More conventional wisdom that needs dispelling this primary season: The adulterous and thrice-married Newt Gingrich will be unable to attract evangelical voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

While it's true that the former House speaker ultimately may fail to achieve the redemption he's seeking from Iowa evangelicals, it is also a fact that he has been quietly building bridges to that important segment of the caucus-going electorate for more than a year now. And, he not only built the bridges, he paid for them. And that could turn out to be Gingrich's greatest secret weapon against his rivals in the Republican caucus in January.

Gingrich's financial ties to Freddie Mac and the mortgage market, the ethanol industry and big health care have gotten lots of well-deserved scrutiny lately, but less well analyzed is a nonprofit he started called Renewing American Leadership (ReAL), which was devoted to issues the religious right cares about. The organization was financed by donations solicited by Gingrich and run by a trusted political operative, Rick Tyler, who later went to work for his presidential campaign, according to multiple news accounts. ReAL poured $150,000 into the successful campaign by Iowa social conservatives in 2010 to oust three Iowa Supreme Court judges, who were targeted after the high court struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage.

One of President Obama's political weaknesses in his first term has been that he's all-too-willing to avoid making tough decisions, hesitant to expend political capital for potential long-term gain.  Throughout his first term in office, he's had a cautious governing style, and has avoided taking on some of his party's core constituencies.

He delegated the crafting of his health care bill to Congressional leaders, he declined to embrace the deficit-reduction recommendations of his own Bowles-Simpson commission, and most recently, he punted on a long-planned construction of a pipeline to avoid a confrontation with environmentalists.  During the debt ceiling debate, he wanted to be seen as the grown-up in the room - that's politically advantageous - but hardly specified any of the tough budget cuts or entitlement reforms he would have liked - a much tougher political proposition.

On political messaging, too, White House strategists seem all-too-eager to have their cake and eat it too.  The strategy for the summer was to portray Obama as the bipartisan conciliator because that's what they thought independent voters wanted.  When that failed, Obama's now become the populist protector of the working class. It's enough to make your head spin.

Publicly Obama campaign strategists insist they'll be able to win over blue-collar working-class voters and white-collar suburbanites - and won't have to make difficult decisions over which states are more important to contest.   It's part of the philosophy that you can have your cake and eat it too - even in the face of contrary evidence.

So when I was reading this story from Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas in the Los Angeles Times, I had another sense of déjà vu.  In it, Obama advisers claim the president has gained support over the last month because he avoided engaging with Congress over the super committee budget deliberations. They argued that as he's kept his distance from an unpopular Congress, he's seen his approval inch upwards ever-so-slightly.

But in the same breath, they're arguing that to avoid a perception of "weak leadership," he needs to actively involve himself in preserving a tax break for American workers.  So over the next month, he's going to be pushing for the renewal of the payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment benefits. Heck, he may even ask for a primetime television address on this fresh legislative fight -- if the TV networks allow it.

From National Journal:

ANALYSIS
Will Arpaio Endorsement Restart Perry?

CAMPAIGN 2012Cain Train Still Chugging

TECHNOLOGY
Facebook Settles FTC Privacy Suit

Here's a telling sign of how much President Obama's fortunes have changed since 2008 -- a leading Democratic Congressional recruit is now attacking a Republican congressman for supporting the president.

Former Ohio Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson, who was attacked relentlessly for being too close with President Obama in last year's losing campaign, kicked off his comeback bid today by accusing his Republican rival of the same sin.

Wilson, who represented a rural, blue-collar district along the Ohio River, is seeking a rematch against freshman Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio.  In his successful 2010 campaign, Johnson effectively characterized Wilson as a lackey of national Democrats, blasting him for casting a critical vote for Obama's health care law and the stimulus.

So it's striking that Wilson is now trying to use that same tactic against Johnson, criticizing the congressman for supporting free trade agreements backed by President Obama.

"I am disappointed that Congressman Johnson supported President Obama's free trade agenda this year. These agreements will ship even more of our jobs overseas," Wilson told WTRF-TV.

Keep in mind that Johnson's district isn't overwhelmingly Republican, but it's the type of rural, blue-collar district where Obama has badly struggled lately.  Obama came within two points of defeating John McCain here in 2008, and Kerry performed similarly against George W. Bush in 2004. 

Corrected: This post has been updated to reflect the size of Romney's initial ad buy on WMUR last week.

Mitt Romney's campaign is preparing to launch its second major advertising flight in New Hampshire, six weeks before the state's first-in-the-nation primary.

The campaign has purchased $85,535 in advertisements on WMUR, New Hampshire's main broadcast station, for ads that will run December 1 to December 6, a Republican source who watches the ad market tells us.

Romney launched a $134,000 buy last week taking President Obama to task just as Obama traveled to the Granite State. A significant buy in the state is $100,000 to $150,000, including cable and other outlets, so $85,000 on a single station is going to be noticed.

Rick Perry is the only other candidate to have advertised heavily in New Hampshire.

We've reached out to Romney's campaign to get details on the new ad. We'll post when we see it.

Every now and then, we suffer from an embarrassment of riches. As we considered today's Hotline Quote of the Day, there were just too many good choices. Here are some of the best runners-up from today:

"There's not another candidate who has more gratuitously promoted the state of New Hampshire. I've gone on all the talk shows. I've gone on Saturday Night Live for heaven's sake."

-- Jon Huntsman, begging, Concord Monitor, 11/30

"We've got real issues to talk about not the latest bimbo eruption."

- Huntsman, Boston Herald, 11/29.

"I did. I'll do that from time to time."

-- Rick Perry, explaining his NH "caucuses" flub this morning, MSNBC, 11/30.

Below the jump, our runaway winner and today's Hotline Quote of the Day.

GOV. ROMNEY: Now let's, now let's look at those very carefully, OK, and you're, you're a careful reader. In the interview with The Boston Globe, I described all three programs that were out there, described what they were, acknowledged that they were not technically an amnesty program, but I indicated in that same interview that I had not formulated my own proposal and that I was endorsing none of those three programs. I did not support any of them. I called them reasonable. They are reasonable efforts to, to look at the problem. But I said I did not support--and I said specifically in that interview I have not formulated my own policy and have not determined which I would support. And, of course, the Cornyn proposal required all of the immigrants to go home. The McCain proposal required most of them to go home, but let some stay. And the Bush proposal I, frankly, don't recall in that much detail. But they had very different proposals. My own view is consistent with what you saw in the Lowell Sun, that those people who had come here illegally and are in this country--the 12 million or so that are here illegally--should be able to stay sign up for permanent residency or citizenship, but they should not be given a special pathway, a special guarantee that all of them get to say here for the rest of their lives merely by virtue of having come here illegally. And that, I think, is the great flaw in the final bill that came forward from the Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: But they shouldn't have to go home?

