“I was the only guy in the room who didn’t know I was dead.”

— Newt Gingrich, in an interview for the just-released e-book, The Right Fights Back by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, on his unlikely comeback.

In a must-see Fox News interview with Bret Baier last night, Mitt Romney showed why he doesn’t do too many interviews.

Miami Herald: “At times during the interview, Romney was icily peevish. He laughed mirthlessly, or denied video evidence showed him shifting his positions or suggested he was espousing clear positions — which nevertheless required clarification. When pushed, he told Baier at one point that people should read his book.”

“Just what everyone wants: A candidate whose positions require homework, if not a concordance.”

First Read: “If you want to understand why Mitt Romney is the favorite to win the
GOP presidential race but is not the front-runner, just watch the
interview.”

[Read more…]

New York Times: “Newt Gingrich is adamant that he is not a lobbyist, but rather a visionary who traffics in ideas, not influence. But in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services and gain access to state and federal officials.”

“Mr. Gingrich and his aides have repeatedly emphasized that he is not a registered lobbyist, an important distinction in their effort to position him as an outsider who will transform the ways of Washington. They say that he has never taken a position for money and that corporations have signed on with him because of the strength of his ideas… Yet if Mr. Gingrich has managed to steer clear of legal tripwires, a review of his activities shows how he put his influence to work on behalf of clients with a considerable stake in government policy. Even if he does not appear to have been negotiating legislative language, he and his staff did many of the same things that registered lobbyists do.”

When asked about reports that campaign manager Rob Johnson and senior adviser Dave Carney had been demoted, Rick Perry called the rumors “just scuttlebutt,” according to NBC News.

Said Perry: “News to me, I’ve talked to both of them within as a matter of fact the last 24 hours. So if they have, news to me. So I would suggest to you that’s just scuttlebutt, highly technical Aggie term for ‘not correct.'”

As Newt Gingrich looks to sustain his rise to the top of the Republican presidential field, the Atlantic Wire
looks at some of the lessons Gingrich learned from watching other
candidates’ who briefly enjoyed the status of front runner only to crash
and burn.

Lessons from Michele Bachmann: “Don’t be
anti-science: Gingrich knows he can’t say he agrees with the majority of
scientists who say global warming is real and win the Republican
nomination. But he’s smart enough not to flat-out say it isn’t
real… Don’t forget about the church crowd: Just because we’ve spent
the last few years talking about the Tea Party and it’s lack of interest
in social issues doesn’t mean the culture war went away. Gingrich has
been working hard to win over evangelicals.”

Lessons
from Rick Perry: “Don’t be bad at debates: Obviously. Gingrich is
already trash talking President Obama’s debate skills. Don’t be too
mean: The top word associated with Perry in an Ohio focus group was ‘bully.’ Gingrich has worked hard to avoid criticizing his fellow
Republicans on stage during debates.”

Lessons from
Herman Cain: “Deal with the woman situation: In fairness, Gingrich
probably didn’t learn this from Cain, but from his old foe Bill Clinton.
Gingrich got out in front of his woman problem a long time ago… Know
things about foreign policy.”

Rick Perry apparently doesn’t know the legal voting age is 18, NBC News reports.

Speaking to college students in New Hampshire, he said, “Those of you that will be 21 by November the 12th, I ask for your support and your vote. Those of you who won’t be, just work hard.”

Of course, the age mistake wasn’t the only one he made: the general election is on November 6, 2012, not November 12.

A new Pew Research poll finds that since the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party “has not only lost support nationwide, but also in the congressional districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus.”

Key findings: “More Americans say they disagree (27%) than agree (20%) with the Tea Party movement. A year ago, in the wake of the sweeping GOP gains in the midterm elections, the balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% agreed and 22% disagreed with the Tea Party.”

“Throughout the 2010 election cycle, agreement with the Tea Party far outweighed disagreement in the 60 House districts represented by members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus. But as is the case nationwide, support has decreased significantly over the past year; now about as many people living in Tea Party districts disagree (23%) as agree (25%) with the Tea Party.”

“We want a virgin to do a hooker’s job.”

— Arizona state Sen. Lori Klein (R), quoted by CBS News, on the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain.

She added that she has known Cain for 12 years and he’s “never been anything but a gentleman — and I am not an unattractive woman.”

Tom Jensen: “You want to know the biggest reason Mitt Romney hasn’t surged at any point in the Republican Presidential race this year? It’s because the more GOP primary voters across the country have been exposed to him, the less they’ve liked him. There are 13 places PPP has polled the Republican race in October or November where it also did a poll sometime between January and March. In those places Romney’s net favorability has dropped by an average of 15 points over the course of the year.”

GQ gives the honor to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R).

“Every election season produces a number of hilariously pointless candidates who have no chance of winning. Some of them have value as novelty items. Look! It’s Alan Keyes, the token black Republican! And over there! It’s David Duke! He’s a racist! These are the fun, fringy candidates. The Sharpton Sector, if you will. Then there are folks like Pawlenty, who fail to register even as novelties. T-Paw (as he calls himself) spent much of 2011 as a six-foot-tall paperweight, an aggressively forgettable fellow perfectly suited to the role of debate filler. The $1 million he spent to lose the Iowa straw poll might as well have been burned in front of a group of orphans.”

Herman Cain told senior members of his campaign “that he is reassessing whether or not to remain in the Republican presidential race on a conference call this morning,” the Washington Post reports.

“Cain’s rethinking of his candidacy comes less than 24 hours after an Atlanta woman named Ginger White alleged that she and the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO had carried on a 13-year extramarital affair. Cain denied the allegation but a statement from his lawyer simply stated that personal matters were not relevant to the candidate’s presidential campaign.”

Interestingly, National Review has a transcript of the phone call.

According to Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told a group of hedge fund managers in 2008 that he was considering a plan “for placing Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.”

At the same time, he was telling Congress and the New York Times a very different story: that the firms must remain shareholder owned.

Felix Salmon: “What on earth did Hank Paulson think his job was in the summer of 2008? As far as most of us were concerned, he was secretary of the US Treasury, answerable to the US people and to the president. But at the same time, in secret meetings, Paulson was hanging out with his old Goldman Sachs buddies, giving them invaluable information about what he was thinking in his new job… And the crazy thing is that we have no idea how many of these meetings there were, or how long they went on for.”

Media training guru Brad Phillips has a detailed analysis of ten Republican debates held between May and November 2011 and concludes Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are the best debaters in the Republican field, while Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry rank among the worst.

Karl Rove tells Newsmax that he doubts a third-party candidate will emerge in the 2012 presidential race.

Said Rove: “I think there will be talk about it. But at the end of the day you have to have people who are willing to get behind that particular candidate, and I think there are too many people who feel so passionately about the necessity of removing President Obama from office that while in normal times they might be infatuated with a third party candidacy, this time around they’ll be very reluctant to do it.”

A new Insider Advantage poll in Iowa shows Newt Gingrich leading the Republican presidential race with 28%, followed by Ron Paul at 13%,  Mitt Romney at 12%, Herman Cain at 10%, Michele Bachmann at 10% and Rick Perry at 7%.

A new We Ask America poll finds Gingrich leading with 29%, followed by Romney at 13%, Bachmann at 13%, Paul at 11%, Cain at 7% and Perry at 5%.