Headline on Yahoo's home page:
Bachmann’s staff developing reputation for bullying reporters

A calculated strategy or not?

Having a rep as a dick to reporters is likely a net + in a Republican primary.

ron paul remains media poison - politico

i really would love it if RP won Iowa...just as a massive **** you to both his party and the media

Given that Perry and Bachmann are both going to be campaigning hard there, Romney will pull probably 15%, and Santorum, Cain and Huntsman will probably pull at least 10% combined, I think that 30% could very easily win the caucus. Can Paul pull 30%? I don't think so but it would be hilarious if he did.

re: perry and social security

He's already making the necessary moves

I'm not a fan of him overall, but he's the clear favorite imo

OMG YES !! That's what will get us the right person for the job!!....NOT!

What we will have, is another guy, like Obama, who gets caught lying, like Obama did when he claimed NAFTA was a bad idea & he'd opt out & then his aides called Canada and told them not to worry, it's just campaign rhetoric, & then when Obama was asked on his plane by the press about it, he told him that it wasn't true, that the call wasn't made, and then senior people in the Canadian govt. confirmed again that the phone call was received...........and the American public will gloss over these lies and vote for the guy anyways, cause he's the one with most charisma........and we'll just continue to get the shaft.

Why?: Because he has the most money from special interests and money can drown the bad news like it was a cat in the ocean.

Poor, poor, America.........no Ron Paul for you! No patriot! Just another bought & paid for politician.........Chat up the 2012 election all you want though.......that's what the politics forum is for.........chatter, chatter, chatter........hope it makes you feel better.........while that big, fat, red, white & blue shaft is being rammed up.........

"The best argument against a democracy, is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill

I don't get the grades argument brought up... do you guys really care how well a person did academically 40 years ago? Any of you oldtimers ever have your grades brought up?

I can't even get med schools to look at my high school grades lol.

It would be hysterical. Unlikely of course, but if Perry were able to pull off a good-sized chunk of Bachmann votes, not entirely implausible.

But the Iowa caucuses are still a long way off (almost six months), and a lot can happen between now and then.

Ok, Politico:



Who's hosing him again?

lol, A+

I can't blame people for taking into consideration how someone did in college. Ultimately, what a person does after school can overcome any grades, but I would be willing to bet that academic record, on average, are a good indicator of intelligence, focus, etc.

This is just absurd. Perry is about 40 years outside of college. I think I'm extremely different from myself 3 years ago. His career is a much, much better indicator of those attributes.

The college grades stuff applies to people who are a few years out of college.

The comment I heard this morning was Bachmann is done against Perry. When they both did the Waterloo event, she went rock star, while he went rubber chicken dinner. Iowa, along with NH, is retail politics. A security fence to keep the unwashed masses away doesn't play there. Nor does taking the stage away from the fundraisers to get their pitch across. Palin may be able to set that bar, but not anyone who needs the low level political activists to keep the campaign chugging along.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news...nn-in-waterloo

they've since edited the headline.

Now this is the way one should be looking upon politics........like the big, fat, red, white & blue Joke that it is!

Wouldn't "let the states decide" be the worst way to do it? I always had the impression that the average person in the US is much more flexible concerning their living conditions than us Euros. So if you work in four different states you get four different retirement plans, with four different sets of conditions, regulations etc. Of course if they all just "privatized" it, than it wouldn't matter as much, at least if the insurance companies were licensed in different states. Still sounds like a major bureaucratic hassle for citizens.

Can anyone from the US confirm this or point out my mistakes?

Sure.......Perry is a cowboy. Cowboys are best at lynching people & not much else.

You're merely arbitrarily asserting its ridiculous after I asserted otherwise.

I'd bet if there were studies out there that measured intelligence and career success and compared them to the strength of their academic records there would be a very strong correlation.

And I already said that "Ultimately, what a person does after school can overcome any grades"

Cameron Todd Willingham says hai.

Lets wait on a few polls without Giuliani, Palin, Pawlenty, or Christie included. Id love to leave off Cain and go with Paul, Romney, Perry, and Bachmann with 2nd choices noted. From everything I see, Perry is pulling more votes from Romney than anyone else, and NH dominance might be Romney's only path to relevance. Bachmann is in trouble, but its hard to judge because she shares so much space with Palin its difficult to get polls without both. Her voters are still more sticky than Romney's non-Mormons and anti-Irish Setters.

If Romney finishes 4th in Iowa, 2nd in NH, 1st in Nevada, and 4th in SC, he is toast.

So now he's just a corporatist political pig as evidenced by the money doled out by his government "tech-fund" instead of just being bad at remembering carbon molecules. Still a complete turd sandwich.

I would tend to agree. During my fairly brief post-college working career (4 yrs), I've lived and worked in 2 states plus DC, and am reasonably confident that I will at least double that number by the time I retire - and I am by no means the most transient of my friends.

And there are consulting jobs that will send you out to random locations to live and work for 6 months at a time, call you back, and then send you out somewhere random again.

+1

The fact that most people who covered him in Texas seem to view him as savvy yet corrupt politician but also a intellectual lightweight tells you all you need to know.

Plenty of incredibly brilliant leaders/CEOs/etc had ****ty college grades

In today's Des Moines Register front page:

"The New Front-Runners!" Huge Photo featuring: Bachmann, Perry, Romney

Way to legitimize your own straw poll, Iowa.

Ron Paul just completely ignored as if he doesn't exist. I'm starting to feel like the fix may have been in to keep RP from winning the poll.