GOV. ROMNEY: Well, whether they go home--they should go home eventually. There's a set per--in my view they should be--they should have a set period during which period they, they sign up for application for permanent residency or, or for citizenship. But there's a set period where upon they should return home. And if they've been approved for citizenship or for a permanent residency, well, thy would be a different matter. But for the great majority, they'll be going home.

MR. RUSSERT: The children they had born here are U.S. citizens, so do the children stay here and the parents go home?

GOV. ROMNEY: Well, that's a choice, of course, the parents would, would make. But my view is that those 12 million who've come here illegally should be given the opportunity to sign up to stay here, but they should not be given any advantage in becoming a permanent resident or citizen by virtue of simply coming here illegally. And likewise, if they've brought a child to this country or they've had a child in this country, that's, that's wonderful that they're growing their families, but that doesn't mean that they all get to stay here indefinitely. We're fundamentally a nation of laws.

With the imminent collapse of Herman Cain's campaign and a surging Newt Gingrich, the Republican primary field is closer than it's been in months to anointing an anti-Mitt Romney candidate.

If President Obama's team wants to cause Romney some real headaches, now is the time to take a page from another Democrat who faced the prospect of a difficult Republican opponent -- former California Gov. Gray Davis.

It's a playbook at least one senior Obama adviser knows well. After all, he wrote it.

In 2002, Davis ran for re-election with terrible approval ratings, a lousy economy and a very strong opponent in Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Riordan was a liberal Republican who would have given even Democratic-leaning Californians a palatable option in replacing Davis in the governor's mansion.

But Riordan had to get through a Republican primary first, a primary in which he faced the much more conservative Bill Simon. Riordan had better name recognition and led early polling by wide margins. But Davis and his team meddled in the GOP primary, spending $10 million on advertisements against Riordan before Republican voters headed to the polls. Those ads killed Riordan's momentum; in the March 2002 primary, Simon beat Riordan, 49 percent to 31 percent.

"Early polling showed that Davis's numbers were in the tank. Early polling showed that Riordan was ahead of him in the general election. And Dick Riordan, when he launched his campaign in the primary, decided he was running against Gray Davis," said Garry South, Davis's general consultant in the 2002 race.

Davis effectively picked his opponent, and it paid off: He ran an almost entirely negative campaign, painting Simon as a radical conservative out of touch with California. Despite incredibly low approval ratings -- just 39 percent approved of his job performance on Election Day and 57 percent viewed him personally unfavorably, according to Davis's own polling -- Davis made the race about Simon; Davis won, 47 percent to 42 percent.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a major step this morning toward inoculating his campaign against the soft-on-illegal-immigration rap when he scooped up the endorsement of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Arizona lawman who has become the most recognizable symbol of transcendent voter frustration with runaway illegal immigration.

"The federal government has failed on border crime and border enforcement, and no candidate for president has done more to secure the border than Governor Rick Perry. I have been watching Governor Perry and Texas closely and know his border surge operations with state, local and federal law enforcement officials have helped shut down the illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people," Arpaio said in a statement today distributed by the Perry campaign.

Campaigning in New Hampshire this morning, Perry also used the occasion to pledge that as president, he will detain and deport apprehended illegal immigrants through expedited hearings, a tougher stance than he had before the issue became an ankle chain on his campaign.
 

Many Iowa-based Republicans goaded Mitt Romney for months to treat their state not as an afterthought but a launch-pad for his presidential campaign. And the former Massachusetts governor, after wavering most of the fall, has finally acquiesced - sending mailers, opening new campaign offices and, according to The New York Times, planning to air TV ads.

So are those same Republicans now crowing Romney made the right call? Not exactly. 

Make sure to read The New York Times's Jim Rutenberg's excellent overview of Team Obama's 2012 strategy, which involves a healthy heaping of negative attacks on the Republican nominee sprinkled with helpful reminders about the president's counterterrorism successes.

But one nugget about the electoral map caught my eye. Rutenberg writes:

Obama's team acknowledges that it is not likely that the stars will align as well for them in 2012. But, having won in 2008 with 365 electoral votes when 270 are needed, they believe they have 95 to spare next year. That buys a lot of breathing room. Mr. Obama could lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Indiana and still win re-election -- though that would mean having to win just about every other state he won last time...

Mr. Messina also said the campaign would focus on holding on to the "New South" states of Virginia and North Carolina that Mr. Obama won last time. It has gone all-out with its plan to have the Democratic convention in Charlotte in September.

That's a roundabout way of saying that Obama's team is focusing on winning Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado (and Michigan/Wisconsin in the Democratic-leaning column) as its most logical pathway to 270 electoral votes.  It means that, despite the spin they're focused at winning every state, they feel that their best chance of securing 270 electoral votes is through the upscale, white-collar coalition that propelled Obama to victory in 2008 - one I outlined in my column earlier this month.   It explains the administration's decision to punt on the Keystone XL pipeline, for fear of alienating environmentalists that make up an important constituency in many of these states.

It also means Obama's pathway to victory is awfully narrow.  Under this map, Obama could win with 270 electoral votes, to the Republican's 268. And it would include carrying North Carolina, the home of the Democratic convention next year, which Obama only won by 14,000 votes in 2008.

The spin shows that while Obama's team is putting an optimistic face on its prospects, its path to victory is getting narrower.

UPDATE: Also note, from Julie Pace's AP dispatch, that the White House is emphasizing VP Joe Biden's campaign role in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Floirda over Obama's.Those three traditional battleground states were included on the list of states Obama could lose and still win 270 electoral votes.

Also From National Journal:
Barney Frank Bows Out, Cites Redistricting Among Reasons | Obama Gives Thumbs Up to NBA Deal | Union-Leader Endorses Gingrich | Arab League Approves Sanctions Against Syria | Romney Steps up Obama Attacks

the Lowell Sun in 2006: "I don't believe in rounding up 11 million people and forcing them at gunpoint from our country. With these 11 million people, let's have them registered, know who they are. Those who've been arrested or convicted of crimes shouldn't be here; those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process towards application for citizenship, as they would from their home country."

