Well there you have it, another onetime Tea Party favorite has dropped out of the 2012 race to be America’s president thereby shrinking the field of “viable” candidates that a Tea Party true believer could vote for this coming November. In fact one should even ask the question of whether or not there is a candidate still in the race that a true Tea Party member could legitimately support. Political columnist E.J. Dionne, to some degree, asked a similar question in: “Where are the Republican populists?” Quoting Dionne: “Members of the Tea Party insisted they were turning the GOP into a populist, anti-establishment bastion. Social conservatives have long argued that values and morals matter more than money. Yet in the end, the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win.” That will leave members of the movement with a truly tough choice this November: Is there any candidate left in the race for which a real Tea Party supporter could vote without a compromising of one’s principles? Unless a third party candidate favorable to the Tea Party emerges, not exactly a development that would guarantee victory, the choices available to Tea Party members will be reduced to voting for a moderate Republican in Mitt Romney, not voting, giving up on the presidency and hoping that a rear guard electoral effort will maintain the House Tea Party Caucus or voting for Obama as a protest. The last choice is something the true believers would never do.

Presently it appears that rank and file Tea Party members have already started to compromise their principles. A recent Boston Globe article, “Tea Party’s opposition to Romney weakens” states: “The Tea Party and its dislike of the Massachusetts health care plan and Romney’s moderate record as Bay State governor were considerable impediments to his candidacy throughout 2011. But none of the Tea Party’s darlings – Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, or Gingrich – has been able to sustain a surge, highlighting limitations of a nascent movement that couldn’t extend its 2010 congressional successes onto the presidential stage…The latest polls suggest a good number of Tea Party supporters are getting behind the party’s most likely nominee [Romney], despite qualms about his record, because their overriding goal is removing Obama from the White House.” Likewise, just as the G.O.P.’s 2012 field is unsettled so are members of the Tea Party when it comes to who they currently support: “CBS reports that voters who identify with the Tea Party movement are similarly divided, with 29 percent supporting Romney, 28 percent supporting Gingrich, 18 percent supporting Santorum, and 12 percent supporting Paul.”

The fact that almost one third of the Tea Party members are backing Romney shows just how far principles on the hard right have eroded at this point in time. Likewise real conservatives would take umbrage with Newt Gingrich’s claim that he is the only true conservative in the race. Gingrich has a track record of clashing with conservatives on many issues. He called Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget reform ideas “right-wing social engineering”, has supported health care insurance mandates, been rather liberal in his views on accommodating illegal immigrants, admitted that climate change is real and needs to be addressed and even criticized the far right publicly on the issue of ideological purity saying: “You can have a very, very intense movement at 20 percent. You can’t govern. To govern, you’ve got to get 50 percent plus one after the recount.” And now in what could be a Herman Cain like moment Gingrich’s second wife is going public in her criticism of him in an expose that is hardly flattering and which will do nothing to endear him to social conservatives, particularly women.

Thus for the Tea Partiers we’re down to just two alternatives, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. If Ron Paul is anything it’s unelectable. His isolationist stance on foreign involvement and libertarian views on drug use are an anathema to the Republican establishment and most likely to the majority of the electorate as well. Paul’s libertarian views can be summarized as follows: “Paul believes: Gays should be allowed to marry; America’s foreign policy contributed to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks; U.S. defence spending should be slashed by 15%; Drugs like marijuana, heroin and cocaine should be decriminalized, and the United States should not come to Israel’s aid if it starts a shooting war with Iran.” With views like these we can effectively dismiss Ron Paul as a serious candidate for president.

