Newt Gingrich released a new attack ad against Mitt Romney today:

Mike Huckabee has since come out and said he did not approve this ad, which uses a clip of him at the beginning.

From Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier Thursday, January 26, 2012

 On Gingrich’s relation to Reagan in light of Nancy Reagan’s remark in 1995 that “Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive”:

Let’s try to clear out the underbrush.

Nancy Reagan is right that the torch was passed from Reagan to Newt. But that speaks to what Newt did in the ’90s, not to what he did in the ’80s.

On the other hand, there’s been an attack on Newt that he criticized Reagan. To which I say: “So what?” Reagan wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t the Pope. He wasn’t unerring. He made mistakes. He admitted the arms-for-hostages was a mistake. Everybody at some point attacked Reagan on different issues. So that I think is irrelevant.

What is relevant is Gingrich’s repeated the claim: “I worked with Ronald Reagan in the ’80s to do x, y, and z, including to bring down the communist empire.”

Well, that is preposterous. First of all, foreign policy is presidential. The Congress has almost no say. If it has any, it’s the Senate. It’s not the House. If it’s in the House, which has almost no say, it would be the majority party. Gingrich was a member of the minority party in the House all through the Reagan years, which has nothing to say about almost anything. He wasn’t even in the leadership. He had no role whatsoever in the destruction of the Soviet Union. That was done by Reagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, George Schultz, Margaret Thatcher, the Pope, Helmut Kohl, Andre Sakharov, and others. Newt is not on the list. And the fact he keeps saying this is a… delusional sign, a sign of grandiosity.

If that is the issue, he [Gingrich] loses. If the issue is, was he a Reaganite in spirit, I think he has a good defense on that.

On Bob Dole’s attack on Gingrich and support for Mitt Romney:

I’m not sure that this will persuade a single Newtonian. The reason is Dole didn’t do that well in ‘96. He is exactly what the Gingrich people would say is what Romney is: He’s the next in line, he’s the establishment favorite, he’s somebody who doesn’t have the kind of fire and energy and ideological fervor that Gingrich had.

So I’m not sure that the Romney people using it — as I’m also not sure that Romney trying to fight on the ground of Reaganism — is a good idea. Because if anybody was not a Reaganite, it surely is Romney….

Essentially, he [Gingrich] brought Reaganism into the ’90s. And on that claim, if that is the one he makes a stand on, he is right.

Who makes up the “Republican establishment”?

Karl Rove is the president. We meet every month on the full moon. I’ve explained this. At the Masonic Temple. We have the ritual: Karl brings the incense, I bring the live lamb and the long knife, and we began . . . with a pledge of allegiance to the Trilateral Commission. That is how it works.

On Pres. Obama’s speech on energy policy, delivered yesterday at Buckley Air Force Base:

In the speech, he . . . said “I’m for an all-out, all-in, all of the above energy policy.”

You know, I thought I was cynical before Obama, but he is turning me into a Diogenes. This guy is saying all of the above.

Here is the guy who just two weeks ago vetoed Keystone, which is a sort of a slam dunk. There is no possible reasonable objection to it other than his political needs.

There is the guy whose EPA has essentially shut down drilling in the Gulf to the point where a judge in Mississippi had to reprimand the administration for not obeying his orders on releasing that [restraint].

We’ve got oil in Alaska and we’re doing nothing about that.

In coal, the EPA is shutting down mine after mine with regulations that the mines can’t meet, which is not going to do anything to help the global warming. The Chinese are building a coal plant a week. We are exporting our coal jobs and mines to China.

So when he says I’m for all of the above and he obviously is not, I think it’s incredibly disingenuous, but he says it with a straight face.

The NYPD once again finds itself in the crosshairs of the New York Times. On Tuesday, theTimes resurrected a year-old story from the Village Voice about the showing of my documentary film The Third Jihad to officers participating in an NYPD training program. What was the new smoking gun that warranted a trifecta of an above-the-fold report from Michael Powell on January 24, an editorial (describing it as a “hate-filled film”) on January 25, and yet another report in theTimes on January 25 — all amplified across the mainstream media by an AP rehash?

The Times was apparently impressed by new and supposedly devastating information that it was over 1,500 police officers who viewed the movie. Never mind that there are almost 35,000 officers on the force.