Whether Romney -- and Gingrich and many of their presidential rivals -- have taken different sides of the immigration debate isn't in dispute. The broader problem is that aside from Gingrich, none of the Republican contenders -- no one in either party's leadership for that matter -- is putting forth a realistic plan to deal with the millions of undocumented workers who are already here.

It is becoming obvious that the outside groups that will raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of Republican candidates are going to outraise those groups spending money for Democratic candidates. That's going to be a complicating factor in President Obama's bid for re-election -- and Democrats have only themselves to blame.

Over the last decade, Democratic groups were way ahead of their Republican counterparts in pushing the boundaries of campaign finance legislation. Unions, environmental groups and other liberal surrogates used fronts organized under sections 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) and 527 of the Internal Revenue Code to raise and spend huge amounts of money on field programs and ad campaigns.

But Citizens United v. FEC changed all that. The 2010 Supreme Court ruling, along with another case called SpeechNow.org v. FEC, allowed outside groups to raise and spend unlimited funds without disclosing donors. Republicans were ready to take advantage of the new rules, and groups like American Crossroads, the American Action Network and other so-called super PACs got off to quick starts.

Now, Democrats are racing to catch up with their Republican rivals, and it's not going great. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have set a goal of raising and spending $300 million in the next year, while Priorities USA, the outfit that will back Obama's re-election campaign, is aiming for $100 million. Crossroads is raising big bucks at a breakneck pace; Priorities has spent less than $1 million, an indication of a sluggish fundraising pace.

My post yesterday on the so-called super committee's so-real failure ("Shame On Us, Washington") drew criticism from the White House, its Democratic allies and some journalists.

"I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who have been here a quarter century, who have children and grandchildren, who are members of the community, who may have done something 25 years ago, separate them from their families and expel them.

The party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families who have been here a quarter century.  I'm prepared to take the heat for saying, let's be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families."

I can understand why Mitt Romney wanted his first television advertisement against President Obama to be splashy and provocative. New Hampshire is a perfect place for it. The president visits the state to talk to about jobs; as his motorcade left for the airport today, a lone protestor waved a sign that said "Obama isn't Working." In trial heats, Romney is beating Obama by almost double digits. The super committee has failed in Washington. It's a great time for a great first ad.

I cannot understand why Romney's ad would be so deceptive - or would NEED to be so deceptive. That adjective is the same adjective that the Obama campaign used to describe it, and they're right. In the middle part of the ad, Obama is heard saying, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'"

As you know by now, this is quote from the 2008 campaign, and Obama was quoting one of John McCain's advisers. Unmistakably, to the point of being obvious, the ad wants viewers to think that Obama is using the phrase to refer to himself in the present tense, because the economy sucks.

It doesn't matter that the Romney campaign pre-emptively defended the line by noting that its back-up material accurate cited the 2008 quote, or that Obama somehow brought it upon himself because the economy is so bad now. What matters is the way a viewer will receive the ad. And unless that viewer takes the time to investigate every claim, the viewer will be deceived.  

It may be true that the line was added in order to generate controversy, which ensures that the ad will be rebroadcast regularly on New Hampshire and national television for free.  That's cynical, but not as cynical as the ad itself.  

Still, credibility matters. Romney has credibility in New Hampshire. He's trusted there. If the press begins to call Romney a liar, or insinuate that his campaign is involved in dirty tricks, he will lose some of it.  

The Romney ad didn't need the last line to be effective. Maybe the campaign thought it needed it to be provocative.  Regardless, because viewers will no doubt perceive it in a way that is totally contrary to the way the speaker (Obama) intended for it to be heard, its inclusion is dishonest. Deceitful. Untruthful. A lie. 

Shame.

Shame on Republicans for a stubborn unwillingness to seriously consider tax increases.

Shame on Democrats for keeping a closed mind to significant benefit cuts.

It might be a blip, but the latest CNN/ORC national poll out this afternoon shows a new reason for more of Mitt Romney's hair to turn gray.

Overall, the survey showed Newt Gingrich edging past Romney to lead the field overall, with 24 percent compared to 20 percent for the former Massachusetts governor. That makes Gingrich the sixth GOP contender to lead a CNN/ORC poll this year - a level of volatility unmatched in any Republican presidential race since 1964.

Larger version

Gingrich actually didn't move much in the new poll, compared to the previous survey last week when he surged into a near-tie with Romney. Gingrich's support among the roughly half of the GOP that identifies with the tea party edged up only from 29 percent to 31 percent, a change within the poll's 6.5 percent margin of error among that subgroup. Among the half that doesn't identify with the tea party, Gingrich also remained virtually unchanged at 17 percent, compared to 16 percent last week.

Pizza magnate Herman Cain, newly deposed from top-tier status in a USA Today/Gallup poll out today, has thought better of his decision to blow off the powerful New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper.

Publisher Joe McQuaid said via Twitter today that the candidate has agreed to an hour-long interview to be taped by C-SPAN next week. Cain relented after snubbing the newspaper in the first-in-the-nation primary state last week when McQuaid refused his demand to limit the interview to 20 minutes without a camera in the room.

Cain was no doubt hoping to avoid a repeat of the fiasco in Milwaukee, when a similar meeting with Journal Sentinel editors and reporters produced one of the most awkward moments in modern politics:  Cain struggling through several long pauses to answer a basic foreign policy question about whether he agreed with President Obama's foreign policy in Libya.

His inability in several venues now to pass even a basic presidential timber test may be fueling Cain's fall in the polls. He was in third place in the Gallup survey, having been displaced by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was in a statistical tie for first place with Mitt Romney.

"I would have anticipated that the president of the United States would have spent every day and many nights working with members of the Super Committee trying to find a way to bridge the gap, but instead he's been out doing other things. Campaigning and blaming and traveling. This is in my view inexcusable."

It might be, but here's guessing that Romney wasn't really hoping the committee succeeded.  Imagine if Republicans on the committee had agreed to raise revenue of any sort. It would bind the party to tax increases, forcing the Republican nominee to run against his own party and inking up a clear contrast with President Obama, who most certainly would close the deficit with tax increases and spending cuts. 

That's also why Obama, assuming he doesn't get the blame for the super committee failure, relishes the chance to cleanly say to the 67% of Americans who favor tax increases as part of a balanced approach to the deficit that Romney is too beholden to the wealthiest 1% of Americans to ask for more sacrifice from them.

Electoral analysts Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the liberal Center for American Progress will publish tomorrow a comprehensive demographic and geographic roadmap to the 2012 presidential campaign that political junkies of all ideological stripes will want to keep close at hand.