That leaves us with Santorum and his acceptability to the Tea Party. One problem Santorum has always had is that he’s been a one trick pony, his overarching theme has been one of social values, something that helped him tremendously in Iowa. “CBS News entrance polling showed that Tea Party conservatives who participated in the caucuses largely supported Santorum. Among those who said they support the Tea Party movement, 29 percent caucused for him, compared with 19 percent for Paul and 19 percent for Mitt Romney.” But Iowa is atypical of the larger political landscape, its whiter, more evangelical, less urban and less affected by the Great Recession due to a strong demand for its agricultural produce. Just how well do the Tea Partiers know Rick Santorum? Since Iowa it’s come out that he was a master at earmarking federal largesse for western Pennsylvania, supported Medicare Part D, was a regular supporter of foreign aid and voted for No Child Left Behind, a federal program that “greatly expanded the federal government’s role in education.” Referencing a Ron Paul advertisement, Santorum is “another serial hypocrite who can’t be trusted.” It targets Santorum for voting five times to raise the debt ceiling, voting in favor of the notorious “bridge to nowhere,” and taking lobbyist cash, among other things.”

A good synopsis of Rick Santorum’s career on Capitol Hill can be found in Sheryl Stolberg’s recent article “Santorum Rose Quickly From Reformer to Insider” Quoting Stolberg: “But a look at the arc of Mr. Santorum’s political career, from his days as a fresh-faced College Republican to his bruising defeat for a third term in 2006, reveals a side of Mr. Santorum beyond that of reformer and abortion foe. He emerges as a savvy operator and sharp tactician, a climber who became a member of the Washington establishment that he had once railed against.” Thus can any true believer in the principles of the Tea Party movement consider Rick Santorum to be a bona fide upholder of the movement’s agenda? Not really. Does Santorum fit the description of a Beltway outsider who can be trusted to champion the agenda of the Tea Party movement? Not in the least, that is, if you want to be honest about whom Santorum is and what his past track record is all about. Once you peel the onion down a few layers past the exterior of standing up for family values what you’re left with is a professional politician and that’s hardly in line with the general tenor of the Tea Party movement.

Conservative columnist David Brooks points out much of what comprises Santorum’s world view is not exactly congruent with Tea Party principles. ”His worldview is not individualistic. His book, “It Takes a Family,” was infused with the conservative wing of Catholic social teaching. It was a broadside against Barry Goldwater-style conservatism in favor of one that emphasized family and social solidarity. While in Congress, he was a leader in nearly every serious piece of antipoverty legislation…He is not a representative of the corporate or financial wing of the party. Santorum certainly wants to reduce government spending. He certainly wants tax reform. But he goes out of his way in his speeches to pick fights with the “supply-siders.” Now many on the far right consider Brooks a “progressive” Republican but few would say the same of Erick Erickson who runs the ultra-conservative political blog RedState and who’s article “What a Big Government Conservative Looks Like” states: “Rick Santorum is a pro-life statist. He is. You will have to deal with it.  He is a big government conservative.  Santorum is right on social issues, but has never let his love of social issues stand in the way of the creeping expansion of the welfare state.  In fact, he has been complicit in the expansion of the welfare state… Santorum is a conservative. He is. But his conservatism is largely defined by his social positions and the ends to which government would be deployed. But he has chosen as the means to those conservative ends bigger government. We see big government conservatives most clearly when they deviate from the tireless efforts of people like Mike Pence and Jim DeMint and the others who were willing to oppose George W. Bush’s expansion of the welfare state. Rick Santorum was not among them.”

So with the abovementioned in mind, am I going out on a limb in pointing out that the Tea Party movement is effectively without a viable candidate for 2012? I don’t thinks so, not if by “viable” you mean a candidate that will put the principles of limiting big government’s influence in our daily lives at the forefront of their policy agenda and who actually has a chance at appealing to that vast raft of independent voters and being elected. If the CBS poll numbers are indicative of anything they show that three quarters of the Tea Party movement’s respondents are supporting a candidate other than one who espouses true Tea Party principles in either positions taken on past policy or personal behavior. Which get us back to E.J. Dionne: “Think about Romney’s rise in light of the overheated political analysis of 2010 that saw a Republican Party as being transformed by the Tea Party legions who, in alliance with an overlapping group of social and religious conservatives, would take the party away from the establishmentarians.

