There is a way to think about the up-and-down GOP nomination fight that at least partially explains its volatility and the seemingly endless array of short-lived challengers to front-runner Mitt Romney as well as Romney's surprising resilience.

It's been the battle between the rationals and the notionals.

 Forget the polls. You don't need to monitor the public opinion polls to track which Republican presidential candidate is surging. All you need to do is see which rival Texas Rep. Ron Paul is attacking - and how sarcastically he gets doing it. In the earlier debates, Paul went after Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Wednesday night, in Mesa, it was Rick Santorum's turn in Paul's sights.

The first question from CNN moderator John King was why Paul is calling Santorum a fake in his television commercials. With the bluntness that has gained him a cult-like following, the veteran congressman man responded, "Because he's a fake."

Under fire from Republicans for a promise he won't be keeping about cutting the deficit, President Obama might consider emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found himself in a very similar bind eight decades ago. In October 1932, Roosevelt told a crowd in Pittsburgh that he would balance the budget and cut government spending by 25 percent in his first term. But when he got in office, the only way to combat the Depression was to increase spending.

It was the right course for governing. But it presented Roosevelt with a real political challenge when he was running for a second term and returning to Pennsylvania. He asked speechwriter Sam Rosenman how to handle questions about the broken promise.

Newt Gingrich's woman problem may be finally catching up with him, just like his ex-wives ultimately seem to.

Exit polls of Florida's Republican primary voters exposed a distinct gender gap between reinvigorated front-runner Mitt Romney and Gingrich. Although Romney beat Gingrich among most demographic groups, Romney's yawning lead among women, especially married women, was noteworthy. Romney beat Gingrich with men, 41 percent to 36 percent, but he beat him with women, 52 percent to 28 percent.

The gender gap was even more pronounced among married couples. Married men split about evenly between the two, giving Romney 37 percent and Gingrich 36 percent. But married women preferred Romney, 51 percent to 28 percent.

MIAMI -- When Newt Gingrich pounded Mitt Romney's immigration policy as inhumane and unrealistic at last Thursday night's GOP debate, the sound of silence was deafening at the debate-watching party of a prominent Republican Hispanic group here.

After a day in which he was blind-sided by multiple attacks and suggestions that he was never quite the Reagan disciple he has intimated during the campaign, Newt Gingrich fired back hard in the Jacksonville debate, blaming rival Mitt Romney for the broadside.

"It's increasingly interesting to watch the Romney attack machine coordinate things," said the former Speaker. "All of a sudden today there are four different articles by four different people that show up" questioning his Reagan credentials.

Perhaps the most biting article was written by former Reagan assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams, who said the young Gingrich "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." He quoted Gingrich in 1985 calling Reagan's Cold War policies "pathetically incompetent."

Just after offering a robust defense of his hard-line immigration policy, Mitt Romney stepped in it when he claimed to have not seen his own ad attacking Newt Gingrich.

The ad airing on Spanish-language radio in Miami says Gingrich referred to Spanish as a "ghetto'' language. PolitiFact called the ad "mostly true.

"I haven't seen the ad,'' Romney said. "Did he say that?"'

Even if he was telling the truth, Romney came across as disingenuous. That's not helpful for a candidate who frequently struggles to come across as authentic. As CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer helpfully reminded the audience, at the end of the ad, Romney says, "I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this ad.''

As Rick Perry would say: "Oops.''

Minutes later, the Gingrich campaign was happy to e-mail blast a copy of the ad so anyone could hear Romney's disclaimer -- which he recites in not-too-shabby Spanish.

Just a side note: Gingrich has apologized for the "ghetto'' remark but in the heat of the debate he insisted it was "taken totally out of context.''

Florida is a must-win state for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The race is tied. Debates matter. That makes tonight a must-win debate. 

If you want to know more about the sky-high stakes in the CNN debate at 8 p.m., read on:

Like a stand-up comedian whose routine suffers without echoes of laughter egging him on, Newt Gingrich was a candidate without cadence Monday night when he found himself searching hopelessly for the secret weapons that have proven crucial to his season of strong debate performances: moderators to scold and audience members to energize.