In their new paper, The Path to 270, the two correctly lay out, I believe, the critical dynamics that will likely tip the balance in both the Electoral College and popular vote next year. President Obama's biggest headwind, they argue, will be disappointment in his handling of the economy; his biggest tailwind will be ongoing demographic change that continues to bend the electorate in his direction.

After Obama's victory in 2008, I argued that he had assembled a "coalition of the ascendant": that is, he ran best among groups that were themselves growing in society, like minorities, the Millennial generation and college-educated whites, especially women.

Teixeira and Halpin draw on that concept to argue that the unbroken wave of demographic change makes it likely that these groups, which remain the most favorable to Obama, will constitute an even larger share of the vote in 2012 than they did last time. They project that the minority share of the vote will rise from 26 percent in 2008 to 28 percent in 2012, an increase commensurate with the average election to election rise since 1992 (National Journal reached a similar conclusion in its analysis, The Next America). And they project that college-educated whites will increase their share of the vote from 35 percent in 2008 to 36 percent in 2012. (Overlapping with both those trends, they calculate that 16 million more Millennials will be eligible to vote in 2012 than in 2008.) Whites without a college degree, the most solidly Republican component of the electorate, they expect to continue their generation-long decline, from 39 percent of the vote last time to 36 percent in 2012. (In 1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected, those non-college whites alone constituted an absolute majority of the electorate, 53 percent.)

Imagine the frustration if you'd spent huge amounts of money on advertisements aimed at improving your image and it hadn't helped one bit. Now you have an idea of how Rick Perry's campaign must be feeling right now.

Perry will launch his third advertisement tomorrow, a spot that portrays him as an outsider with the spine needed to shake up Washington. That ad will run alongside his second ad, which takes President Obama to task for his "lazy" comment a few days ago. All told, he'll spend $392,000 on the Iowa ads next week alone, according to a Republican source watching candidate ad campaigns.

(The new buy will include $165,000 on broadcast television in Des Moines, good for 900 gross ratings points; in Cedar Rapids, where he bought 700 points; and Sioux City, where he bought 600 points. Needless to say, those are very substantial buys. He's also up with $182,000 on 10 cable channels in Iowa, including ESPN, CNN, TNT and the Discovery Channel, and with $44,000 in radio ads in five key markets.)

Patches of blue sky are breaking out for President Obama in the true blue states.

Three surveys out this week show Obama opening substantial leads over Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in several of the mega-states at the foundation of the "blue wall": the 18 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have voted Democratic in at least the past five consecutive presidential elections. This continues a largely overlooked pattern evident in polling in several other "blue wall" states since mid-October - and suggests that it may be more difficult for the GOP to vastly expand the Electoral College map than the weakness of Obama's national approval ratings might suggest.

In this week's magazine, Ron Fournier and I write about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's counteroffensive to the flip-flop line of attack by President Obama's campaign. Romney's team believes it can make a credible argument that Obama is not a man of his word. It's an uphill slog, but it could diffuse some of the sting of the attack against Romney.

So here's Exhibit A: Yesterday, the Boston Globe published a big story that says Romney's aides purchased the computer hard drives when he left the Massachusetts governor's office and the server was wiped clean, making it impossible retrieve e-mail records from his administration. By 9:22 a.m., Romney's campaign had fired off a press releases with a headline accusing Obama of being "obsessed with secrecy.''  It charged: "From the very beginning, President Obama's administration has turned its back on his promises of openness and transparency.'' Four hours later, the Romney campaign was demanding its own set of email records -- any correspondence between Obama's top advisers and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- and accusing them of colluding on a "dirty tricks shop'' that produced the Boston Globe story.
 
Who you calling secretive now?

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post misstated the newspaper that Jim Rutenberg works for. He works for The New York Times.

Oops. For the second day in a row, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is getting a harsh reminder that his post-Congress career as an influence peddler is a drag on his GOP presidential campaign. 

Marc has a smart rejoinder to my column this week, arguing that President Obama doesn't necessarily have to make a choice between a blue-collar and white-collar message (an Ohio versus Virginia strategy, as I called it.) As the Obama brain trust in Chicago seems to be saying, the president can walk and chew gum at the same time.

That may be true, but it also may be too clever by half.  First off, the president's favored policies in the first term - cap-and-trade, health care law, a stimulus that hasn't created jobs -- have already alienated many blue-collar voters in the Rust Belt.  His numbers were always weaker than most Democrats with white, non-college educated voters, dating back to the 2008 Democratic primaries.  The first two years of his presidency may have baked that perception in the cake.  So Obama runs the risk of trying to appeal to blue-collar voters when many have already tuned him out - and no amount of sounding populist, reversing ozone regulations or appealing to their innermost fears of a plutocratic Mitt Romney will change that.

Second, on the environment, the president's team has clearly calculated that he's lurched too much to the left on environmental regulation, as neatly outlined by the New York Times' John Broder yesterday.  By reversing themselves on the ozone regulations - and releasing the news late on a Friday afternoon, when few are paying attention - the administration seemed to realize that there's a political cost to being seen as overzealous with environmental regulations - particularly with the very working-class voters they're now looking to win over.

The calculus with Keystone XL came down to Obama looking at the prospect an important part of his base break with him and publicly threaten to sit out the elections.  The cost of inaction would be the less-public break of working-class voters wondering why the administration is punting on the pipeline   They chose the former for obvious reasons but that doesn't mean it comes without a political cost.

 Third, the president's political maneuvering is becoming more and more transparent - and that itself contains risk.  Obama, who ran his 2008 campaign on making tough decisions, now is punting on a fairly straightforward decision on the energy pipeline for political reasons.  Obama the deal-maker has transformed within several months to Obama the Truman-esque fighter.  Obama, who pushed for environmental causes for much of his term, is now backtracking on some, in the wake of weak economy and public resistance to an overreaching government.

The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of California Republicans released yesterday shows that the basic divide in the GOP presidential race extends even to states not yet in the center of the action.

The survey, conducted from October 30 to November 9, found the race closely bunched among Republicans who identify with the tea party movement while Mitt Romney held a big lead among Republicans who do not. That follows the pattern evident in most national surveys about the race, as well as the recent CNN/Time Magazine/ORC polls in the big four contests that will kick off the competition next January: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. California isn't scheduled to vote until June 5 of next year.

The administration's decision to cater to environmentalists by postponing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is a clear sign of the dilemma. The president decided to punt on a job stimulus measure in order to placate parts of the coalition that elected him in 2008. Environmental sensitivities took precedence over job creation.

