From John Cassidy's "Alas, Poor Newt" in the New Yorker...

At one-thirty this morning, Intrade, the political betting site, was putting the probability of him winning the nomination at just eight per cent, and the probability of Mitt Romney getting to take on Barack Obama at ninety-two per cent.

Betting markets, like all futures markets, are far from infallible. In this case, though, I think they have it right. With the Florida polls having swung against Newt after a lackluster performance in Monday’s debate, and with the Republican establishment turning on him in savage fashion, he desperately needed a strong performance last night. But an event that the media, myself included, had billed as the debate of the year turned out to be a big disappointment—unless, that is, you are Romney or one of his supporters. “I thought it was a terrific night,” the Mittster said to CNN’s Gloria Borger as he left the Jacksonville stage, sporting a grin as wide as a Cheshire cat’s. “I think it’s going to give me the boost I need in the remaining couple of days of the election.”

From Gingrich, there was no comment, which was pretty much what he had offered up all night.

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Paul Krugman also bids Newt ¡adiosito! and adds a farewell video.

It would be nice if Republicans -- candidates and the rest -- could get their facts straight.  Mitch Daniels committed a serious blooper during his response to the State of the Union speech.  In doing so, he killed the Republicans' effort to hang Obama with the auto industry bailout. 

Paul Krugman picks up on the blooper.

Mr. Daniels tried to wrap his party in the mantle of the late Steve Jobs, whom he portrayed as a great job creator — which is one thing that Jobs definitely wasn’t. And if we ask why Apple has created so few American jobs, we get an insight into what is wrong with the ideology dominating much of our politics. ...Paul Krugman, NYT 

Daniels came out with this: "The late Steve Jobs — what a fitting name he had — created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew."

Jobs created jobs, but not in the USA.  Daniels tries, and fails, to make Obama's job-saving intervention in the US auto industry into a big mistake.  It wasn't.  As we know now, for GM it meant triumph.

Although Apple is now America’s biggest U.S. corporation as measured by market value, it employs only 43,000 people in the United States, a tenth as many as General Motors employed when it was the largest American firm.

Apple does, however, indirectly employ around 700,000 people in its various suppliers. Unfortunately, almost none of those people are in America. ...Paul Krugman, NYT

Krugman adds another really important factor that rarely gets talked about.  A major reason for moving work overseas is that the environment for production is better outside of America.  What are we missing here?  We used to be such great producers.

Well, we no longer have "the advantages of industrial clusters — in which producers, specialized suppliers, and workers huddle together to their mutual benefit."

And Chinese manufacturing isn’t the only conspicuous example of these advantages in the modern world. Germany remains a highly successful exporter even with workers who cost, on average, $44 an hour — much more than the average cost of American workers. And this success has a lot to do with the support its small and medium-sized companies — the famed Mittelstand — provide to each other via shared suppliers and the maintenance of a skilled work force.

The point is that successful companies — or, at any rate, companies that make a large contribution to a nation’s economy — don’t exist in isolation. Prosperity depends on the synergy between companies, on the cluster, not the individual entrepreneur. ...Paul Krugman

Why isn't this part of the discussion in Washington?  Too complicated?  Not a subject in which one party can blame the other?  One which Obama understood when he bailed out the auto industry but which escapes his Republican critics? 

The case for this bailout — which Mr. Daniels has denounced as “crony capitalism” — rested crucially on the notion that the survival of any one firm in the industry depended on the survival of the broader industry “ecology” created by the cluster of producers and suppliers in America’s industrial heartland. If G.M. and Chrysler had been allowed to go under, they would probably have taken much of the supply chain with them — and Ford would have gone the same way. ...Paul Krugman

Winning points to President Obama and thanks to Mitch Daniels for -- inadvertently, of course -- revealing one of the president's most significant successes.

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The Hill reports that Congressional Democrats are warming up to a new tax initiative, one that would seem to spring from Mitch Daniels' blooper -- at least in spirit.

Democratic leaders are embracing a new strategy for tax reform that leans on President Obama's State of the Union call for tax fairness and economic equality.

The new strategy diverges from the 1986 formula, the last time Washington successfully tackled tax reform, and focuses on raising tax revenue from the wealthiest taxpayers and businesses that funnel jobs offshore.

“Tax reform after the president's speech now has a different definition,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday.

