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COMMENTARY | According to Jon Stewart’s Super Pac (founded by Stephen Colbert) South Carolina’s Republicans, who go to the polls Saturday, should vote for Herman Cain.

Reasons? South Carolina doesn’t allow for write-in candidates and Stephen Colbert, who according to the Laughing Squid is exploring the possibility of running for president of the United States of South Carolina missed the ballot deadline. Herman Cain (and Texas Gov. Rick Perry who dropped out of the race on Thursday) will, however, appear on the ballot, despite having suspended their campaigns.

I propose four more reasons that South Carolina Republicans should nominate Cain: Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich/

Santorum doesn’t get that the purpose of freedom in no way empowers his theocratic notion that everyone is free, in America, as long as they adopt his personal version of biblical morality. If you’re a straight, middle-class, white, Christian male, then perhaps Santorum is your guy. To everyone else, he’s the devil.

Rep. Paul is only marginally better. His strict constructionist point of view on the Constitution gives no sanctuary to the fact that we ratified that document when it took two months to cross the Atlantic, when no one had ever heard of police actions, because they didn’t exist yet. Interpretation of the Constitution has to happen through an examination of intent, rather than through a legalistic approach of examining words on a page. Elect Rep. Paul, and you have just notified the world’s despots that they are free to start attacking their neighbors.

Romney says, “Corporations are people too, my friend.” Seriously, Republicans? Why are you still even looking at this guy? He’s completely out of touch. Bain Capital was a good place for him because he’s the bane of your party.

Gingrich got into this race with a simple strategy — let all of the others punch each other out, and then swoop in and steal the nomination from a man (Romney) that evangelical Christians wouldn’t support in a race against three Muslims and a Jew. Gingrich for president? Sure, if you thought King Ralph should have kept his throne! You may as well elect Snooki.

Republicans, I’m sorry, but you should sit this one out. Are any of these guys really the guy you want to risk saddling yourselves with for eight years? This is about the future of your party. Vote Herman Cain in South Carolina!

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/pl_ac/10862503_why_south_carolina_republicans_should_vote_for_herman_cain

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NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) ? Score one for ABC News in the ratings department.

Saturday night’s GOP debate was the most-watched of the 2012 campaign as an average of 7.6 million viewers tuned in to watch the presidential candidates take on such hot topics as unemployment and immigration.

Despite a relatively late start time — 9 p.m. on the East Coast — 2.1 million of those viewers were in the key adults 25-54 demographic.

Both of those numbers beat the previous highs, held by Fox News in total viewers (6.11 million on September 22) and MSNBC in the demographic (1.73 million on September 7).

They were also well ahead of the numbers for the only other debate on one of the major broadcast networks, CBS News’ debate on Nov 12.

Moderated by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, the ABC debate was broadcast live from Des Moines, Iowa, with the Iowa caucus — the first of the election season — less than a month away.

Between the two current frontrunners — Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — Gingrich was seen as the winner of the contest, which was also hosted by Yahoo News, the Republican Party of Iowa and the Des Moines Register.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111212/media_nm/us_tvratings_debate

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Republican presidential candidates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, right, take part in the Republican debate, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential candidates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, right, take part in the Republican debate, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich says he is being factually accurate when he calls the Palestinians an “invented” people and says they are the creation of anti-Israel propaganda.

Gingrich’s chief rival for the presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, says the former House speaker has made a mistake in the description and has made it more difficult for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate toward peace.

In remarks Saturday night at a candidate debate, Romney said the United States should allow both sides to talk without signaling a preference.

Gingrich responded to the criticism by saying he is speaking as a historian but adds that it’s time for a candidate to stand up and call Palestinian leaders “terrorists.”

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-10-Debate-Palestinians/id-e85e4c513b184a00a8eb27932abc5688

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WASHINGTON ? Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich landed the endorsement of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper on Sunday while rival Mitt Romney earned a dismissive wave, potentially resetting the race in the state with the first-in-the-nation primary.

For Gingrich, the former House speaker, the backing builds on his recent rise in the polls and quick work to build a campaign after a disastrous start in the summer. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has a vacation home in the state and has been called a “nearly native son of New Hampshire,” absorbed the blow heading into the Jan. 10 vote that’s vital to his campaign strategy.

“We are in critical need of the innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing,” The New Hampshire Union Leader said in its front-page editorial, which was as much a promotion of Gingrich as a discreet rebuke of Romney.

“We don’t back candidates based on popularity polls or big-shot backers. We look for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job,” the endorsement said.