"Sometimes, when I brought friends home after school, my mother would overhear them remark about the lack of food in the fridge or the less-than-perfect housekeeping, and she would pull me aside and let me know that she was a single mother going to school again and raising two kids, so that baking cookies wasn't exactly at the top of her priority list, and while she appreciated the fine education I was receiving at Punahou, she wasn't planning on putting up with any snotty attitudes from me or anyone else, was that understood?"

President Obama's approval ratings are subterranean, his policies are anathema to a sizeable segment of the electorate, and personality-wise, he is so brainy and tempermentally reserved - the much-analyzed "coolness" factor - that he finds it difficult to connect with voters in the feel-your-pain way that Bill Clinton did.

There would seem to be no limit to the slices of the president that a clever Republican opponent could sink his teeth into. But his "privileged" upbringing? As someone in Texas Gov. Rick Perry's inner circle should have told him yesterday, that dog won't hunt.

Instead, the presidential contender went on Fox News' Sean Hannity Show and mused that Obama "grew up in a privileged way ... He never had to really work for anything. He never had to through what Americans are going through."

Survey results in New Jersey released Wednesday show both President Obama's residual strength in a classic coastal suburban state at the core of the new Democratic electoral map -- and why Mitt Romney may offer Republicans a better chance than his rivals of denting that fortress.

The Quinnipiac University survey showed that although New Jersey voters split only evenly on Obama's job performance, he led all four of the top GOP presidential contenders by substantial margins. In a potential 2012 matchup, the poll showed Obama leading both Rick Perry and Herman Cain by 23 percentage points and Newt Gingrich by 19 points. Only Mitt Romney held Obama to a single-digit advantage, and he just barely: Obama led him 49 percent to 40 percent. 

Romney, though, was the lone GOP candidate to hold Obama under 50 percent in New Jersey, and he did so by leapfrogging the president among college-educated white voters while the other Republican competitors lost that category by gaping margins. In 2008, Obama narrowly topped John McCain among New Jersey's college-educated whites, 51 percent to 49 percent, according to exit polls.

Hypocrisy, cronyism, and bad politics aren't going to get you very far in the 2012 presidential race. Which is why Newt Gingrich's ties to the government-sponsored mortage company Freddie Mac is a story with legs.

Last night, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman spoke to more than 100 voters at a Portsmouth Elks Lodge. It was the 100th event Huntsman has held in the first-in-the-nation primary state, a state Huntsman has targeted as his only hope of advancing his long-shot campaign.

One hundred events is a heck of a commitment, and it's far more than any other candidate has held. But it's not doing Huntsman much good; a new Bloomberg poll, conducted by Iowa-based Selzer & Co., shows Huntsman's at just 7 percent in the Granite State, good for fifth place and 33 points behind front-runner Mitt Romney.

And Hotline polling editor Steve Shepard pointed out a bigger problem for Huntsman: Despite all the events he's held, his campaign hasn't actually contacted that many voters -- or at least they don't recall interacting with the campaign at all.

One of the most important moments of Mitt Romney's campaign came weeks before he announced his candidacy. In a gathering of political advisers and the once-and-future GOP presidential candidate, one of the consultants cleared his throat and said, "Governor, you can't win until you're not afraid to lose."

If it's possible to encapsulate the volatility and uncertainty of the 2012 Republican presidential race in a single chart, the one below might fit the bill.

It tracks the results of the 13 national CNN/ORC polls this year measuring the preferences of Republican primary voters. It also separates the results into three categories: the overall leader, the leader among the roughly half of the party that identifies with the tea party, and the leader among the roughly other half that does not.

Larger version

The chart points to several large conclusions. First is how fluid and unsettled the race has been. Five different candidates (including three that did not run, Mike Huckabee, Rudolph Giuliani, and Donald Trump) have held the overall lead in the survey; not since 1964 have so many different candidates led in a GOP presidential race in the year before the voting.

Within the two evenly balanced wings of the party, there's even more fluctuation. In the 13 polls, six different candidates have led among tea party supporters: Huckabee, Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and most recently Newt Gingrich. Among those who don't identify with the tea party, a similar group of six candidates have held the top spot: Sarah Palin, Gingrich, Trump, Romney, Giuliani, and Perry.

Mitt Romney's campaign is facing a pivotal decision on how aggressively to play in the Iowa caucuses. He could downplay his chances there, expend minimal effort and avoid the repercussions of not winning.  That would raise the stakes in the primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida - states where he's better-positioned.

Or he could take a calculated risk, spend additional money and time in the Hawkeye State, and go for broke - hoping for a surprising win, thanks to a crowded and underwhelming conservative field of opponents.  An Iowa win would put him on a glide path to wrapping up the nomination early.

But based on his comments at a private event with supporters in Florida this morning, he sounds less willing to take that risk.

Per the St. Petersburg Times:

Romney said after airing ads in Iowa for nearly an entire year during the 2008 campaign, he has not run any spots to date. Romney told the crowd his campaign calculus was that he could spend nothing and come in fourth or spend a bit and finish second or third. He guessed that Republicans could split the first three events, which would make Florida particularly important.

Romney predicted a Tea Party favorite would win Iowa and that he would take New Hampshire, according to interviews with six people in the audience. Romney told the crowd he would seal the nomination by then winning Florida's Republican contest.

The latest CNN/ORC national survey showing Newt Gingrich surging to a statistical tie with Mitt Romney captures not only the continuing volatility of the GOP's most conservative wing, but cracks in Romney's standing among the party's more managerial and moderate voters.

Most directly, the CNN/ORC poll underscored the persistent inability of the GOP's conservative vanguard to settle on an alternative to Romney. In the poll, Gingrich now leads among Republican voters who identify with the tea party movement, drawing 29 percent. That's an 18 percentage point increase over the 11 percent Gingrich attracted among those voters in CNN's mid-October poll. Gingrich's gain among the tea party contingent is matched almost exactly vote for vote by Herman Cain's loss: he plummeted from 39 percent among them in October to just 22 percent now. Cain's ascent with the tea party came after Texas Gov. Rick Perry suffered a similar collapse with those voters from September through October.

Now along comes Newt Gingrich, the latest Republican to rise to the top of the polls after convincing a sufficient number of voters that he is not and never has been Mitt Romney. The vetting begins immediately of course, with every aspect of Gingrich's personal, professional and political background getting a serious look from journalists, bloggers and opposition researchers.  And let's face it, it will be an embarrassment of riches.