“We intend to pursue a different kind of tax reform that borrows from the president's proposals," Schumer, a leader in crafting Democratic messaging, told reporters. ...The Hill

"Such a strategy," the Hill's reporter writes, "would seem to have little chance of winning Republican support, making it seem more like election-year politics than a way to actually pass a bill."

Maybe not.  Maybe it's about time for the great greed machine to pay back what it owes to Americans who do their jobs (when they have one) and pay the taxes they actually owe.

Maybe the real debate should be about whether Republicans should bother to run at all with this set of candidates.  In the  meantime, we're seeing another bounce:  a dive for Gingrich, a lift for Romney.   Gingrich seems determined to self-destruct or, at best, not find himself on the other side of a real mess-up in Florida.

His strategy, like Mr. Romney’s a week earlier, perhaps looked good in the playbook: the initial polls after South Carolina had shown Mr. Gingrich surging to a lead in Florida, and perhaps Mr. Gingrich thought he could look more like a front-runner by adopting a less combative and more magnanimous approach.

But Republican voters, once more, did not react well: Mr. Gingrich has since lost considerable ground in the polls and now trails Mr. Romney in Florida. It is not necessarily clear that the debate was the only cause of this. Nevertheless, Mr. Gingrich entered Thursday evening trailing Mr. Romney in the polls and needing a win in the second debate.

Instead, Mr. Gingrich seemed to be playing for a draw. ...Nate Silver, NYT

Newt is "plummeting" at InTrade. Romney has a new debate coach.  Santorum is back in view... ho hum.

Wait!  This is interesting:

The path forward would not be easy for Mr. Santorum, especially given that he would be at something of a delegate deficit to Mr. Romney. But Mr. Santorum could focus on two Midwestern states that are key in the general election — Michigan, which votes on Feb. 28, and Ohio, which votes on March 6. If there is truly an appetite for a “not Romney” candidate, then a state like Ohio would provide as good a testing ground as any. ...Nate Silver

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The Washington Post examines just how much the conservative establishment dislikes Newt Gingrich.  Don't they?

With Gingrich’s win last week in South Carolina and strong prospects in Florida’s primary, conservative figures and media outlets have been amping up their attacks on a presidential candidate they deem erratic and a potential disaster for the Republican Party. ...WaPo

Scary!  Bob Dole (he lives!) pops up in Kansas with his opinion.  The National Review gets in there, too.

Gingrich was the subject of twin hits Thursday by National Review, the bible of conservative thought founded by William F. Buckley Jr. The biweekly magazine, which has inveighed against Gingrich for weeks, published a blistering anti­Gingrich statement on its Web site by former senator Bob Dole (Kan.) and a scathing commentary by former Ronald Reagan aide Elliott Abrams.

“If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices,” wrote Dole, who supports former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. “Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself.” The National Review said the statement came from the Romney campaign. ...WaPo

There are an awful lot of old Republicans who get mentions in this report, Republicans I thought (hoped?) had gone to Republican heaven (green lawns trimmed by illegals, iPads with archived Reagan speeches).  Elliott Abrams, for crying out loud -- isn't he in prison?  Tom DeLay?  Ditto? 

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I've been waiting for the real Mitt -- the one who set up the original "Obamacare" system in Massachusetts -- to stand up and take credit for it, even in the face of his party's intransigence.  He seemed to do so in last night's debate.  Harold Meyerson notices:

The most interesting moment in the debate, though, came when Romney sought to defend the Massachusetts health insurance plan he signed into law against Rick Santorum’s charges that it was simply a one-state version of the national law signed by President Obama. In replying, Romney delivered a very effective defense of the universal mandate, pointing out how it was needed to offset the costs to the public of health care for the uninsured. That, as Santorum very effectively argued, is precisely the case for Obamacare, which Romney, inadvertently, defended more articulately tonight than Obama sometimes has. Romney only lapsed into his accustomed inarticulateness when he sought to contrast Obama’s law with his own. Santorum is right: Romney probably couldn’t make a plausible attack against Obamacare should he be the nominee.

But Romney’s prospects of becoming the nominee likely improved as a result of his debate performance tonight. With new polls showing that Gingrich’s momentum in Florida may have slowed, or even begun running in reverse, Romney’s forcing Gingrich onto the defensive and keeping him there stripped from the former Speaker his last chance to do his inimitable slash-and-burn before Florida Republicans go to the polls.  By the standard of getting the nomination, a good night for Romney. By the standard of showing himself capable of taking on Obama on health-care reform, not so hot.  ...WaPo

Which makes the prospect of candidate Romney going head-to-head against President Obama in a debate even more interesting.