The Union Leader’s editorial telegraphed conservatives’ concerns about Romney’s shifts on crucial issues of abortion and gay rights were unlikely to fade. Those worries have led Romney to keep Iowa’s Jan. 3 caucuses ? where conservatives hold great sway ? at arm’s length.

At the same time, the endorsement boosts Gingrich’s conservative credentials. He spent the week defending his immigration policies against accusations that they a form of amnesty. On Monday, Gingrich takes a campaign swing through South Carolina, the South’s first primary state.

Even Democrats on Sunday were noting Gingrich’s rise.

“He’s clearly a smart guy,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York. “And look, I give him some credit for not just blowing with the winds on an issue like immigration. That showed some real courage.”

Romney, taking a few days’ break for the Thanksgiving holiday, has kept focused on a long-term strategy that doesn’t lurch from one development to another. Last week, he picked up the backing of Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota conservative, to add to his impressive roster of supporters.

The Union Leader’s rejection of Romney wasn’t surprising despite his efforts to woo state leaders. The newspaper rejected Romney four years ago in favor of Arizona Sen. John McCain, using front-page columns and editorials to promote McCain and criticize Romney. In the time since, Romney courted publisher Joseph W. McQuaid. Earlier this year Romney and his wife, Ann, had dinner with the McQuaids at the Bedford Village Inn near Manchester, hoping to reset the relationship. It didn’t prove enough.

Romney’s advisers were quick to point out that Gingrich went into October with more than $1 million in campaign debt. Romney, meanwhile, was sitting on a pile of cash and only last week began running television ads ? a luxury Gingrich can’t yet afford.

The duo’s rivals, meanwhile, tried to gain traction.

Herman Cain on Sunday criticized any immigration proposal that included residency or citizenship but struggled to explain how he would deal with the millions of people estimated to be currently living illegally in the United States.

Cain, who joined the race to great fanfare, has seen his luster fade as his seemed to have trouble articulating the nuances of his policy positions. For instance, he was unable to explain the difference between “targeted identification,” which he says would determine common characteristics of people who want to harm the United States, and racial profiling.

At the same time, Cain acknowledged that accusations that he sexually harassed several women during his days running the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s have pulled him from among the front-runners. He has flatly denied the allegations repeatedly.

“Well, obviously false accusations and confusion about some of my positions has contributed” to his fall in the polls, Cain said.

While Romney enjoys solid support in national polls, many Republicans have shifted from candidate to candidate in search of an alternative to Romney. That led to the rise ? and fall ? of potential challengers such as Cain, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Romney enjoys solid leads in New Hampshire polls, too. A poll released last week showed him with 42 percent support among likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Gingrich followed with 15 percent in the WMUR-University of New Hampshire Granite State poll.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas posted 12 percent support and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman found 8 percent support in that survey.

Those numbers could shift based on the backing of The Union Leader, a newspaper that proudly works to influence elections, from school boards to the White House, in the politically savvy state.

Huntsman, President Barack Obama’s former ambassador to China, said the endorsement points to how competitive the New Hampshire contest is.

“A month ago for Newt Gingrich to have been in the running to capture The (New Hampshire) Union Leader endorsement would have been unthinkable,” Huntsman said in an interview Sunday during a break in campaigning. “I think it reflects, more than anything else, the fluidity, the unpredictability of the race right now.”

The endorsement, signed by McQuaid, suggested that New Hampshire’s only state-wide newspaper was ready to assert itself again as a player in the GOP primary ? even if the newspaper has reservations.

“We don’t have to agree with them on every issue,” McQuaid wrote in the editorial that ran the width of the front page. “We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear.”

Yet with six weeks until the primary, The Union Leader’s move could again shuffle the race, further boosting Gingrich and priving a steady stream of criticism against his rivals. In recent weeks, Gingrich has seen a surge in some polls as Republicans focus more closely on deciding which candidate they consider best positioned to take on Obama.

He has also started to put together a strong campaign organization.

In New Hampshire, he brought on respected tea party leader Andrew Hemingway and his team has been contacting almost 1,000 voters each day. Gingrich hasn’t begun television advertising and has refused to go negative on his opponents.

The newspaper has a decidedly mixed record of picking candidates. It backed Steve Forbes in 2000 and Pat Buchanan’s 1992 and 1996 bids. Neither candidate won the Republican nomination.

