Michael Shear notes that despite a steady stream of “gaffes, misstatements, puzzled looks and long, awkward pauses” the Republican presidential candidates “have turned the cringe-inducing moments to their advantage, asserting that they demonstrate an authenticity different from the slick professionalism of politicians in Washington.”

“But the embarrassing moments are piling up, and some veteran Republicans are beginning to wonder whether the cumulative effect weakens the party brand, especially in foreign policy and national security, where Republicans have typically dominated Democrats.”

Notes former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein: “It is an Animal House. It’s a food fight. Honestly, the Republican debates have become a reality show. People have to be perceived as being capable of governing this country, of being the leader of the free world.”

A new Bloomberg poll in New Hampshire shows Mitt Romney way ahead of his GOP presidential rivals with 40%, followed by Ron Paul at 17% and Newt Gingrich at 10%. All the other candidates are below 10%.

Said pollster Ann Selzer: “You just don’t have any volatility in these numbers. He’s liked and widely liked.”

John Dickerson:
“No candidate spans the rheostat more than Gingrich, who can go from
sweet to sour in seconds. As the Gingrich candidacy gains traction in
the polls, the key questions are going to be about temperament,
discipline, and character. Those are important with any candidate — but
with Gingrich they are especially so… But now Gingrich will face the
pressures of being a front-runner, which means reliving that period
during the 1990s when his disapproval rating was in the high 70s. He
will face a lot of questions about his temperament and discipline, most
of which he’ll undoubtedly think are stupid. Whether he says so will
tell us something about his temperament this time around.”

Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees with mortgage company Freddie Mac, Bloomberg reports.

The amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate last week.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds Newt Gingrich is the strongest Republican presidential candidate when matched head to head against President Obama.

Obama leads Gingrich by just two points, 47% to 45%. Mitt Romney is next closest, trailing Obama by 4 points, 49% to 44%. Ron Paul is the third best bet for the Republicans right now, 8 points back from Obama, 49% to 41%.

No other Republican is within single digits of the president.

Ronald Klain takes issue with “data wonks” and their forecasting models and argues that election outcomes are not just the product of underlying fundamentals.

“First, the models’ seemingly objective factors are loaded
with ambiguity and interpretation that inject political
handicapping… Second, the models cheat by capturing the performance of
the campaigns and the candidates via backdoor measures… Third, and perhaps most important, the U.S. doesn’t hold
presidential elections often enough in a given time frame to
provide sufficient data to model the drivers of an election
result.”

Factors “such as the state of the economy
and the ideology of the Republican candidate will certainly
affect the president’s chances of re-election. But in the end,
how the campaign unfolds — the messages the candidates offer,
the campaigns they run, their performance on the stump, their
get-out-the-vote efforts and their debate appearances — will
make the difference. Candidates and their campaigns will dictate
the outcome, not calculators.”

Newt Gingrich said during a GOP presidential debate last week that he earned $300,000 to advise Freddie Mac as a “historian” and warned that the mortgage company’s business model was “insane.”

However, former Freddie Mac officials tell Bloomberg that Gingrich “was asked to build bridge to Capitol Hill Republicans.” They say he never advised management that the company’s business model was at risk and that the housing market was a “bubble,” as he claimed during the debate.

Mark Halperin: “If the press decides to pursue the angles, there could be six Newt enterprise/investigative pieces a day. If the Romney campaign decides it wants to take Gingrich down, there could be eight.”

“One of the Republican weaknesses is that we rely too much on consultants and too much on talking points, and we don’t rely enough on actually knowing things.”

–Newt Gingrich, in an interview with David Brody.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) reiterated her previous contention
that the HPV vaccine can lead to “mental retardation,” telling a voter
in Iowa on Monday that her child shouldn’t “have to live with the
ravages of this vaccine,” according to Ben Smith.

The Hotline
notes that Elizabeth Warren, the likely Democratic nominee for the
Senate race in Massachusetts, is “the biggest rock star candidate in the
2012 Senate races” and “riding a wave of enthusiasm inside the state —
one we haven’t seen with other top Senate recruits so far this cycle.”

The
proof: “While she raised 70 percent of her third quarter haul from
outside of Massachusetts, the, her total haul was $3.14 million, meaning
that nearly $1 million was raised from donors in the state. That’s no
small sum… The Democrat drew a crowd of about 1,000 people at a
campaign rally in Roxbury on Sunday, NECNreports. And, as the Boston
Globe notes, it’s not her first campaign event to draw a large number of
people. Warren has also held volunteer events that have consistently
drawn hundreds of people… Those are numbers even the presidential
candidates wouldn’t turn up their noses at.”

New York magazine compiles a slideshow of Newt Gingrich looking at people condescendingly.