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The Hill's report on the mini-healthcare debate last night has a nice typo which may suggest where the debate is going:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn.) hit Romney over a plan that has many similarities to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, often refered to by Republicans as "Obamacare."

Romney defended his plan on the state level, but called Obama’s healthcare law “bad medicine” and vowed to repel [sic] it as president.

“We cannot give the issue of healthcare away in this election,” Santorum charged during his lengthy attack on Romney. ...The Hill

Just diss it.  Not repeal it.  Gotcha, Mitt.

You might well conclude that they have if you listen to what conservative (somewhat disillusioned conservative) journalist David Frum has concluded about this presidential race.  He goes right back to Deborah Tannen, the brilliant linguistics professor at Georgetown, for an explanation of Newt Gingrich's rocket ride to the top of the ticket (but now, predicted fall).

Here's part of a funny interview with Frum on NPR this morning:

NPR: You've been very critical of Newt Gingrich, and yet you've written in recent days that you think he understands this party very well. What is it that Newt Gingrich understands very well about the Republican Party?

FRUM: Well, Mitt Romney - who's a candidate I like a lot more - has a kind of technocratic cast of mind. There's a linguist named Deborah Tannen who says that one of the ways that men and women go wrong is that a woman will tell a man about a problem she's got, and the man will immediately begin to offer a solution. And she doesn't really want the solution. She can think of the solution for herself. What she wants to hear is some kind of understanding and validation of how she feels. Don't be so quick...

NPR: I've been in this conversation.

FRUM: OK, don't be so quick to offer the answer Mr. Smart Guy. Just listen for a few minutes first. Well, I think that in many ways what we're having here is a Deborah Tannen moment between the Republican base and Mitt Romney.

The Republican base says: We're angry. We're frustrated. We're embarrassed. And Mitt Romney says, OK, I've got my, literally, 59-point plan. And by the way, it's a very smart plan, but that's not what those primary voters are really expressing right now.

NPR: And so Gingrich understands that and is able to tap into their unease, if that's the right word.

FRUM: Exactly.

NPR: Bret Stephens, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, wrote an incendiary article, an angry article saying that the GOP deserves to lose this election. He was not complimentary of any of the remaining candidates, and he referred to Mitt Romney - the one you say you like a lot better - as a hollow man.

FRUM: Yeah.

NPR: Is that fair?

FRUM: That's not fair. Look, Mitt Romney has the kind of qualities that I think a lot of us would like to see in a president. He's judicious. He's very smart. He's cautious, and he makes decisions based on a wide range of information.

The reason people will describe him in this way is because he's not able to channel the rage that is felt by many of Republicans, because he doesn't feel that kind of rage. But I tend to think that that's one of the things that I like about him. I mean, the passions that you're hearing from the Republican base are not good descriptions of reality and they are not good guides...

NPR: What's an example of what you are talking about?

FRUM: Well, I did a radio show the other day with a very Republican radio station, and the host was telling me, this country is on the edge of an apocalypse. You know, look, actually, the country's sort of climbing back from an apocalypse. An apocalypse is kind of strong and that kind of overwrought feeling that yeah, there's nothing ahead but decline and extinction for America. That's no way for a candidate to think, because it's not true.

NPR: You were arguing that in order to express the anxiety that a lot of Americans feel, you can most easily do that by saying things that are just not factually true.

FRUM: Well, the great politicians, the great leaders are people who, at moments where the country has real reasons for fear and unease and resentment and anger, take those feelings and they re-channel them, redirect them in ways that can lead to solutions.

And at the end of that process, the people can look back and say that the leader - and the reason we admire these leaders is, yeah, we had a lot of feelings in 1933 or in 1981 that could have taken this country in an ugly direction. And you responded to the way we felt, and then you led us to a positive place, not to a negative place.

NPR: When you said 1933 and 1981, you're talking about President Franklin Roosevelt, Present Ronald Reagan.

FRUM: That's right.

NPR: And you're acknowledging that Mitt Romney just isn't there?