Powell’s report on Tuesday was shoddy and biased, and ignored central facts presented by the movie. There was no analysis of the film’s ideas or the content that the officers actually viewed. The article instead simply channeled the scattered ramblings of the victimology of the opponents of the movie. Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism noted last year that “the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ protest that the documentary The Third Jihad smears Muslims reveals more about CAIR’s desire to hide its record than any concern for the civil rights of Muslim Americans.”Now, again, in following CAIR, the Times reveals its own exploitation of American Muslims in order to score political points.

Powell’s premise is that the film is discriminatory against American Muslims because it presents all Muslims as radicalized. Yet if Powell, a journalist, believed the film to be an affront to Muslims, wouldn’t he have felt a duty to speak with the devout Muslim who narrated the movie, to see why he was involved in its making? Powell made no attempt to discuss the film with me, or indeed with any other Muslims who sympathize with the film’s view. (The AP, on the other hand, did contact me and placed a one-sentence response from me in its otherwise sympathetic rehash of the Times piece.) I’m an observant American Muslim, one who has chosen to take on a “jihad against jihad” as an act of love for my faith, in order to help protect our children from the inherent separatism of political Islam. Times readers would have been well served by being given my perspective.

In 2007, the NYPD released a landmark report titled “ Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” a seminal piece of research on how radicalization occurs. I embraced it as a blueprint that could help American Muslims confront the threat to our religion and to our country. Groups like CAIR, on the other hand, saw it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between American Muslims and law enforcement. The attacks by the Times upon the NYPD have everything to do with the efforts of CAIR to use American Muslims as a tool to suppress dissent and frame our communities as victims of American society.

The Third Jihad is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. If it were, I would not have been a part of it. To this day, when it comes to Muslim diversity and the battle of ideas within Islam, it remains utterly bewildering why a major newspaper like the Times ignores anti-Islamist Muslim reformers. They essentially have no use in their political agenda for devout Muslims who maintain the courage to publicly take on the dominant American Islamist establishment from within.

— Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim, is president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and author of the forthcoming book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith (Simon and Schuster, June 2012).

I’m genuinely puzzled.

Rush Limbaugh kicked off his show today by reading from Jeffrey Lord’s piece accusing Elliott Abrams of quoting Newt Gingrich out of context. Lord’s post at the American Spectator blog is a response to Abrams’ piece here at NRO. By all means go read both pieces for yourself. I just did.

Among other things, Lord argues that when Abrams quoted Gingrich as criticizing President Reagan’s policies towards the Soviet Union, Abrams was taking the quote out of context. From Lord’s blog post:

Abrams quotes Newt for saying in this speech that Reagan’s policies towards the Soviets are “inadequate and will ultimately fail.” This is shameful. Why? Here’s what Newt said — in full and in context:

“The fact is that George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are right in pointing out the enormous gap between President Reagan’s strong rhetoric, which is adequate, and his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail.”

In other words, Newt was picking up on a concern, prominent in the day and voiced by no less than Reagan’s then ex-UN Ambassador Kirkpatrick, not to mention prominent Reagan supporters Will and Kristol and the late-Mondale aide turned conservative Krauthammer, that Reagan’s anti-Communist policies could be stronger if better institutionalized and not tied as much to the Reagan persona. The entire speech focused on suggestions of how to do just that — to effectively institutionalize Reagan’s conservative beliefs in the government. Is Abrams seriously accusing Jeane Kirkpatrick and George Will of being anti-Reagan? Of spewing “insulting rhetoric” at a president everyone in Washington knew they staunchly supported? Really? Of course not. But in apparent service to the Romney campaign, in order to make Newt Gingrich appear to be doing just that, Abrams apparently quite deliberately cut out the original Gingrich reference to Will, Kirkpatrick, Krauthammer, and Kristol.

Personally, I think that the knock on Gingrich for criticizing Reagan is overblown, for reasons that Reagan biographer Steve Hayward ably explains over at Powerline. Lots of conservatives criticized Reagan for particular policies or remarks during the 1980s. But the Elliott Abrams piece never claimed that Gingrich was constantly, relentlessly anti-Reagan. Abrams merely argued that Gingrich lodged criticisms of Reagan’s decisions that were often abrasive and, well, wrong in retrospect. Yes, you can say something similar about George Will and other conservatives. That doesn’t mean that Abrams took Gingrich’s comments out of context or misrepresented them in some way. That is a serious charge against someone’s competence or honesty, and requires more evidence than Lord offered.