In front of a small, sedate crowd comprised primarily of rank-and-file spectators rather than die-hard activists, Gingrich found himself on the defensive from the opening bell against a barrage of blows from Mitt Romney over everything from his work at Freddie Mac to his abrupt departure from Congress.

In past debates, Gingrich has employed humor, hubris and humiliation to deflect incoming criticism and reverse the rhetorical momentum, rallying the crowd to his cause with a sharp remark to a rival or stinging rebuke of the moderator. But there was no such outlet for Gingrich in Tampa: NBC's Brian Williams asked the audience to stay quiet and steered clear of any John King-style confrontation; and most of Gingrich's internecine attacks seemed to land with a rhetorical thud.

After months of campaigning in which they rarely encountered Latinos, the Republican candidates are suddenly hunting for votes in the state with the third highest number of Hispanics. But in the Tampa debate, neither Mitt Romney nor Newt Gingrich backed down from their tough stands about the English language and immigration - even when confronted with what seems to many to be a little hypocrisy in their campaigns. Beth Reinhard of the National Journal noted that both candidates want to make English the official language and outlaw ballots being printed in Spanish. But Gingrich is sending out Florida press releases in Spanish and Romney is running some Spanish language advertising.

Both candidates insisted there is nothing hypocritical about this. "I think campaigning, historically, you've always been willing to go to people on their terms and in their culture, whether it is Greek Independence Day or something you did for the Irish on St. Patrick's Day," said Gingrich. "I'm perfectly happy to have a lot of support in the Latino community." But he said that "it is essential to have a central language" to unify the country. He added, "Look, English is the language of this nation. People need to learn English."

The only dissenting voice was Ron Paul who favors English as the national language but chided his rivals for trying to impose their policy on the states. "Our system really gives us a way to be more generous," he said. "Because if Florida wanted to have some ballots in Spanish, I certainly wouldn't support a federal law that prohibited Florida" from having them. The others, he said, were "dictating one answer for all states."

The imperative of the issue is clear from the numbers. In the three states where the candidates have spent most of their time campaigning, there is a grand total of only 371,000 Latinos - 37,000 in New Hampshire, 130,000 in Iowa and 204,000 in South Carolina, according to the Pew Hispanic Center numbers for 2009. In Florida, there are 3.9 million. Hispanics in the other three states are either three or four percent; in Florida, they are 22 percent of the population.

"Angry Newt" took the night off. In a striking role reversal, Newt Gingrich looked more like a firefly than a firebrand in a high-stakes debate Monday night, while rival Mitt Romney called the surging former House Speaker a disgraced, influence-peddling, Washington insider.

Somebody must have awakened the cool-and-nonchalant Romney out of his debate slumber and told him the GOP nomination was slipping away. Gingrich stunned the political world -- and frightened much of the GOP establishment -- with a landslide victory in South Carolina on Saturday night that erased Romney's lead in national and Florida polls.

It took less than a minute into the latest Republican presidential debate for longtime front-runner Mitt Romney to show what lesson he took from his surprisingly big defeat in South Carolina: Bare the teeth and go for the jugular of the man who beat him so solidly.

The attacks on former House speaker Newt Gingrich were almost non-stop. Before most viewers had a chance to settle in to watch NBC's broadcast, Romney had lashed Gingrich as a Washington "influence peddler," a disgraced speaker forced out of office, a failed political leader, a lobbyist and a traitor to the conservative cause.

Asked by moderator Brian Williams how he squared those attacks with his lament last week that he wanted to avoid personal criticisms of other Republicans, Romney adopted a tight smile and recalled his Saturday shellacking. "I learned something from that last contest in South Carolina," said Romney. "And that was I had incoming from all directions, was overwhelmed with a lot of the attacks. And I'm not going to sit back and get attacked day in and day out and without returning fire."

Gingrich was not bashful about fighting back, though he refused to get dragged into many of the specifics. He seemed more saddened than angry at the barrage from Romney. "He just went on and on and on," he said of Romney, adding that "he may have been a good financier. He's a terrible historian." Yet Gingrich, who really is a historian, offered up some questionable history himself.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished an astonishing comeback Saturday night to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina, plunging the Republican Party into a wrenching and potentially lengthy period of soul-searching: Can either of these jokers beat President Obama?