FRUM: Well, Mitt Romney has the answers. I mean, the challenge for Romney is he's not good at connecting with the feelings, but he would be very good at leading the country to a more positive space. But the reason that a lot of the Republican base is having trouble with him is he's not connecting with them.

From Morning Edition, NPR, 1/26/12

Frum is dead wrong about Romney, I'm pretty sure. But he gets the apocalyptic anger on the right and he makes a good connection to Tannen's theory about "it's not the damn facts I want, but validation for how I feel!" 

That's how liberals and progressives been dumb when they insist on countering the girlish hysteria on the right with those macho statistics, with history, with truth -- all of which only drive the aggrieved little ladies crazier!  Just giving Roosevelt credit as a leader -- just that! -- may send them over the edge!

The tea partiers and their allies need a stretch in the Betty Ford Center or perhaps a more secure setting for about ten years.... until they get over it.

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Just one more comment.  It's becoming clearer and clearer to this reader that one of DC's most odious newspeaks is "Look!..."  preceding a categorical statement.   But watch out, it doesn't really mean "look closely."  It means don't look too closely because I'm going to try to convince you of something I'm not sure of myself."  Maybe Deborah Tannen will write something about that...

It was bound to happen. 

Polling released within the past 24 hours suggests that Mitt Romney may have stopped and possibly reversed Newt Gingrich’s momentum before the Florida primary on Tuesday.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast model still projects Mr. Gingrich as the slight favorite in Florida, giving him a 2-point lead and a 60 percent chance of victory. However, this lead is diminished considerably from two days ago, when the model saw a potential double-digit win for Mr. Gingrich as polls released immediately after the South Carolina primary had him surging in Florida.

In fact, I suspect the model is being too conservative and that there is enough evidence — when you look carefully at the day-to-day results — to conclude that Mr. Romney has re-emerged as the slight favorite in Florida instead. ...Nate Silver, 538

This reminds me of that nosy, gossipy, flighty, snobbish, manipulative and jealous Emma finally settling down with a gentle, privileged, and tailored prig, Mr. Knightley.

It's about whether we're good or bad.  And lately we've been getting pretty bad.

Matt Yglesias looks at two possible ways of organizing the world.  In the first instance, it's "merit" that lifts you above others even though that merit may have grown at least in part out of having good parents, a good education, a helpful peer group.  In the second, it's your physical and mental capabilities that put you in the lucky leader group.

I don't think American society resembles a pure version of either of those things, but the more important point to keep in mind is that a meritocracy is not necessarily a very admirable place, unless it's also a humane society in which people are enjoying a high quality of life. ...Yglesias, Moneybox

This, of course, is what people who study societies have found.  Even the people at the top (who may or may not deserve to be there) don't flourish to the extent they would if everyone were flourishing.  Opportunity can make a society great, but only if those who achieve it -- or those who are given it -- bring others of lesser fortune along with them.

...New research suggests that narcissists are actually more stressed than others, putting them at risk for a slew of cardiac diseases. ...

Psychologists studied 106 undergrads, measuring levels of narcissism and of cortisol, a hormone produced as a stress response. Their results, published Monday in the online journal PLoS One, found that narcissist had higher cortisol levels. The effect, shown in the above chart, was especially true for males. Previous research has linked high cortisol levels to hypertension and heart disease. ...Sarah Kliff at Wonkblog

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For now, however Republicans are still around and making trouble.  Still, they seem to backing off from at least one battle with the White House.  According to Greg Sargent, it looks like Congressional Republicans have decided to give Obama's recess appointments a pass.

... Some Senate Republicans appear to have concluded that it may be a political loser for them to take up his battle. After all, it could reprise the dynamic that played to the Democrats’ advantage during the payroll tax cut fight: it could mire Republicans in an argument about process, even as the White House and Dems make the case for what their new consumer protection bureau would do for the American people.

With polls showing the public blames Congressional Republicans more than Obama for governmental gridlock, it would force Republicans into the position of engineering more dysfunction, while Dems argue that the GOP is trying to undo their efforts to defend the middle class against Wall Street excess. This would play neatly into Obama’s strategy of preenting himself as the true champion of middle class interests while hammering Republicans for prioritizing the rich and running against a historically unpopular Congress.

Even if you concede that the politics of recess appointments themselves are unclear, it’s hard to see how this particular fight would help the GOP brand. ...Plumline