Gingrich did say during his 1986 speech that Reagan’s polices concerning the Soviet empire were “inadequate and will ultimately fail.” Those were Gingrich’s words, not George Will’s, although they may have represented a view shared by both Gingrich and Will. That does not constitute taking Gingrich’s words out of context.

Was Gingrich less favorable to President Reagan’s policies than Mitt Romney was at the time? Of course not. I also think the whole matter is extraneous to the current moment. There isn’t much daylight between Gingrich and Romney on today’s foreign-policy challenges, or on the Cold War in retrospect.

Perhaps Mark Krikorian or one of our fellow Cornerites could help me out on this. Last night, explaining his position on illegal immigration, Mitt Romney said this:

The answer is we’re going to have a system that gives people who come legally a card that identifies them as coming here legally. Employers are going to be expected to inspect that card, see if they’re here legally. On that basis we’re going to be able to bring you to this country.

What’s he on about? I’ve got a card that identifies me as coming here legally. It’s called a Green Card, or “Permanent Resident Card”, and it has my “Alien Registration Number” on it. And, thanks to FDR, I’m obliged to carry it with me at all times, including when I’m strolling in the woods behind my pad here in New Hampshire. If I were to be employed by anyone, they wouldn’t generally ask for my Alien Registration Number, but they’d insist on my Social Security or Taxpayer Identification Number. Because in the land of the free it’s increasingly illegal for one person to write a check to another for all but the most footling sums without taking the requisite government numbers for the W8s and 1099s and all the rest.

So is Mitt proposing yet another stupid card and pointless official number from the Republic of Paperwork? And, if so, why would that database be any less liable to abuse and corruption than Social Security and drivers’ licenses have proved?

I’m not part of the problem, so why do I need to be part of Mitt’s solution? I’d wager that, as with all the other bureaucratic barnacles encrusted to America’s rusting hulk since 9/11, this latest card – like the eyeball scans and fingerprinting – will be used by a lazy and inept immigration bureaucracy to torment and harass legal immigrants, while those outside the system get on with their lives unimpeded. And no doubt some obliging judge will rule that it’s illegal for employers to demand to see the new card.

Between federal and state numbers, I have more official numbers from the United States than from any other country I’ve ever lived in. Why do I need another one?

Mona, I get some of the same mail you do, from people who think that Newt is the Last Word in Conservatism. I’m learning, more and more, that political perceptions have a great deal to do with style. If you slash and shout, many people think of you as “conservative” or “right-wing.” If you say right-wing things in a calm, polite way, you may be seen as a moderate.

“Attitude” is another word that comes to mind — attitude and style. They have so much to do with political perceptions.

Think about two governors, Perry and Romney. (Well, one’s a former governor.) Perry is considered the more conservative by far. But there are some areas in which Romney is to the “right” of Perry. Thing is, Perry could quote The Communist Manifesto and he’d still come off as conservative. It’s the swagger, the chest, the twang — all that.

I used to say that Richard Armitage seemed right-wing, looked right-wing. He was built like a brick you-know-what. I think William Safire once referred to him as “a State Department source, with no neck.” But Armitage was at one, philosophically, with Colin Powell.

Newt Gingrich will always seem more conservative than Romney, if for style and attitude alone, I think.

P.S. The enemies a guy makes makes a huge difference too. In some ways, Nixon out-LBJ’d LBJ, as he occasionally liked to brag. But the Left hated Nixon so much, righties rallied to him. 

The megalomania of Olympic officialdom is no secret, but I have to say that this took me aback:

MILAN — Italy’s Olympic committee president has urged the government not to drop Rome’s bid for the 2020 Games amid concerns over the country’s financial crisis. Premier Mario Monti, who heads a government tackling Italy’s economic problems, has been noncommittal about guaranteeing funds for the Olympics.

Olympic committee chief Gianni Petrucci urged Monti to commit to the bid, calling it a “unique and one-time opportunity” to bring the games back to Rome for the first time since 1960. In an interview with Corriere della Sera on Tuesday, Petrucci said postponing the candidacy until the 2024 Olympics would put Italy in a tough position against possible bids from South Africa, France and the United States.