A stunning opening to the debate as John King goes there, all the way.

Newt went with full attack, as I said he must have wanted to do. He questioned ABC's legitimacy, denied the veracity of his ex-wife's claim that he wanted an open marriage, claimed that ABC wouldn't interview persons with a conflicting account. He went as far as to say that the media was working for Barack Obama. The "destructive, vicious, negative nature of the media," he said.

 If the former speaker's outburst wasn't surprising, the unwillingness of any of his opponents to jump in was less obvious. Ron Paul dissed the media but slyly noted his marriage of 54 years. Santorum said he was glad God believed in forgiveness.

Gingrich's remarks played well in the hall. Will they with GOP voters in South Carolina? It's hard to know. And it depends what else his second wife might or might not say in the coming days. But one voice that won't be heard is Callista. The other woman can't be a character witness.

Forget about potentially losing the evangelical vote in South Carolina. Marianne Gingrich's interview on ABC News tonight puts her ex-husband's presidential campaign in jeopardy with a much bigger segment of the electorate in South Carolina -- women. Be they evangelical, Catholic or agnostic, women are going to see in Marianne Gingrich a highly sympathetic version of that American classic -- the middle-aged woman abandoned by her ambition-addled husband for a younger version of herself. The fact that he heaped insult onto injury by asking her for an open marriage, so that he could keep both his marriage and his young mistress, makes it highly unlikely that women will be willing to overlook Newt Gingrich's character and vote for him on the economy.

Although most of what Marianne Gingrich has to say about her ex was reported in 2010 in a long interview with Esquire, her decision to say it on television, just two days before the South Carolina primary, is potential dynamite. One has to wonder whether she waited for precisely this moment to drop the bomb, when in all probability she had multiple interview requests over the several months that Gingrich has been in the race for the Republican nomination for president. If revenge is a dish best served cold, she made sure she reached into the fridge at just the right moment.

Her claim that Gingrich requested an open marriage is believable, given the candidate's reputation for grandiosity and for, well, his ability to dream up novel approaches to problems. When Gingrich admitted his six-year affair with Callista, while he was the House speaker and she was a congressional aide, Marianne Gingrich said she pleaded with her husband that they had been married for 18 years.

This morning's front-page headline in the State, one of South Carolina's leading papers, offers the bookend to National Journal's report on the movement toward Mitt Romney among business-oriented managerial Republicans. The headline reads: "S.C. Evangelicals Split, Frustrated."

Though evangelical Christians constituted a solid 60 percent majority of GOP primary voters in 2008, they "are divided among the faith-and-values trinity of the 2012 S.C. GOP primary, supporting Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum," writes reporter Adam Beam. Beam quotes Oran Smith, the executive director of the Palmetto Family Council, a leading local social conservative group: "I do sense frustration that there is not a single candidate that is being put up against Romney."

The Monmouth University survey released Tuesday - which showed Romney holding a double-digit advantage overall in South Carolina - quantifies the reason for Smith's frustration. It showed Romney attracting 29 percent among self-identified evangelicals - much better than his 11 percent with them in 2008, but not much more than the 27 percent John McCain won among them that year while amassing a narrow plurality win in the state. 

Somewhere, Lee Atwater is looking down on his home state in disbelief. This can't be what the father of the modern political attack had in mind: a Republican using the modern version of his diabolical invention against another Republican in South Carolina.

King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town, the newly-released destroy-the-front-runner vehicle from the super PAC run by rival Newt Gingrich's political operatives, blames Mitt Romney for everything from endlessly high unemployment, to the demise of American manufacturing to the destruction of the modern marriage. Visually, it's a montage of smoke-filled rooms, suitcases filled with cash and glinting corporate headquarters juxtaposed with images of cracked sidewalks in broken small towns and the haggard faces of former factory workers.

Over the top? Sure. A gross violation of Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment to Republicans to speak no ill of fellow Republicans? Hands down it is. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul condemned the film as full of "blatant falsehoods and fabrications."

But the most important point about Gingrich's movie is that it works. And if it is unleashed full force on South Carolina voters as promised, it has the potential to do serious damage to Romney's lead in the state's Jan. 21 primary. That's how powerful it is.