Let's set aside for now Gingrich's personal life, specifically his three marriages, the last of which was the product of an extramarital affair while he was still married to wife No. 2. Too easy.

Of greater interest will be Gingrich's professional life since he left the Washington insider-y job of House speaker in 1998. Since then, Gingrich, never a small thinker, has presided over a wide network of quasi-political, business and academic projects that has raked in millions of dollars, a portion of it from businesses in need of a friend who can open Capitol Hill doors.   

New polls released late last week in three behemoth swing states underscore a central opportunity Mitt Romney could provide Republicans in the general election-and the threat he could pose to President Obama.

In the Quinnipiac University surveys in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania released on November 10, Romney ran more strongly against President Obama than Rick Perry, Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich. One key reason: Romney performed much better than his rivals among college-educated white voters.

My colleague Reid Wilson reported on results from the latest poll of Iowa Republican voters, which showed Herman Cain (20 percent) and Newt Gingrich (19 percent) deadlocked in first place, with Mitt Romney not far behind with 14 percent.

One conclusion to draw from the numbers: Spending time with voters isn't essential for success, even in a caucus state where voters trudge out in the cold of January to spend a day backing their favored candidates.

None of the top three candidates has spent much time lately in Iowa.  Cain is returning to the Hawkeye State tomorrow after spending nearly a month without visiting the state.  Gingrich didn't have a single campaign office open in Iowa until October - even though he's putting a renewed emphasis in the state lately   And Romney has only been to Iowa four times all year.

Meanwhile, the candidate who has spent the most time in Iowa - former Sen. Rick Santorum, who has visited every one of the Hawkeye State's 99 counties - didn't even hit five percent in the survey.   Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent lots of time in the state and poured money on advertisements introducing himself to Iowa voters - and his support has dropped in the last month.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Herman Cain sums up his world view in an all-too-simple phrase: "Peace through strength and clarity," he tells adoring audiences. "Clarify who our friends are and clarify who our enemies are."

Easy for Cain to say until faced at Saturday night's foreign policy debate with a question about Pakistan: Friend or enemy, Mr. Cain?

"Number one, he hasn't asked for it,'' said Jones, chancellor of the fundamentalist Christian university named after his family. "I had a reason for doing it the first time. I don't have that same reason this time.''

In a wide-ranging interview Friday afternoon in his stately office replete with mounted game, a bear rug, dark wood furniture and stained glass windows, Jones recalled why he backed Romney in 2007.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. _ Rick Perry hopes to salvage his GOP presidential campaign with a self-flagellation tour, topped Thursday night by this appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman."

But the betting in Spartanburg is that Perry is toast. Republican leaders say they don't see how he can recover from his agonizing memory lapse in Wednesday's debate, the latest stumble in a fumble-prone candidacy.

The Cain sexual harassment story hit a new low on Thursday when the Republican presidential candidate's newly hired lawyer issued a threat to any woman considering stepping forward with information, saying they "should think twice."

Lawyer L. Lin Wood offered no specifics about why they should think twice, but a front-page story in today's New York Times is full of clues: Less than 24 hours after she acknowledged being one of Herman Cain's alleged victims, Karen Kraushaar, a career media specialist in the federal government, was the target of a leak about a workplace complaint she filed in the early 2000s seeking permission to work at home after a car accident. In the same story, Cain's campaign notes that Wood's services will include a "research team."

Rick Perry is bad in debates. Really bad. This morning's coverage of his incredible brain freeze last night compares the moment, unfavorably, with Gerald Ford's assertion that "there is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe," with Al Gore's sighs and Michael Dukakis's death penalty flub.

But the underlying problem is that Perry is no longer the answer to the most pressing question in the Republican primary right now: Which candidate will emerge to coalesce the anti-Mitt Romney factions within the GOP?

The obsession the media has had with the prospect of new blood entering the field stems from the underlying assumption that Romney is a front-runner in name only, that his support for health care legislation in Massachusetts, his myriad flip flops and his less-than-stellar relations with social conservatives would eventually lead to his defeat. This year has seen a parade of pseudo-candidates (Donald Trump), non-candidates (Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels and Haley Barbour) and long-shots (Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann) grab headlines as the Next Big Thing in the Republican field.

To many this summer, Perry was the real deal, the answer to that question. And he started off with a bang; his entry into the race, on the same day as the Iowa straw poll, effectively robbed Bachmann of any spotlight and doomed her campaign to obscurity. His blistering fundraising pace put him on par with what looked like the unassailable Romney juggernaut. And his record on the economy, at first glance, gave Republican voters a reason to think he could have compared favorably with President Obama next November.

It's always hazardous to analogize too aggressively from one election to another. But the scale of the union-led victory Tuesday in the drive to repeal Republican Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining legislation in Ohio is bound to encourage Democrats who want President Obama to pursue a class-conscious populist appeal in 2012.

The referendum repealed legislation that the Republican State House and Senate approved without a single Democratic vote and that Kasich signed last March; the bill sharply curtailed the collective bargaining rights of public employees (including police officers and fire fighters, who are often exempted from similar Republican bills), and imposed cutbacks on pay and benefits. Overall, just over three-fifths of voters on Tuesday backed the repeal, in a prototypical swing state where Republicans swept in 2010.

From National Journal:

NATIONAL SECURITY Mismanagement of War Remains at Dover AFB

VIDEOIranian Influence Made Clear in Basra

PICTURES
Who's Who on the Super Committee

When I first heard that one of Herman Cain's accusers had the same last name as me, I immediately recognized there was a possibility I could get sucked into the media firestorm.  After all, Kraushaar isn't the most common surname -- and I worked for Politico for several years.  It wouldn't take much for some to wonder if there was a connection. 

From National Journal:

GALLERY Women Who've Made Charges Against Cain

WHITE HOUSEOpen Mics Trip Up White House

ANALYS
Don't Overreact to U.N. Nuclear Report on Iran

But I never expected a presidential campaign spokesman to go on national television, without even contacting me, and falsely implicate me in the whole sordid scandal.  Yesterday I'd received e-mails from dozens of reporters, friends and colleagues asking if I was related to Karen Kraushaar -- and I promptly told them that wasn't the case.  I wasn't contacted at all by Cain's chief of staff Mark Block, or anyone else from Cain's campaign.  Despite that, Block proceeded to go on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to proclaim that I was Karen Kraushaar's son and to suggest I was one of the people who leaked the story.