Certainly some of the movement’s failures can be attributed to a flawed set of competitors and the split on the right, especially Paul’s ability to siphon off a significant share of the Tea Party vote. That has made a consolidation of its forces impossible…But there is another possibility: that the GOP never was and never can be a populist party, that the term was always being misapplied, and that enough Republicans are quite comfortable with a Harvard-educated private-equity specialist.” If E.J. Dionne is correct, and I believe he is, then the members of the Tea Party movement have a rendevous with reality in Novemeber that will leave then feeling jilted with regard to having a true candidate in the race and, if a Republican wins the presidency, with having that old sinking feeling of having been used for their votes with little propsect of seeing their agenda advanced by the professional politicians who run the Republican Party.

Steven J. Gulitti

1/20/2012

 Sources:

Perry suspends campaign, endorses Gingrich; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdvje9Fr-uY

What doomed Rick Perry’s campaign; http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/19/politics/perry-rise-fall/index.html

Where are the Republican populists; http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/romneys-rise-puts-the-lie-to-a-populist-gop/2012/01/18/gIQAoPqG9P_story.html

Tea Party’s opposition to Romney weakens; http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/01/19/opposition-from-tea-party-begins-fade-mitt-romney-gains-support-more-conservatives/JrU4fS9Gy5BF44dEfEkQoM/story.html

GOP Race Remains Fractured, Tea Party Supporters Divided: http://www.decodedscience.com/gop-race-remains-fractured-tea-party-supporters-divided/9673

Gingrich Has Record Of Clashing With The Right; http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142868567/gingrich-has-record-of-clashing-with-the-right

Newt Gingrich wanted ‘open marriage,’ ex-wife says; http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/19/politics/gingrich-wife/index.html

Paul’s candidacy thrives on the unconventional; http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Paul+candidacy+thrives+unconventional/5776016/story.html

Can Rick Santorum claim the Tea Party mantle?; http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57354522-503544/can-rick-santorum-claim-the-tea-party-mantle/

Santorum Rose Quickly From Reformer to Insider; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/us/politics/santorum-rose-quickly-from-reformer-to-insider.html?_r=1&hp

Workers of the World, Unite! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/opinion/workers-of-the-world-unite.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

What a Big Government Conservative Looks Like; http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/09/what-a-big-government-conservative-looks-like-2/

Rick Santorum and the Tea Party; http://thepoliticalzealot.com/2012/01/09/rick-santorum-and-the-tea-party/

Well there you have it the Herman Cain debacle is now officially semi-complete . But in reality Cain’s hopes to be president are now thoroughly at an end, campaign spin notwithstanding. “Herman Cain Suspending 2012 Campaign For President”;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/03/herman-cain-suspending-presidential-campaign_n_1126331.html To wit: “Herman Cain announced on Saturday that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The news comes in the wake of Cain being accused of having an extramarital affair and sexual harassment charges from more than a decade ago resurfacing.”
 
Now I am wondering how soon it will be before my good friends on the far right trot out that old canard that Cain was undone by the “progressives” who perpetrated a campaign of ”falsehoods” against him. Now really, are the “progressives” that powerful that they can knock off conservative candidates at will? Hardly, because as we all know the guy who killed Cain’s chances is none other than Cain himself. Has anyone who has been supporting Cain asked themselves this question: If Cain were truly without guilt wouldn’t he have stood up to his accusers and called them out to prove their accusations? He wouldn’t be walking away from the 2012 race as easily as this if he knew in his heart of hearts that he was right and his accusers were wrong and that he could prove it, not with all that’s at stake he wouldn’t. If these accusations were truly false the accusers wouldn’t have had a chance of success at prevailing over Cain in the scrutiny that they would receive in trying to substantiate their claims. Cain would have known of their weakness and thus would have prevailed in a showdown over who was in fact telling the truth. The fact that he is bowing out is proof positive, to my mind, that at least one of these women, Ginger White, does in fact have the goods on him and Cain knows it. If its anything other than the aforementioned and Cain knows he’s right but is just too tired of all of the media attention he’s been receiving then he is in fact unfit to be president in the first place. How could he stand up to the threat of a collapsed economy or nuclear war if he can’t stand up to a media that’s got its story wrong and he himself knows that it is he, Herman Cain who is right?   
 