An underdog presidential contender fails to qualify for the primary ballot in a large, early-voting primary state, prompting questions about the candidate's organizational prowess and ability to run a competitive campaign past January's early nominating contests. Sound familiar?

No, it's not Newt Gingrich in Virginia. It's Jon Huntsman in Arizona.

Huntsman failed to qualify for Arizona's February 28 presidential preference election after his filing paperwork -- which was turned in only two hours before Monday's 5 p.m. deadline -- was rejected due to a "notary issue," according to Secretary of State spokesman Matt Roberts. The Arizona Secretary of State's office sent a letter to Huntsman's campaign shortly thereafter informing them that they are "unable to certify" Huntsman as a candidate.

Huntsman's nomination forms were ruled "incomplete" because they were "missing the candidate's original notarized signature," Roberts said. "We are unable to certify him because of that."

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The only five men standing between Mitt Romney and the Republican presidential nomination took a walk Saturday night -- attacking each other and the media as the former Massachusetts governor coasted toward the brass ring.

Mitt Romney may have pulled off the zinger of the night Saturday when, in answer to aggressive questioning by George Stephanopoulos about whether he would support a state ban on the sale of contraceptive drugs and devices, Romney insisted it was a non-issue and a "silly" one besides.

"States don't want to ban contraception," the former Massachusetts governor scolded, so why, he seemed to suggest, was Stephanopoulos wasting precious time at the Republican candidate debate in New Hampshire asking whether a state ban would be proper or not? And then this: "Contraception, it's working just fine. Just leave it alone," Romney zinged.

(VIDEO: See Romney's Zinger)

The audience whooped, and Stephanopoulos pursed his lips.

But more important for Romney than getting off a memorable line was his success landing a punch in the face of the liberal elite media, which Stephanopoulos -- the chiseled, articulate former top aide to President Bill Clinton -- embodied for the Republican audience at the 14th debate of the GOP primary contest.

Sure, House Speaker Newt Gingrich gets the credit for coming up with the bash-the-liberal-media strategy at several earlier debates, but Romney gets high marks for perfecting it.

The St. Anselm debate got a little nasty and awfully personal when Rep. Ron Paul stuck by his accusation earlier this week that former Speaker Newt Gingrich is a "chicken hawk" because he accepted deferments that kept him out of military service during the Vietnam War. "At least I went when I was called up," said the 76-year-old Paul who was a flight surgeon in the Air Force in the early '60s.

Paul made the charge on Wednesday when he first talked about Gingrich's reaction when he was eligible for the draft. "Guess what he thought about danger? He chickened out on that and got deferments and didn't even go."

Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if he would again call Gingrich a chicken hawk, Paul responded, "Yeah, I think people who don't serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments... they have no right to send our kids off to war."

There must be something in the Iowa air that impels politicians to give off-key speeches after the votes have been cast in the caucuses. Eight years after Howard Dean committed political suicide by screaming out the names of states and four years after Hillary Clinton put so many oldsters on stage that she looked like she was taping an AARP commercial, the Republican candidates Tuesday night gave us so many fresh memories to cherish.

There was Ron Paul declaring, "I'm waiting for the day when we can say we're all Austrians now." The Texas congressman was referring to the Austrian school of economics and his favorite economist, Freidrich von Hayek. But television viewers could be excused if they wondered whether the rally would break into a rousing singing of "Edelweiss." And Paul wasn't finished with the strangeness. In a first in modern American politics, he welcomed to the stage an active-duty soldier wearing his camouflage uniform and critical of American foreign policy.

Corporal Jesse Thorsen, of West Des Moines, is only 28 years old so perhaps he could be excused for forgetting the Defense Department regulation hammered into all members of the Armed Forces that they may not "participate in partisan political... rallies" and "cannot appear at any kind of political forum in uniform." But Paul, himself a veteran, should have known better than to put Thorsen in a position where he could be disciplined by the Army.

A lighter - but also odd - touch was in Rep. Michele Bachmann's valedictory after her sixth place finish. She praised her husband, Marcus, but drew a wince from him when she disclosed that on the day before the caucuses "he was out buying doggie sunglasses for our dog Boomer."