Anybody with Internet access would, at the very least, been able to figure out that I haven't worked for Politico since June 2010 -- and have been working at National Journal since then.  I even Tweeted the fact that I wasn't related to Karen Kraushaar earlier that evening before Hannity's show to clear up any potential confusion. 

That didn't stop Block.  When I heard what Block had said on Hannity's show, I immediately e-mailed him informing him of his mistake.  I still haven't heard back, though Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon is now correcting the record - over 12 hours later. That's an eternity in the 24-7 news cycle, when most media outlets (conservative, liberal, and non-partisan alike) already had reported the facts. 

Let's be clear, off-year elections aren't great indicators of the direction of a presidential contest. But even after Republicans won control of the Virginia state Senate last night, Democrats can make the case that they didn't do so bad -- and, more importantly, that the results are evidence Virginia voters have not rejected the Democratic Party, despite recent Republican wins.

That should be a relief to President Obama's re-election strategists.

Democrats lost two seats last night, one in Southwest, along the North Carolina border, and one stretching from Fredericksburg to Charlottesville. The southern seat, held by outgoing Sen. Roscoe Reynolds, is in an area where even popular Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner have trouble making inroads. The northern seat, where Republican Bryce Reeves holds an 86-vote lead over Democratic Sen. Edd Houck, is essentially a toss-up seat.

Drilling down into Houck's district, it's apparent Reeves' margin comes from Spotsylvania County, which Reeves won by 10 points, or about 1,600 votes, and Orange County, which he won by 500. Houck won Albemarle County by 1,100 votes and Fredericksburg City by 1,100 votes. Those are margins consistent with results over the last decade -- a decade in which Democrats won two Senate seats and the state's electoral votes.

(For comparison's sake, in the 2006 Senate race in which Democrat Jim Webb beat Republican George Allen by a similarly tiny margin, Webb won Albemarle by a 16-point margin, less than Houck's edge, and Allen won Spotsylvania by 15 points, more than Reeves' advantage).

In perhaps his biggest gaffe so far as a presidential candidate, Rick Perry sought to defend his support for the DREAM Act as an economic positive, and to cast opponents of the law as heartless.

The law, which Texas passed and Perry signed in 2001, allows the children of illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition for a college education. It's a bill Republican immigration hardliners hate. But in a Republican primary debate in September, Perry said it was an economic decision, one that made students tax-payers rather than tax consumers.

The backlash caught Perry's advisers off guard, and he's spent weeks backpeddling and explaining himself. The issue poses such a threat to his campaign that Perry has brought it up himself on tele-town hall meetings with Iowa voters.

But Perry has at least one fan willing to stick up for his position: Former President Bill Clinton.

In an interview with USA Today, Clinton offered a defense of Perry's position. "It makes my skin crawl when they attack Rick Perry for one of the best things he did," Clinton said.

Here's the latest evidence that Rick Perry won't be making a comeback in the Republican presidential race: The newly-released NBC/WSJ poll shows Mitt Romney holding a commanding lead over the Texas governor in a head-to-head primary matchup, 62 to 33 percent.

As I argued last week on Decoded, Perry's problems with the Republican base are deep-seated, and it's becoming awfully hard to see him coming back to seriously challenge Romney-- even with his millions to spend.

And with Herman Cain's struggles to get past the sexual harassment scandal, it's just the latest sign that Romney is on a glide path to the GOP nomination. 

On the day after Barack Obama's sweeping victory in 2008, veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg described the modern Democratic coalition as diverse America and the whites who are comfortable with diverse America.

From National Journal:

CONNECTIONS POLL: Public Doubts Congress Will Aid Economy

ANALYSISThis Time Cain's Accuser Has a Name and a Face

That appears to be even more true today. The line between whites who are comfortable with the racial and ethnic change transforming America into a "world nation" and those uneasy about it increasingly looks like one of the most important boundaries of the 2012 campaign.

The big Pew Center for the People and the Press generational survey released last week offers powerful evidence on that point.  Overall, in the Pew survey, 47 percent of non-Hispanic whites agreed with the statement that "the growing number of newcomers from other countries are a threat to traditional American customs and values." Exactly 50 percent of whites disagreed.

Like an Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor survey released earlier this summer, Pew found that whites comfortable with the demographic changes now underway express very different attitudes than those uneasy about it on President Obama, the role of government, and the choices in the 2012 election.

Not even close. Not any more.

With those two pithy sentences, my colleague Beth Reinhard concluded in her piece today that:

Another ugly jobs report. More lousy poll numbers. This must be a depressing day for President Obama and his reelection team.

Well, not if they're taking the long view.

In my National Journal column this week, I touch on the debate among Democrats about whether President Obama's increasingly populist message - particularly his emphasis on asking wealthy Americans to pay more in taxes, both to reduce the deficit and to fund his jobs program - risks the party's support with white-collar white voters who have become increasingly critical to its electoral coalition.

In the column, Mark Penn, the initial chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary campaign and pollster for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection, expressed the fears of those who worry that Obama will drive away upper white-collar whites who have moved toward the Democrats over the past two decades. By making higher taxes on the wealthy "such a big part of his solution, [Obama] is in fact just splitting his coalition," Penn insisted.

At a National Journal conference this week previewing the 2012 election, Geoff Garin, who succeeded Penn atop Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008, expressed the opposite view during a panel I moderated. "This label of populism ignores the reality of the conversation that's going on and the positions that President Obama represents in the debate," Garin said. "You know, it's only about 75 percent of the public that supports a millionaire's tax. The Republicans can have the other 25 percent. We'll take the 75."

This dispute marks one of the critical strategic decisions Obama faces. It revolves around a straightforward question: will upper middle-class voters believe that Obama is targeting them when he talks about asking more from the rich, or will they share the sense that people on the very top rungs of the economic ladder have gotten off too easy and need to contribute more? Recent volumes of the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll published in National Journal Daily offer some insight on the dispute-and some support for each side's argument.

Mitt Romney's team will dismiss it as old news, but this Washington Post story on the former Massachusetts governor's "ever-evolving ideology" is a must-read because it underlines his greatest weakness as a presidential candidate.

A sign that the Occupy Wall Street movement isn't the best long-term vehicle for Democrats to connect themselves with: A new Quinnipiac poll, showing a plurality of voters viewing the group unfavorably.

The poll, released today, show 30 percent of voters surveyed view the movement favorably, 39 percent unfavorably, with an additional 30 percent not hearing enough to have an opinion.  It's one of the first national polls to suggest voters are growing skeptical of Occupy Wall Street- and it comes as police have clashed with protesters in several cities.  Previous national polls have shown a plurality of adults supporting the movement.

