“President Obama called for the removal of Gaddafi. 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?”

— Herman Cain, struggling to collect his thoughts in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which was recorded on video.

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The effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) will start at midnight, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Organizers have to gather more than 540,000 signatures to force a recall election against Walker but they hope “to gather 600,000 to 700,000 signatures to allow a cushion if some signatures are found not to properly count.”

Joshua Spivak notes the signature requirement “is not low: The 540,000 represents 25% of the vote for the governor’s office in the last election.”

New research from the Federal Reserve concludes that the European debt crisis is raising the odds of a U.S. recession, with economic contraction more likely than not by early 2012, according to Reuters.

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds Mitt Romney leading the GOP presidential field, but just barely.

Romney leads with 24%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 22%, Herman Cain at 14%, Rick Perry at 12%, Ron Paul at 8% and Michele Bachmann at 6%.

Key finding: While Romney’s support has pretty much stayed the same, Gingrich has seen his support jump 14 points since last month.

This post is part of our guest series from Inkwell Strategies analyzing the 2012 campaign ad war.

As the 2012 ad war heats up, political action committees are starting to get in on the action. Case in point, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS just announced a major ad buy targeting President Obama in several key battleground states.

Looking past the GOP primaries to a tough general election, the ad, entitled The Two Presidents, knocks Obama on tax policy. Unlike many of the campaign ads we’ve highlighted to date — which are produced primarily to garner free media coverage — this is a major buy. Crossroads is spending $2.6 million to run the ad in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado — all states the president carried in 2008.

[Read more…]

A new Public Policy Polling survey shows Newt Gingrich taking the lead in the GOP presidential race.

Gingrich leads with 28%, followed by Herman Cain at 25% and Mitt Romney at 18%.

The rest of the field: Rick Perry at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

Key findings: “Gingrich’s lead caps an amazing comeback he’s made over the last 5
months.  In June his favorability nationally with Republican voters
plummeted all the way to 36/49. Now he’s at 68/23, representing a 58
point improvement in his spread since then. As recently as August
Gingrich was mired in single digits at 7%, and even in September he was
at just 10%.  He’s climbed 18 points in less than 2 months.”

A new survey from The Polling Company (R) in Iowa finds Herman Cain leading the GOP presidential field with 20%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 19%, Mitt Romney at 14% and Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 10%.

All other candidates were under 5% with another 13% of likely voters still undecided.

Donald Trump told Fox News he would make an endorsement in the presidential race very soon.

Said Trump: “Within a month probably sounds good — maybe a little bit more than that, but I’ve got a good, good sight on everybody. I have a lot of respect for a lot of them. We have some good people.”

Despite Rick Perry’s string of poor debate performances and sinking poll numbers, Jay Newton-Small thinks it would be foolish to count him out just yet.

“In fact, there is still a path for him to win… Money. Perry’s campaign on Friday announced a $1 million ad buy on Fox News… Despite the defection of some bundlers, Perry remains a fundraising powerhouse who will be able to afford investments other candidates can’t… If he backs out now, it’s so much worse. You can’t run for president and then not give it your all. If Perry walks away now, before every last option is exhausted, he’ll bear the quitter label for the rest of his life… Perry is improving: he’s more comfortable on stage, more confident. Maybe he knows he’s now got nothing to lose. His brain-freeze comedy tour was successful and if he can start really engaging and delivering, he might just catch a wave… Perry still has more endorsements than anyone else but Romney, including some in key states like South Carolina. Plus, he has the strong backing of his wife and family… If Gingrich gets knocked off, there’s time for one, maybe two more waves before the first voting begins. Perry still has a window to the nomination if he can win Iowa and ride that momentum through South Carolina and into Florida.”

That said, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has Perry fading to just 4% support nationally among Republican voters.

President Obama’s top political operatives met with Bill Clinton to ask for his help on how to win re-election, Joe Conason reports.

“As the meeting began, the Obama aides laid out their sense of the political landscape, their polling data on attitudes among voters in the Democratic base and independents who might be truly undecided, the shaping of their message and their campaign’s organizational structure across the country… Much of the presentation dealt with battleground states such as North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and Arizona, where Obama prevailed four years ago but faces more difficult odds next year.”

“Having absorbed all this information, Clinton peppered the Obama operatives with dozens of probing questions and specific suggestions, not only concerning their strategy and message but how to handle the leading Republican candidates, too. Economic conditions and how to address them dominated the discussion. What most interested the Obama team were Clinton’s insights on heartland voting blocs that remain in the political middle: Not the Republican-leaning independents who always end up voting for the GOP nominee, but the truly uncommitted who largely ended up supporting Obama in 2008.”

The Note: “Though the pace of the new stories about it has dropped off, Gloria Allred, the lawyer for one of the accusers, plans to hold a press conference in Louisiana this afternoon with the former boyfriend of Sharon Bialek, who recently came forward with her story about Cain’s misconduct.”

“The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.”

— Herman Cain, in a GQ interview.

Al Hunt notes the similarities between President Obama and Mitt Romney:

“They are super smart men, who quickly absorb data, policy wonks able to analyze complicated choices. Also, in a business that places a premium on personal and political relations, neither relishes that sort of camaraderie or cajoling; they both appear aloof and spend little quality time with fellow politicians.”

“There are profound differences between these two likely 2012 nominees… Yet in style and brain power there are surprising similarities. They both are graduates of Harvard Law School… Rhetoric aside, both are more comfortable with compromise and consensus than confrontation.”

Alexander Burns: “It’s a weird quirk of the political marketplace that in a
political environment as unstable and change-hungry as this one, the
opposition party appears set to put forward a nominee who looks in many
respects like a center-right version of the incumbent.”