As one political commentator said on Friday night talk radio, the fact that this has happened to Cain shows either a gross underestimation of what kind of scrutiny he would be subject to in the race for president or a naive assumption that his persona and ego could prevail over accusations of sexual harassment and infidelity. Whether or not its the former or the latter matters not, both show the public how patently unqualified Cain was to be president in the first place based on his fundamental errors in judgment as to how his personal life would affect his race for the White House. In the best of light Herman Cain can be sympathetically seen as the accidental candidate for president in 2012, almost as a farcical figure. In the worst of light Cain can be seen as an egotist undone by the hubris of his own life. In either case this is not the sort of person that this country needs in the White house no matter what the overall state of the American union.
 
SJG
12/3/11

I know so many on the right are bending over backwards in defending Herman Cain from those sexual harassment allegations that won’t go away but lets just put that aside for a moment and look at Cain on foreign policy. Apparently Cain seems to have “Perryed” a very elemental question about the military campaign that just ended in Libya. Now we’re not talking about some obscure war from America’s past, we’re talking about an event that was on all of the newswires last month!

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain stumbled when asked about the recent war he didn’t even know where Barack Obama stood on the issue: “Libya. President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Qadhafi. Just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, yes I agree, I know I didn’t agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason — no, that’s a different one. I gotta go back to … Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree with on what? … Here’s what I would have — I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is and I’m sure that our intelligence people have some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition — based upon who made up that opposition, might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no, I did not agree with Qadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. So something would have had to be — I would have supported many of the things they did in order to help stop that. It’s not a simple yes-no, because there are different pieces and I would have gone about assessing the situation differently, which might have caused us to end up in the same place. But where I think more could have been done was, what’s the nature of the opposition?”

You know things are going South when even the ultra-right organ “The Blaze” criticizes a Republican like Cain: “The Herman Cain campaign seems to be in crisis mode as Cain’ s wife has emerged from silence to support the candidate against infectious sexual harassment allegations to new polls showing a surge in support for Newt Gingrich, taking the short-lived role Cain had as the chief opponent to the GOP presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney. Cain has appeared to suffer another blow today, as the candidate has been heavily criticized in the media for an odd video interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that shows Cain stumbling while answering a question about President Obama’s handling of Libya…Cain also said that he supports collective bargaining for public employees and mistakenly said federal workers already have the right to bargain collectively. These comments come in the state where the battle between the Scott Walker-led GOP statehouse and public sector unions has played out as one of the biggest political story lines of the year.”

The rest of the media doesn’t seem to be in too charitable a mood either when it comes to Herman Cain:

“CBS News notes that Cain stumbled badly on the Libya question Monday despite avoiding major gaffes in Saturday’s foreign policy debate. That said, the network notes that Cain,who has no foreign policy experience, offered vague answers when pressed on foreign policy questions.”

“The Atlantic writes that Monday’s odd interview is latest in a string of foreign policy gaffes by the Georgia businessman from not knowing what Palestinian “right of return” was to saying that knowing who is the head of “small insignificant states around the world” is not critical to national security, to being unable to offer a full answer on whether an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador was an act of war.”

The highly respected Republican strategist Todd Harris said that with the sexual allegations hanging over Cain’s head along with his series of recent misstatements, that there is no clear path to winning the nomination for Cain and there, in fact, never was one in the first place.

