Mitt Romney seems to be smarting after watching Newt Gingrich once again
rise in the polls by attacking the media at debates, criticizing him
for playing to the crowd, The Hill reports.

Said Romney, “It’s very easy to talk down a moderator… The moderator
asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to
them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the
moderators and attacking the media… But it’s very different to have
candidates going against candidates, and that’s something I’ll be doing,
going against President Obama, if I get the chance to be our nominee.”

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found American voters feeling more positively about the economy and of President Obama’s handling of it. Some 30% believed the country was headed in the right direction, up eight points from a month ago. Some 60% said the country was on the wrong track, down from 69% in December.

For the first time in seven months, more people approve of Obama’s job performance than disapprove, 48% to 46%.

In an interesting ABC News interview, Warren Buffett lashed out at assertions from Republicans that the “Buffett rule” endorsed last night by President Obama — which says that anyone earning more than a million dollars a year should be taxed at at least 30% — is class warfare.

Said Buffett: “If this is a war, my side has the nuclear bomb.”

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A new CNN-Time poll in Florida finds Mitt Romney leading with 36%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 34%, Rick Santorum at 11% and Ron Paul at 9%.

Key findings: “Romney leads Gingrich among female and white voters, voters over 50, and those with a college degree… Gingrich holds leads among men, Tea Party voters, self-identified conservatives — among whom he boasts a 10-point advantage — and born-again Christians. His fans also appear to be more committed than Romney’s.”

Buzzfeed: “Because garments are considered so sacred, Mormons tend to recoil when
they hear non-Mormons make casual reference to their
underwear — especially in a political context. But if there ever was a
time when discussion of the subject could be contained to Mormon
circles, now is not it.”

Newt Gingrich insisted that there was nothing similar about his personal failings and those of Bill Clinton — even though both were having extramarital affairs in the late 1990s, CNN reports.

Said Gingrich: “I didn’t do the same thing. I have never lied under oath. I have never committed perjury. I have never been involved in a felony. He was.”

Lois Romano: “You got hand it to the guy. He always tries to find a small patch of moral high ground on which to stand. No matter how tiny.”

Fidel Castro lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest
competition of “idiocy and ignorance” the world has ever seen, the AP reports.

“Castro’s comments came in a long opinion piece carried by official media
two days after Republican presidential hopefuls at a debate in Florida
presented mostly hard-line stances on what to do about the Communist-run
island, and even speculated as to what would happen to the 85-year-old
revolutionary leader’s soul when he dies. Cuba has become an important issue as the candidates court Florida’s influential Cuban-American community in an effort to win the biggest electoral prize so far in the primary season.”

While Mitt Romney regularly accuses President Obama of wanting to turn the United States into Europe, a new DNC video asks why Romney puts so much of his money there in secret Swiss bank accounts and other overseas tax havens.

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Newt Gingrich told NBC News that he doubts Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has any dirt on him as she hinted last night.

Said Gingrich: “She lives in a San Francisco environment of very strange fantasies and very strange understandings of reality. I have no idea what’s in Nancy Pelosi’s head. If she knows something, I have a simple challenge: Spit it out.”

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the AP  she will seek a fourth term in the U.S. House following her failed presidential bid.

Mitt Romney told Fox News that he wished he knew what Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hinted she knows about Newt Gingrich that would derail his presidential bid.

Said Romney: “I wish I knew what that was. I’d tell people what it is right now.”

John King, CNN: “Because of your history with Speaker Gingrich, what goes through your mind when you think of the possibility, which is more real today than it was a week or a month ago, that he would be the Republican nominee and that you could come back here next January or next February with a President Gingrich?”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Let me just say this. That will never happen.”

King: “Why?”

Pelosi: “He’s not going to be President of the United States. That’s not going to happen. Let me just make my prediction and stand by it, it isn’t going to happen.”

King: “Why are you so sure?”

Pelosi: “There is something I know. The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him that’s their prerogative. I don’t even think that’s going to happen.”

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