Tears helped save Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire four years ago. Could they be Newt Gingrich's salvation in Iowa?

(RELATED: Video of Gingrich Tearing Up Below)

The former House speaker, in a statistical three-way tie for third place in the latest Iowa polls, is better known for incendiary ideas and rhetoric than displays of heartfelt emotion. But his tears flowed Friday at a "Moms Matter" event when moderator Frank Luntz asked him about his own mother.

A second poll underscores the opportunity that division on the right is creating for Mitt Romney in Iowa. In the NBC/Marist College Iowa survey released Friday, Romney continues to draw only modest support overall - but remains positioned to capture the state because the groups most skeptical of him are fragmenting.

Overall, the poll showed Romney leading with 23 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 21 percent, and then Rick Santorum (15 percent), Rick Perry (14 percent) and Newt Gingrich (13) all bunched closely together. That largely tracks the findings of the CNN/Time/ORC Iowa survey released earlier this week.

In the NBC/Marist poll, like the CNN/Time survey, Romney continues to draw meager support among the party's most ardent elements. The new survey shows him capture just 13 percent among both evangelical Christians and voters who describe themselves as strong tea party supporters.

The Republican bubble has finally lifted Rick Santorum, at least to third place in one state.

For a while it looked like he'd be the only GOP presidential candidate in Iowa to miss out on his personal rise-and-fall saga. Now comes a CNN poll showing Santorum with 16 percent of the vote in Iowa - 2 points higher than a rapidly fading Newt Gingrich.

The comparison with a CNN poll earlier this month is striking. 

The latest CNN/Time/ORC surveys released this afternoon for New Hampshire, and especially Iowa, show that on the eve of the first actual voting, the GOP race is reverting to the pattern that has defined it for most of this year: the party's more pragmatic and secular circles are consolidating around Mitt Romney more than the GOP's more ideological and evangelical wings are consolidating around any single alternative to him.

That pattern isn't enough to place Romney in a commanding position - but it does offer him the possibility of a plurality advantage in a fragmented field. The surveys provide a snapshot of the nightmare for the conservative activists most resistant to the former Massachusetts governor: it raises the possibility that he could steamroll to the nomination without ever attracting majority support in the party because the ideological voters most resistant to him fail to ever coalesce behind a single alternative.

These dynamics are most apparent in the results of the new survey in Iowa, which polled 452 GOP likely caucus participants from December 21-24 and December 26-27. Overall the survey shows Romney now leading with 25 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 22 percent; Rick Santorum has surged into third place with 16 percent, followed by Newt Gingrich with just 14 percent. In the most recent CNN/Time/ORC poll from early December, Gingrich led with 33 percent, followed by Romney at 20 percent and Paul at 17 percent.

"Iowans need to decide whether they want to keep their first in the nation role in presidential politics where candidates spend time and effort traveling to the 99 counties...'' he said in an e-mail. "Or are they going to reward the northeastern establishment's candidate who has spent the least amount of time in Iowa and the most on false advertising? The later would lead future candidates to abandon grassroots campaigning in the Hawkeye state and simply run negative ads instead.''

Newt Gingrich has finally found a politician he considers even worse than the president he calls socialist, anti-colonialist and radical. That would be his fellow Republican Ron Paul.

"I think Barack Obama is very destructive to the future of the United States. I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American," Gingrich said Tuesday in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.

Could he vote for Paul? "No." If it came down to Paul vs. Obama? "You'd have a very hard choice at that point."

A bus tour is a great way to experience the under-appreciated glories of Iowa. (Seriously folks, the state is beautiful). It's also a valuable tool in a place that prizes personalized retail campaigning and hasn't seen all that much of it this year - especially from these two leading GOP presidential candidates.

Romney has been tending to his firewall in New Hampshire and trying to seem like he's not working too hard in Iowa lest he be embarrassed on caucus night. Gingrich has played the VIP celeb, counting mainly on debates to make him a contender.

That's changing this week in the final stretch. Romney gives a speech Tuesday night in Davenport and launches a three-day bus tour the next morning.  Gingrich and his wife Callista will be riding a bus for the duration. Their "Jobs and Prosperity" tour starts Tuesday with 11 stops in its first three days. 