And what a tragedy that would be. Good grief.

Mr. Monti should pop over to the Englishman’s Castle, and read what is being talked about there before taking the one second necessary to decide to postpone the Italian bid indefinitely. The Englishman, you see, was reacting to this report on Sky:

The true cost of the London 2012 Games for the UK taxpayer comes in at over £12 billion, £2.7 bn more than the 9.3bn budget, a Sky investigation has revealed. This means the cost of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is approximately six times the £2.37 billion pounds that was originally quoted when London bid for the Games in 2005.

 That original public sector funding package, which is primarily cash to build the venues and provide security and policing, was increased in 2007 to approximately £9.3bn after a review of the figures.

However the extra money, revealed by Sky comes on top of this £9.3 bn. The additional cash includes spends such as more anti-doping control officers, money for local councils for their Olympic torch relay programmes, cash spent on legacy schemes, paying tube workers not to strike, governmental operational costs, the cost of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, legal bills over the stadium tenancy decision and extra cash to UK Sport… The additional money calculated by Sky does not include extra counter terrorism funding of £1.131bn being allocated to the police despite a ministerial statement saying “much of this capacity will be devoted to the Olympics in 2012″. Nor does it include the £4.4bn budgets of the security and intelligence services.

It also doesn’t take into account the opportunity cost of having the majority of the UK police force working on the Games instead of fighting crime elsewhere. On peak days 12,000 police officers will be policing the Games.

In addition Sky’s total misses out the £6.5bn spent on transport upgrades which have been brought forward due to the Olympic Games and could have been cancelled as part of the Conservative government’s spending cuts if it wasn’t for the Olympics.

If we had counted these figures, the Olympic spend would have totalled well over £24 billion, more than double the current Olympic budget and ten times the original calculation….

By comparison Newt’s Moonbase Alpha could almost be seen as a bargain.

The Sky report concludes:

Following previous Olympic Games, nobody has ever been able to accurately predict the final cost and it won’t be until 2013 when we can predict whether any increased tourism, economic benefits and the returns from the tenancy or sale of the Olympic venues and Olympic village will be a worthwhile investment.

The Englishman is less cautious:

I think I can safely predict now whether it will be a worthwhile investment, the answer is a big f****** NO.

And that, Mr. Monti, is what you should say to Petrucci.

The moon!

There’s still time to vote, I think.

You may have noticed on the last couple post-debate homepage polls we begin with “Putting aside Ron Paul . . . .” I’ve seen sundry complaints about this in e-mail, comments, and social media, so I figured it was worth explaining.

We’re not trying to silence Paul fans, or even dismiss his candidacy. Indeed, lots of us have said publicly and privately that we expect Dr. Paul to do well enough to be a force at the convention, if not the candidate that ends up on stage. The reason we decided to exclude Paul is quite simply that we don’t trust his numbers. And the reason we don’t trust his numbers is that just about every time he’s on a poll with other Republican hopefuls, he starts out at the back of the pack but then enjoys suspicious, and statistically highly unlikely, late afternoon/evening surges. ‘So what?’  you say. ‘Maybe Paul supporters like to sleep in.’ Yeah, sure, maybe. Or maybe they’re trolls.

We design the homepage polls not just to get the pulse of National Review Online readers, but to give NRO readers the pulse of each other. And if we suspect large numbers of non-readers are showing up to spam our polls in a way that gives a skewed picture of the NRO community’s views, we’re going to take actions to correct it.

Hope that explains things.

The green wheel turns…

Via the Guardian

The trial of a Tunisian TV station charged with “insulting sacred values” by screening the award-winning film Persepolis resumed earlier this week, only to be postponed again. The trial is being seen as a crucial test for the role of Islam within the country’s nascent democracy.

Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s animation is accused of violating Islam with its cartoon representation of God. The film sparked furious protests when it was broadcast by the Nessma TV station last year.

Based on Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis is a coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Following its broadcast in October 2011, Islamic extremists stormed the Nessma office in Tunis and later firebombed Karoui’s house. The trial of Nessma began in November but was quickly adjourned after angry confrontations within the courtroom. Following further altercations this week, the trial has again been postponed. It is now due to resume in April.