(PICTURES: Protests Turn Violent in Oakland)

These numbers comes as Democrats, from the White House on down, have struck a decidedly populist tone in recent months, from President Obama calling on the wealthy to pay a higher share in taxes, Senate Democratic officials rallying behind the campaign of Elizabeth Warren, who has embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement, and House Democrats, who sent out a petition last month aimed at leveraging the Occupy Wall Street movement against the Republican Party.

There are a lot of reasons to say Herman Cain won't win the GOP nomination, much less the presidency. The snowballing sexual harassment story is an obvious one.

 This may be the best reason:

Cain: let me, let me, let me say one thing, I'm here with these doctors and that's what I'm gonna talk about, so don't  even bother asking me all of these other questions that you all are curious about, OK, don't even bother. 

Scott Thuman: But are you concerned about the fact that these women do want to to come forward. (repeated) 

Cain: What did I say? Excuse me, (raises voice) Excuse me! (yelling) What part of no don't dumb people understand?  

Hotline polling editor Steven Shepard raises a cautionary note about the Quinnipiac poll released today that shows President Obama's approval rating rising to 47 percent - which ties his high-water mark in any national poll since the summer.

Democrats shouldn't draw too many optimistic conclusions from the more-favorable numbers, thanks to a sample that included an unusually low number of Republicans -- far less than the pollster's previous national survey in October.

From Steve's poll writeup:

The sample of voters to whom Quinnipiac talked in the new poll is significantly more Democratic -- and less Republican -- than the early October survey. In the current poll, 35 percent of respondents identified as Democrats, 22 percent as Republicans and 36 percent as independents, according to data provided to National Journal Wednesday morning. In the early October poll, 31 percent of respondents were Democrats, 28 percent were Republicans and 33 percent were independents.

(For reference: In 2008, according to exit polls, 39 percent of voters identified as Democrats, 32 percent identified as Republicans and 29 percent identified as independents. In the 2010 midterm elections; the percentages of Democrats and Republicans were equal; midterm elections typically feature higher Republican turnout.)

In a phone interview Wednesday morning, Quinnipiac Poll director Doug Schwartz said his organization does not weight by party identification, and the poll's large sample size guards against over-sampling or under-sampling a certain subgroup. A review of other demographic data from the two polls shows that there were not significant discrepancies in the breakdowns by age, gender, geographical region or race across the surveys.

"We're very comfortable with the results," said Schwartz.

Amid all the buzz over the sexual harassment settlement against Herman Cain, relatively little attention was paid to a notable foreign policy flub the Georgia businessman made on Monday, during his appearance on PBS' NewsHour.

Asked how he would react to China's growing military influence, Cain said that he was worried that the country is "trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have." 

China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964, and has been a nuclear power since then.

Comments like these are why much of the Republican establishment don't take Cain seriously as a presidential candidate, despite his strong showing in primary polls.  It's not the first inaccurate comment he's made on foreign policy.  In the early stages of his campaign, Cain declined to specifically respond to many foreign policy questions, instead saying he'd defer to his military advisers, if he was elected president.  His dismissal of foreign policy towards "Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan-stan" as a gotcha question highlights his mentality on the subject.

The Tea Party activists find Cain's authenticity refreshing, and they have a well-honed disdain for elitism - what Michael Barone recently referred to as a "revolt against the experts." But there's a difference between being skeptical of self-proclaimed experts and having a pattern of neglecting to get facts straight.  Even among the Republican base, that's bound to cost Cain in the long-run -- perhaps as much as the current scandal enveloping his campaign.

The conventional wisdom has coalesced around the view that Texas Gov. Rick Perry, with his sizable bankroll, is the obvious choice to emerge again as Romney's chief primary challenger. His campaign is now up with ads in New Hampshire and Iowa, reintroducing himself to the voters.  And businessman Herman Cain, with the latest scandal, could find himself falling in the next round of polls.

But I'm not so sure that, even with the Texas governor's significant resources, his rebranding campaign will work.  Perry's collapse since entering the race really has been remarkable.  Unlike other recent candidates who entered the race with high expectations only to fall flat (Fred Thompson, Wesley Clark, Rudy Giuliani), Perry boasted executive experience, a largely conservative record, and success in some hotly-contested gubernatorial campaigns.  On paper, he had that resume that translates to a presidential campaign.  That's why many Republican voters initially viewed him so favorably, thinking he was the most electable conservative in the race.

But he was utterly unprepared to make the transition to the national stage, alienating the establishment with his weak debate performance and infuriating the base on illegal immigration.  The Republican chattering class now is convinced he doesn't have what it takes to defeat a vulnerable President Obama, and the base is awfully skeptical that he's the principled conservative they once thought.  That's hard to turn around with a bunch of 30-second ads.

There's a growing sense among strategists in both parties that two distinct, even inverse, sets of swing states now hold the key to close presidential elections.

One set includes the traditional battlegrounds of American politics: the metal-bending behemoths of the Rust Belt like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These states tend to be older, preponderantly white, and stagnant or declining in population.

The emerging battlegrounds are their opposite: fast growing, diverse, generally younger states across the Sun Belt. Many of these states were solidly Republican in the 1990s, but have grown more competitive as their population has tilted more toward racial minorities and socially-moderate college-educated whites.

President Obama won most of both groups of states in 2008, but his path in 2012 looks much more challenging.

Herman Cain's campaign manager says the sexual harassment story has run its course, but he may be blowing smoke.

Charlie Cook says Herman Cain's day has pretty much come and gone, and it looks like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP presidential nominee.

It's anybody's guess why Rick Perry delivered such a comically awkward speech in New Hampshire last weekend. Here's two guesses: pain medication and booze.

The first guess came from GOP consultant Charlie Black, who was asked about the Internet sensation at National Journal's 2012 Election Preview on Tuesday.

"It's odd," Black said of the speech. "I haven't asked anybody in Governor Perry's campaign about it. Look, he's got a back problem, maybe it was back medicine... ."

Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, who joined Black on the panel, said "it appeared" that Perry may have been drinking. "Just odd," McMahon said, adding that he didn't know for certain whether Perry was drinking.

WATCH Highlights from Perry's speech:

Well, that didn't take long.

The first question posed by CBS News bureau chief Bob Schieffer at National Journal's 2012 Election Preview drew a qualified defense of embattled GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain from a Republican insider.