While so many of Cain’s supporters had continued to point to the fact that the candidates poll numbers had held up in the face of all this controversy, that too has now started to change. For one thing the polling which Cain’s supporters had referenced predated the rash of scandals and the increased scrutiny that Cain would receive as his popularity rose. That seems to now be changing. Quoting Alexander Burns of Politico, “Among likely Republican voters surveyed Sunday, Nov. 6, Cain led the field with 40 percent. On Monday, he was third with 22 percent. By Wednesday, just 19 percent of those surveyed said they supported Cain for the nomination.” Likewise a yet another poll showed support for Herman Cain dropping even among Republicans: “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows sharply higher negatives for Cain, with Republicans also souring on the surprise front-runner. Overall, 44 percent of Americans say they have unfavorable impressions of Cain, up from 27 percent in mid-October, before the first allegations against him. Nor has Cain been immune among fellow Republicans: negative ratings among Republicans have more than doubled over this time period, now reaching 36 percent. Cain hasn’t lost support in his base, but the large number previously undecided now seem to have shifted negative. Should Cain be the GOP nominee, he would have to make up ground lost over the past month. In the new poll, independents now tilt negative on Cain, and the candidate’s unfavorable number among Democrats has jumped to nearly six in 10.”

So there you have it, yet another Republican candidate who had a breathtaking rise only to see his fortunes change so rapidly that its almost unbelievable. I think that its safe to say that the air is coming out of the Cain campaign faster than even his harshest critics on the left could have imagined. Seems to me that Herman Cain is just the latest but not the last of the “anti-Romney” candidates that the far right has so desperately embraced on the road to 2012. Who’s up next, a recycled Newt Gingrich but how much shelf life does his comeback have? Not much for my money, not with the rap sheet that he has to defend against.

Steve Gulitti
11/14/11

Sources:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Herman Cain on Libya; http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/video/?bcpid=13960334001&bctid=1275195602001

Politics ‘Stuff Twirling’: Flustered Herman Cain Struggles to Answer Libya Question During Newspaper Interview; http://www.theblaze.com/stories/stuff-twirling-flustered-herman-cain-struggles-to-answer-libya-question-during-newspaper-interview/

Herman Cain’s poll numbers slide in POLITICO poll; http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68286.html#ixzz1djrJ4t5J

Republicans Sour on Herman Cain; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/republicans-sour-on-herman-cain/2011/11/01/gIQAZDDyLN_blog.html

Judging from several pundits on the right, Rick Perry’s candidacy for president is all but finished. Perry’s latest gaffe during Wednesday’s Republican debate, in front of millions of potential voters, may be the proverbial last straw. Summarized by two New York Times reporters: “For any other candidate, the moment may have been quickly forgotten or easily explained. But for Mr. Perry, whose candidacy has been consistently undercut by his debate performances, the seriousness of the moment was not a question, only how deep and enduring the damage would be. It reinforced negative stereotypes about his candidacy, a point that was made clear after the debate when he made a rare trip into an adjoining room to face reporters and try to brush away what had happened.”

But least anyone think that criticism of the Perry campaign is solely a game being played by “progressives” consider the following critiques of Perry’s performance by Republican strategists and commentators:

Mark McKinnon, an aide to former President George W. Bush, describing the moment as the “human equivalent of shuttle Challenger.”

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist: “I think the biggest question now is whether or not he can raise any more real money…A donor strike will totally cripple what’s left of his campaign.”

Sara Taylor Fagen, Republican strategist: “It was a political death knell. There’s just no recovering from a moment like that when you’ve had such a bad record of debates.”

Steve Schmidt, Republican Strategist who oversaw the reelection “war room” during George W. Bush’s campaign for a second term and who then went on to advise John McCain, speaking of Perry’s performance: “After a series of ruinous debates, this on top of it ends it for him… Since he [Perry] got into the race, he’s not been ready, he’s not ready to be Commander in Chief…Republican primary voters aren’t going to put Perry in front of Barack Obama in a debate.” Schmidt went on to say that Perry’s debate performance will be a videotape highlight for the next thirty years when the topic of poor debate performance is discussed.

Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics labeled Perry’s debate performance as “the worst mistake ever made in a presidential debate.”