Gingrich, who left the House in 1999 under the cloud of an ethics investigation and after disastrous midterm elections for the GOP, has faced skepticism of his personal life. He married to his third wife and acknowledged infidelity during his first marriages.

Even so, voters are giving Gingrich a look ? and the timing appears to be ideal for him.

“Romney is a very play-it-safe candidate. He doesn’t want to offend everybody or anybody,” said Drew Cline, the op-ed editor of The Union Leader. “He wants to be liked. He wants to try to reach out and be very safe, reach out to everybody, bring everybody on board.”

That isn’t the brand of candidate The Union Leader was looking to back, he said.

___

Schumer was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Cain and Cline spoke with CNN’s “State of the Union.” Huntsman appeared on “Fox News Sunday.”

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111127/ap_on_el_pr/us_campaign2012

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UNITED NATIONS ? Bashing the United Nations seldom fails as an applause line for Republican presidential candidates.

Mitt Romney says the U.N. too often becomes a forum for tyrants when it should promote democracy and human rights. Newt Gingrich pledges to take on the U.N.’s “absurdities.” Herman Cain says he would change some of its rules. Rick Perry says he would consider pulling the United States out of the U.N. altogether.

All that U.N. bashing has raised questions about whether a Republican victory could strain the relationship between the United Nations and its host country, the United States.

President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration considers the U.N. critical to the country’s interests, while Republicans traditionally have been disenchanted with the world body over America’s inability to reliably win support for its positions. It doesn’t help that U.N. members often criticize American policies, especially as they relate to Israel and the Palestinians.

That was reinforced last month when the U.N. cultural agency voted to approve a Palestinian bid for full membership in that body, and the U.S. responded by cutting off funding.

Yet history shows that any American president learns to get along with the United Nations “simply because there’s a lot of stuff the U.N. does that is useful to the United States,” said David Bosco, who writes the Multilateralist blog for Foreign Policy magazine.

Case in point: Even the harshest American critics were silent earlier this month when the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog concluded that Iran was probably developing nuclear arms.

Bosco, also an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service, noted that the Republican administration of George W. Bush supported a major expansion in U.N. peacekeeping despite regular sniping about the world body.

But the relationship wasn’t a smooth one. Tensions ran high between the U.S. and the world body during the Bush presidency, especially when outspoken John Bolton was the U.S. ambassador.

U.N. officials have declined to comment on the possibility that a Republican win could strain the United Nations’ relationship with the U.S.

“The United States is an important state at the United Nations and we would expect that relationship would continue under any administration,” said Martin Nesirky, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The presidential race has been dominated by the economy and other domestic issues, but foreign affairs are taking on greater importance and will be the subject of a debate by the Republican candidates Tuesday, giving them another chance to air their views on the U.N.

Cain says he has read and admires Bolton’s foreign policy views, which are highly critical of the United Nations. But the former ambassador to the U.N. said Friday he has not endorsed any of the candidates.

One of the loudest U.N. critics among the candidates is Perry, the Texas governor who has recently slipped in the polls. “I think it’s time for us to have a very serious discussion about defunding the United Nations,” he declared in October.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said in 2007 that U.N. failures were “simply astonishing,” but he has been more measured during the current campaign.

U.N. supporters say that when the candidates bash the world organization, they are simply playing to the most conservative Republicans: the primary voters and caucus-goers needed early in the electoral contest.

“My sense is that if any of them were to be elected president, they would quickly realize that the U.N. serves American interests,” said Peter Yeo, vice president for public policy of the U.N. Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the world body’s work.

“They would find a way to constructively work within the U.N. system,” Yeo added.

Detractors say that the candidates are just being truthful.

“I wouldn’t call it U.N. bashing; I’d call it U.N. realism,” said Bolton. “I think the issue for the United States is what to do to make the U.N. more effective, and the answer to that has to lie in how it is funded.”

Contributions to the U.N.’s regular budget are assessed on a scale based primarily on a country’s ability to pay. Additional contributions to U.N. entities such as the children’s agency UNICEF are voluntary.

The U.S. assessment is the highest ? 22 percent of the total U.N. operating budget. By comparison, China pays 3 percent.

In the 2010 budget year, the U.S. provided $7.7 billion to the U.N. for its regular budget, peacekeeping and other programs, up from $6.1 billion the previous year.

House Republicans recently introduced legislation to force the U.N. to adopt a voluntary funding system. The administration opposes it and it is unlikely to become law.

___

Online:

U.N. Foundation: http://www.unfoundation.org

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_el_pr/un_un_republican_candidates

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