That's small potatoes next to the 10 stops Michele Bachmann has scheduled for Tuesday alone. Bus tours have been a staple for Bachmann as well Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Ron Paul - the other candidates competing hard in Iowa. 

Polling in the unsettled race suggests Paul, Romney or Gingrich could win it. Bachmann and Santorum, short on money, are looking for a better-than-expected finish to keep them afloat. If Perry makes a surprise show of strength, he could re-emerge as the chief alternative to Romney.

Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times pointed out this week that some 370,000 Florida Republicans already have requested absentee ballots for that state's Jan. 31 primary -- more than all the Republicans who voted in the 2008 Iowa and New Hampshire contests combined.

Still, the snowball effect of doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire cannot be ignored. Thus the bus tours, the ads, the descending of the national media. 

The most accurate indicator of how candidates will fare Jan. 3 in Iowa is the Des Moines Register poll conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. In the final days of 2007, it was the only poll to pick up on Barack Obama's growing lead over Hillary Clinton, due to his success at bringing new voters into the arcane caucus process.

The caucuses that year were also held Jan. 3 and the final poll was released Dec. 31 based on interviews conducted Dec. 27-30. Obama led Clinton 32 percent to 25 percent, a margin almost identical to his 8-percentage-point victory over Clinton and John Edwards a few days later.

The Register won't disclose when it is in the field this year. But judging by the 2007 time frame, interviewers will be talking to Iowa Republicans throughout this week of intensified candidate activity, advertising and press coverage.

Did Paul peak too soon? Did Romney and Gingrich wait too long to make a full-court press, or are they coming on strong just in time? The Register poll will be our best clue to what is likely to happen next week when Iowa Republicans cast the first votes of the primary season.

The new Quinnipiac University survey out this morning in Virginia spotlights the delicate tightrope President Obama must walk to retain many of the fast-growing, new battleground states that he captured in 2008 - and why Mitt Romney may be better positioned than Newt Gingrich to snatch those prizes from the president.

In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to carry Virginia, attracting nearly 53 percent of its vote. In that election, Virginia was a luxury for the president because he also swept the table of Rust Belt swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota that have often decided presidential elections. But given his difficulties with blue-collar white workers, it will be difficult for Obama to repeat that performance in the Heartland. That could make it a necessity for him in 2012 to carry many of the emerging Sun Belt swing states defined by rapid growth, increasing racial diversity and (generally) high levels of white education - a list that includes Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico in the Southwest and North Carolina, Florida and Virginia in the Southeast. Of all those places, Virginia may be the closest to a tipping point state most likely to decide a close race.

Demography should help the president in these new Sun Belt battlegrounds: given the steady growth of the minority community in those places, the non-white share of the vote in them should be slightly higher in 2012 than 2008. That will likely reduce the share of whites he needs to win those states, even if economic discontent slightly erodes the preponderant share of the minority vote he captured in all of them three years ago. His problem is the share of the white vote he can attract may be declining even faster than the share that he needs - especially in the white working class.

It's a bad day for a Republican presidential candidate when he can't even get a break from Bill O'Reilly, the bullish Fox News arbiter of conservatively correct thinking. Newt Gingrich had just spent several daylight hours complaining across Iowa about the onslaught of negative campaign ads by his GOP rivals that are contributing to his downward creep in the polls. If he was looking forward to a sympathetic conversational nightcap with O'Reilly on the Republican-friendly network, he was disappointed.

O'Reilly instead came down hard during his evening talk show on Gingrich's recent comments that "radical" judges who issue rulings out of step with mainstream values can be subpoenaed and hauled before Congress by federal marshals to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment.

Mitt Romney has pulled into a tie with Newt Gingrich in the latest CNN/ORC national poll on the strength of gains with both wings of the Republican Party. Both men polled at 28 percent support overall in the survey.