At the trial earlier this week, Nabil Karoui, the director of Nessma, said: “I am sorry to be here today, this is a political trial. It is the trial of 10m Tunisians who dreamed of having a democratic country.” His station has been charged with “insulting sacred values, offending decent morals and causing public unrest”.

In my piece today, I look at how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed the role earmarks played in congress. Before Gingrich, House members on the Appropriations committee requested them. But it was Gingrich who spearheaded making earmark requests the new normal for all House members — because he realized that being able to point to earmarks obtained could help House members keep their seats. 

My column on Romney today, although some of the specific examples were overtaken by the debate last night.

So far, 2012 has been a good year for religious liberty in federal court. Two weeks ago the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that religious organizations have a First Amendment right to choose their ministers — even in the face of federal nondiscrimination policies. Today, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial-court ruling that essentially allowed Eastern Michigan University to erect a “no Christians allowed” sign outside its graduate counseling program. I explained the case almost three years ago (when it was first filed):

Eastern Michigan University expelled Julea Ward because she was unwilling to vocally support same-sex sexual conduct in counseling sessions. They expelled her in spite of the fact that the she referred to another counselor the only client for whom her stance was relevant and had never even engaged the issue with that client. They expelled her in spite of the fact that she followed the exact process for referral recommended by leaders in the profession. In short, they expelled her not because she harmed anyone but simply because she was unwilling to express support for things she did not believe.

Applying an astonishingly broad policy that prohibits students from even “condoning” discrimination (whatever that means), the university informed Julea that she would have to “see the error of her ways” and change her “belief system” to stay in school. She refused to change her deeply held beliefs, refused to voice support for actions she finds immoral, and found herself out of the program — in spite of a stellar GPA.

The trial court had essentially ruled that the university could do whatever it wanted with its curriculum, and if it wanted to mandate that Christian students affirm homosexuality while granting referrals and exemptions to other students on other issues, it could. The Sixth Circuit disagreed, strongly:  

A reasonable jury could find that the university dismissed Ward from its counseling program because of her faith-based speech, not because of any legitimate pedagogical objective. A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree. 

The stakes of this case were very high. If the university had prevailed, students would truly have been at the mercy of ad hoc ideological demands reformulated as “curricular requirements.” Understanding the stakes for individual liberty, the Michigan attorney general, the American Center for Law and Justice (where I’m a senior counsel), the Becket Fund, Eugene Volokh, and others submitted amicus briefs on Ward’s behalf. They were opposed by, among others, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, LAMBDA Legal, and the ACLU.

I argued the case at the trial-court level (and cough lost cough) when I was at the Alliance Defense Fund and was on the appellate briefs, but the credit and congratulations go to Julea Ward, my former ADF colleagues, and my friend ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco, who argued the case at the Sixth Circuit. Well done, Jeremy.

Getting lots of mail accusing me of RINOism. Why is it that people who support Newt believe they are backing the more conservative candidate? Where is the evidence that Gingrich is more conservative than Romney? Gingrich has supported embryonic stem cell research, Medicare Part D, global warming legislation, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, an industrial policy, amnesty for some illegal immigrants, and ethanol subsidies, among many other apostasies. True, he has also changed (and changed back) some of those views. But does harranguing the press really count for so much?

Romney is not a solid conservative either. But unlike Newt Gingrich, who would drag the Republican party to defeat across the board, he has been moving consistently to the right for the better part of a decade and he doesn’t repel independents. 

My guess, and I admit it’s only that, is that Romney would prove a far more conservative president than people imagine if he were to be elected. But, in supporting him, I’m faithful to the Buckley Rule. You can have your Newtist colonies on the moon.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Foster Friess is the largest financial backer of the political entity running an independent campaign to boost Mr. Santorum in the GOP race. Mr. Friess said this week he isn’t likely to help Mr. Santorum ahead of Tuesday’s Florida primary, because it’s “not realistic” that the former Pennsylvania senator can prevail in the winner-take-all contest.

But Mr. Friess, 71 years old, said he plans to fund television advertisements for Mr. Santorum in other states in February and March. That could help keep Mr. Santorum competitive against his better-funded rivals and is one reason the fight for the Republican nomination will likely run at least through Super Tuesday on March 6.