At this point in time and with all of the undercurrents swirling around and within the Republican presidential contest there is little reason, short of a miracle, to believe that Rick Perry will be able to pump enough water to keep his hopes from sinking altogether. But there are victims beyond Rick Perry as well, those on the far right who have been hoping beyond hope for a viable anti-Romney to emerge. At this point in time there can only be the utmost desperation within the ranks of the Tea Party movement and others on the radical right when they consider that the may be faced with having to choose between two political progressives for president next November, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. While we all know that the radical right has as its expressed goal, the defeat of Barack Obama, voting for Romney will, in reality, do nothing to further their cause. One only need to recall the Massachusetts Senate race of 2010 when Scott Brown gladly accepted the support of the Bay State’s various Tea Party groups only to part company with them shortly after he took office. His voting record on major issues is hardly in line with the ideology advocated by the Tea Party movement.

So after seeing Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry rise only to quickly fall, and a Palin candidacy fail to materialize, what options are left to the radical right for 2012? Well there’s the perennial Ron Paul who can’t pierce the threshold of single digit favorability and then there’s the recycled Newt Gingrich. Gingrich’s poll numbers have been on the rise of late but how long will he be viable once the voters become reacquainted with his scandalous past and record of serial matrimony? Can Gingrich past muster with the Evangelical element on the far right? I seriously doubt it. Likewise if the allegations of sexual impropriety currently afflicting Herman Cain can not be dealt with effectively by Cain, the Evangelical’s won’t flock to support him either. Thus for the far right the dead end of their hopes for putting one of their own in the White House may be coming clearly into view. That will constitute a major setback for a movement that just a year ago thought it was on the threshold of fundamentally altering the structure and function of American government.

Steven J. Gulitti

Sources:

“Oops” at Debate When Perry Can’t Get to Three;

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11314/1188910-84-0.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml#ixzz1dLxIcCLT

Perry takes a lengthy pause during debate; http://hardballblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/10/8741648-perry-takes-a-lengthy-pause-during-debate

Back in March of this year in an article on the Gingrich presidential campaign, “Newt Gingrich’s Dream, Driven by the Winds of Folly?”, I posed the question of why Newt Gingrich would even bother to seriously consider a run for the Oval Office.  Now apparently his campaign staff has come to the same conclusion and left Gingrich and his hopes adrift with their en masse departure. Not only are Gingrich’s top operatives leaving him flat, many of his state level operatives have likewise jumped ship.

Bedeviled by conservative criticism for calling Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plans, “right wing social engineering” and his $250,000 plus jewelry tab at Tiffany’s, it appears that Gingrich’s latest two week vacation to the Greek Isles was enough to convince his staff that this guy just isn’t for real. All of this led MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to opine that Newt Gingrich is simply in the 2012 race for his own self serving publicity and that he was never a serious contender to start with. 

The unfortunate aspect of this for the Republican’s is that in only acts to heighten the farce and buffoonery that has thus far surrounded the formation of the field of G.O.P. presidential hopefuls. Now in addition to the historical gaffes of Bachmann and Palin, Rick Santorum thinks that American troops landing on D-Day were somehow fighting to make a future decision about health care reform. We have Donald Trump, having once dropped out of contention, now saying he may re-enter the race as a third party candidate. Not to be left out of the fray, Rush Limbaugh’s has effectively written off the Romney candidacy with a hearty “bye-bye” due to Romney’s admission that he believes, to some extent, in global warming. Last but by no means least, Herman Cain is saying that any Muslim on his staff would have to swear a loyalty oath if he were elected president. And, as if it really would even matter at this point, Newt Gingrich is saying that he will be launch his campaign anew in Los Angeles this coming Monday.

Surely at a time when Barack Obama is struggling to keep his presidency on course, with his poll numbers wavering back and forth about the fifty percent mark, one would think that the Republicans would be queuing up for a knock out blow. Instead what we are witnessing is a G.O.P., formerly famous for internal discipline, careening towards 2012 in disarray.

SJG

6/9/11

 
Sources:
 
Newt Gingrich’s Dream, Driven by the Winds of Folly?
http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2011/03/04/newt_gingrichs_dream_driven_by_the_winds_of_folly_1
 
Gingrich presidential campaign implodes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html

 Santorum: D-Day Troops Fought For Health Care Freedom;: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/santorum-d-day-troops-fought-for-the-ryan-plan.php