When Gingrich rocketed to the top of the GOP primary polls last month, he did so mostly with tea party support but also with a healthy percentage of non-tea party Republicans, who had previously provided Romney's core constituency. In the new poll, Gingrich has slightly passed Romney among Republicans who don't identify with the tea party - 28 percent to 24 percent. Last month's CNN poll had Romney up by two points among non-tea party supporters - but also with only 19 percent of them. As recently as mid-October Romney had attracted 35 percent with that group in CNN polling; he hasn't trailed with that group since late August and early September, when Rick Perry briefly consolidated both wings of the GOP before fading.

Now it is Romney's turn to eat into Gingrich's core supporters: Romney won the support of 28 percent of tea partiers in the new poll, his best showing among the most ideological Republicans in any CNN poll this year. Gingrich still leads among the group, 32 to 28, but that represents a much smaller lead among the tea party than last time around. In November, Gingrich led Romney 31 percent to 19 percent with those voters. Romney's previous high with tea party Republicans in a CNN poll this year was 27 percent in June.

Overall, Gingrich is the first GOP contender since Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in that late summer stretch, to lead among both tea party and non-tea party supporters in a CNN survey. But that could be a lagging indicator: more recent Iowa polls have found Gingrich plummeting under a sustained advertising assault.

If Iowa voters changed channels a few minutes into Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, they would have taken away the impression of a gracious Newt Gingrich wishing them "a very joyous Christmas." But anyone who stuck around longer would have seen the Gingrich who makes many Republicans quake at the idea of him as their nominee.

"I sometimes get accused of using language that's too strong, so I've been standing here editing. I'm very concerned about not appearing to be zany," the former House speaker said, in a sly reference to Mitt Romney's characterization of him as unsuited to the presidency.

Whatever your definitions of strong and zany, it's doubtful that Gingrich succeeded. In fact at times during the Fox News debate in Sioux City, Iowa, he made libertarian maverick Ron Paul sound like a sober upholder of the status quo.

The exchange that summed up all of Gingrich's strengths with the GOP base, and potential weaknesses in a general election, came over his plans for the courts.

Does Gingrich have a "woman problem" in the primaries? Polls are mixed - one recent poll of Republican voters showed a 9-point gender gap, while another showed no gap. Clearly he has enough support among women to be leading the GOP field in many state and national polls.

Gingrich's public contrition, redemption story and conversion to Catholicism seem to have disarmed some skeptics. Nor does his personality - at times pugnacious, outrageous, patronizing - faze GOP voters.Many enjoy his media baiting and his party is, after all, looking for someone to give voice to their anger at President Obama and the state of the nation.

Big get for surging Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in Florida: His new state director is Jose Mallea, who helped steer Marco Rubio's come-from-behind victory in the 2010 Senate race.

Mallea's move is likely to fuel speculation that Rubio will endorse Gingrich, though the freshman senator has said he would stay neutral in the primary. Gingrich and other candidates have dropped his name as a likely running mate.

"For those of us who came up in politics in the mid 1990s, he's someone we admired,'' Mallea said. "He's so intelligent on the issues and understands where we need to go as a country.'"

The new CNN/Time/ORC polls out today for the first four states on the Republican calendar underscore the breadth of Newt Gingrich's rise - and the extent of the threat confronting the erstwhile front-runner Mitt Romney.

In each of the states except New Hampshire, Gingrich is consolidating the voters that have long been the most skeptical of Romney, while dividing those that had been most open to the former Massachusetts governor. That's a formula for success - if the former speaker can maintain it, admittedly a big question.

(RELATED: Gingrich Leads in Three of Four New Early-State Polls)

Gingrich is now succeeding among both sides of the party - dominating among the vanguard half that identifies with the tea party movement, and holding his own with the less ideological half that does not. What's more, the evidence from these polls suggests that along each track, the voters most skeptical of Romney are moving to unite behind Gingrich, at least for now. In particular, among the groups most dubious of Romney, Gingrich is now attracting much larger shares of the vote than any single candidate did in surveys earlier this fall.

In all four states, Gingrich now leads Romney among GOP primary voters who identify with the tea party movement. Gingrich's share of the vote among tea party supporters has increased as if launched from a rocket: since the last round of CNN/Time/ORC polls in late October he's up from 13 percent with them in Iowa to 40; in New Hampshire he's jumped from 6 to 37; in South Carolina from 11 to 53; and in Florida from 14 all the way to 62.