However, of course, Friess alone can’t prop up Santorum’s campaign. Asked about this in South Carolina, Santorum pointed out that a super PAC couldn’t pay for his travel or other campaign costs. But with both Romney and Gingrich buoyed by well-funded super PACs, Friess’s support will give Santorum at least a fighting shot in the next couple of months. 

Results from Quinnipiac poll of likely GOP Florida voters: Mitt Romney (38 percent), Newt Gingrich (29 percent), Ron Paul (14 percent), and Rick Santorum (12 percent). 

When Arizona governor Jan Brewer greeted President Obama on the Phoenix airport tarmac, he voiced his displeasure with her account of a White House meeting between the two in June 2010. The president claimed Brewer’s portrayal of him was inaccurate, and Brewer asked him if he had actually read the book. Obama replied that he had read the relevant excerpt.

The book in question is Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border. Starting on page 162, Brewer describes her encounter with the president. After sitting down in the Oval Office with him, she writes:

The president’s tone got serious — and condescending. He proceeded to lecture me about everything he was doing to promote “comprehensive immigration reform.” . . . He mentioned that the Department of Justice was reviewing SB 1070 and that he was leaving to them the decision whether to sue [Arizona]. “I will not put my finger on the scales of justice with regard to this review,” he said. “I have completely delegated the decision to them.” . . .

She continues:

It wasn’t long before I realized I was hearing the president’s stump speech. Only I was supposed to listen without talking. Did he care to hear the view from the actual scene at the border? . . . I didn’t think so. His mind seemed made up. . . . It was as though President Obama thought he would lecture me and I would learn at his knee. He was patronizing. He understood that we were “frustrated,” he said — heck, yes, we were frustrated! — but he didn’t seem interested in knowing why. Then it dawned on me: He’s treating me like the cop he had over for a beer after he badmouthed the Cambridge police, I thought. He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me.

Afterward, Brewer describes how she complained that her five letters to the administration had never been answered. Obama said he didn’t know about them, and within minutes of their meeting, the White House called Brewer’s office to obtain copies of the letters. Brewer also says she asked the president to visit the Arizona border with Mexico himself. 

In a new NBC/WSJ poll, Newt Gingrich leads at 37 percent, followed by Mitt Romney (28 percent), Rick Santorum (18 percent), and Ron Paul (12 percent). In general election match-ups, Obama vs. Romney is 49 percent to 43 percent, Obama vs. Gingrich is 55 percent to 37 percent, and Obama vs. Santorum is 53 percent to 38 percent. 

Liberals professors are always saying that their politics are private, and that left-wing dominance of college and university faculties has no effect on the teaching they do in classrooms. Tell that to the students of Prof. Joel Rogers at the University of Wisconsin Law School — and check out his quote at the end of this extract, from a report by Judith Ayers at The College Fix:

Students at the University of Wisconsin Law School were surprised at the end of the Fall 2011 semester when they received an e-mail from their Professor propositioning them. The e-mail asked students for their help in a private political project, while final grades in their classes had yet to be posted.

Professor Joel Rogers taught the class, entitled Law & Contemporary Problems: Public Law & Private Power. …

Rogers offered students the chance to work for an organization he has been developing for the last several years called the American Legislative Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE). It is intended to function as a liberal counterpart to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The goal of ALICE is “identifying, supporting and assisting 10,000 progressive local elected officials.” …

The College Fix spoke with Rogers. He said he did not see a problem with providing students an opportunity to put what they’ve learned into practice. “It’s like asking a priest not to pray…they have acquired skills and want to use them in real life.”

Either Gingrich’s debate-prep team is not as careful as Romney’s, or Newt is not listening to them. Did he not think that Wolf Blitzer would anticipate an attack like the one John King received? Did he not appreciate that Mitt’s investments are now old hat, and that Romney would therefore be able to turn them around on Gingrich as he did in the embarrassing Freddie/Fannie exchange? Did he not know that he is stereotyped not just as a big-idea guy but a big-loopy-idea guy? Why, then, talk about moon colonies on the eve of the debate?

Last night’s debate revealed that Romney is preparing far better than Gingrich for these debates, largely in the sense that he analyzes his weaknesses and Gingrich’s as well, and then deliberately prepares the suitable defense and offense, while Newt, in Napoleonic fashion, believes his innate talent and exuberance will naturally carry him through. The result is a sort of Waterloo, where method and prep defeat predictable talent.