running amok.

Speaking on behalf of many who have committed their lives to defending the most defenseless, I lament the loss of principled decisions in our culture.

Consider the facts:

• The Komen Foundation is a private philanthropic organization. It has every right to fund or not fund charities or causes of its choice.
• That certain individuals and causes are “outraged” over Komen’s announcement is, in itself, outrageous.
• To complain about a gift not given is the highest form of presumption and arrogance.

And what about Planned Parenthood?

According to its annual report, the nation’s leading abortion provider is worth in excess of $1 billion. In 2010, abortion procedures constituted 91 percent (329,445) of Planned Parenthood’s services for pregnant women.

Yet, to follow their illogical argument, to have lost Komen’s projected yearly gift of $680,000 was somehow going to cripple their empire — and prevent them from continuing to offer mammograms. But Planned Parenthood centers do not offer mammograms, and instead refer women to other clinics for such services.

And let’s not forget what instigated this entire episode: Planned Parenthood is under federal investigation. They’ve been accused of using taxpayer money to perform abortions, a charge they deny, but common sense suggests otherwise. It’s something of a shell game. In 2009 Planned Parenthood received $363.2 million in federal money.  In fact, since 1970, Planned Parenthood has received billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Planned Parenthood is regularly lobbying for even more federal subsidies. So not only do they now want to take more of your money via taxes — but they also want to be able to tell private foundations whom they (should) give to!

It defies logic.

Furthermore, as I indicated earlier this week, the relationship between Komen and Planned Parenthood has always struck me as a peculiar affiliation. That’s because according to some researchers, there’s evidence of increased risk of breast cancer after an abortion. Thus, the very disease Komen is trying to fight is potentially increased by the services Planned Parenthood provides! 

The Susan G. Komen foundation has done much commendable work, and as the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists, they didn’t deserve to be harassed and bullied like they’re being today.

At the core of this matter, though, is a fundamental difference of opinion. Should private organizations have the right to operate under the rule of law? Should they be permitted to distribute their own funds to whom they see fit? Or should they be subjected to the rule and pressure of a mob mentality that is no respecter of independent rights, one who demands the donor’s money?

What we’ve witnessed this week is how bullies beat down their victims. It’s sad, unfortunate and most seriously, a tragic turn of events for the dignity and preservation of the defenseless victims of abortion.

— Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family.

In Catholic churches across the country, parishioners were read letters from the pulpit this weekend from bishops in their diocese about the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services giving Catholics a year before they’ll be required to start violating their consciences on insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs. But not in the Army. 

A statement released this afternoon — which happens to be the 67th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Dorchester, on which four chaplains lost their lives – from the Archdiocese for Military Services explains:

On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels. The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains subsequently sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop’s letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit.  The Chief’s office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.

Archbishop Broglio and the Archdiocese stand firm in the belief, based on legal precedent, that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.

Following a discussion between Archbishop Broglio and the Secretary of the Army, The Honorable John McHugh, it was agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter.  Additionally, the line: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law” was removed by Archbishop Broglio at the suggestion of Secretary McHugh over the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.

The AMS did not receive any objections to the reading of Archbishop Broglio’s statement from the other branches of service. 

So not only were chaplains told not to read the letter, but an Obama administration official edited a pastoral letter . . . with church buy-in?

Didn’t people flee across an ocean-sized pond to be free of this kind of thing?

UPDATE: Army spokesman confirms “the Army asked that the letter not be read from the pulpit.”