Larger version

Said the 2008 Republican nominee John McCain on Sunday: "If I had, frankly, a criticism of the process, it is that I think maybe we're really getting a little too heavy on the debates.''

It's not an uncommon refrain. But so far, there have been roughly the same number of debates in this election cycle as there were in the last Republican primary.

McCain participated in 10 debates televised on major network or cable channels as of this time four years ago, missing only the PBS debate in Baltimore on September 2007, for a total of 11 debates in all. He subsequently appeared in six more before clinching the nomination.

This year, if you don't count the May 5 debate in South Carolina that didn't include several major candidates, Thursday's debate in Des Moines will be - you guessed it -- No. 11.  (No, I'm not counting Mike Huckabee's Saturday night special or Donald Trump's wanna-be reality show or the Newt Gingrich's Lincoln-Douglas-esque debates.) Another 11 debates are proposed between Thursday and March 19^th, but who knows how many of those will materialize.

The perception that the 2012 GOP primary has been overloaded with debates may stem from their impact more than their quantity. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have all seen their poll numbers soar after strong performances, while Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry endured the opposite.

The best test of whether there are too many debates is the number of people watching them, and some have attracted twice as many viewers as they did four years ago. 

What's the scariest news for Mitt Romney in the nearly mirror-image polls out today showing Newt Gingrich rocketing into the lead in Iowa, South Carolina and nationally?

The short answer: the breadth of Gingrich's support. In all three surveys, Gingrich is not only lapping Romney among the ideologically conservative and religiously devout voters who have resisted the former Massachusetts governor throughout the race; Gingrich is also running step for step (or ahead) with Romney among the less ideological, more secular, voters who have been Romney's base.

All of this is a big and ominous change for Romney. Earlier he had the luxury of watching the rivals to his right divide conservative voters while he made steady progress at consolidating the party's more managerial, less ideological wing. For a brief period in late summer, Texas Gov. Rick Perry threatened to reach across the divide - but his poor debate performances quickly deflated his standing with both groups. Now Gingrich, a much steadier (if still volatile) contender than Perry, is not only consolidating conservatives, but loosening Romney's hold on the more pragmatic and managerial components of the GOP coalition.

For an interesting study in contrasts, compare the television advertising broadcast by the leading Republican presidential candidates ads in Iowa.

The most distinctive quality of Newt Gingrich's first ad is its speed: slow motion. Going for the heartstrings, the spot showcases amber waves of grain to purple mountain majesties, joining the scores of homages to Ronald Reagan's beloved "It's morning again in America'' ad. Gingrich says, "Some people say the America we know and love is a thing of the past. I don't believe that. Because working together, I know we can rebuild America.'' Definitely an old-school ad by an old-school politician.

Mitt Romney's ad brands him from the first frame with what could be the title of the world's most boring memoir: "Mitt Romney: Conservative Businessman.'' In a voice over, Romney says, "I spent my life in the private sector. I've competed with companies around the world. I've learned something about how it is that economies grow." The tall, dark and handsome candidate is in every frame of the spot, sometimes in color, sometimes in black and white. His ad is the only one that features a picture of himself and his equally handsome wife, Ann.

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.

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 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.

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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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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?

It's about time to start planning for the post-Herman Cain world, and there are gathering signs that Newt Gingrich could be the next anyone-but-Romney contestant in the GOP primary race.

 If the Cain campaign implodes as it seems determined to do, the question would be who replaces him as the alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney - and if there has been anything consistent about the GOP contest, it's been the need among likely GOP voters for an anti-Romney. Could the baton go to the blunt-spoken former speaker of the House?

After struggling to put a couple pennies together, Gingrich announced in New Hampshire on Tuesday that his campaign had raised over $800,000 in the month of October, more  than in the entire third quarter of the year. Gingrich's poll numbers have also been quietly creeping up lately, from the low single digits to 10 percent in the most recent CBS/New York Times survey. The results put him in third place, after Cain, at 25 percent, and Romney, with 21 percent. The man who led Republicans to congressional victories in the mid-1990s is also now enjoying double-digit support among voters who identify with the tea party in the key primary states of Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, according to a CNN/Time poll earlier this week.