WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH ROMNEY’S BUSINESS BACKGROUND?

A former Wall Street investment advisor is out with a sharp, detailed attack on the business methods employed by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Get the more here.

RON PAUL ON HIS SECOND PLACE FINISH IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

“But freedom, if you understand it, you should all fight for freedom because you want to exert your freedom the way you want.”

Oh, thanks for esplainin’ that!

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

 The Tea Party’s Not-So-Civil War

 By MATT BAI

 In South Carolina, they know who their enemy is, but they are too busy attacking one another to fight him.

The NY Times has an excellent piece on the screaming absurdity of the presidential campaign, especially as seen in New Hampshire.

A quote from the article:

Mr. Romney can remind you of the dorky uncle at the Thanksgiving table, the one who excitedly delivers platitudes with a big wind-up, and then gets the platitude just ever-so-slightly wrong. The Link

Another  quote from the article:

Early presidential voting has become a full-on amusement spectacle in America, where political hobbyists can buy T-shirts from licensed vendors and ask would-be presidents to hold a pose with them for several seconds while Grandma tries to figure out how to get this iPhone machine to take a picture (“Oh wait, that one didn’t come out either, Governor). The Link

Dana Milbank discloses the “secrets” of reporters covering the campaigns: sharing notes.

The good residents of New Hampshire, uninspired by the candidates,  seemed less interested in attending candidate rallies than in years  past.  The result was that traveling mobs of journalists routinely outnumbered the “real people”.

As Jon Huntsman wound down his New Hampshire campaign with a stop Monday at Crosby Bakery in Nashua, he was trailed by about 150 journalists. Total number of New Hampshire  voters? Perhaps a dozen. And some of them seemed more focused on taking pictures of Meet the Press€� moderator David Gregory than in seeing the candidate. THE LINK

E.J. Dionne believes the Republicans are hurting themselves, badly, by the nature of this year’s contest for the presidential nomination.

So far, the impact of this year’s Republican contest has been more  negative than positive for the GOP. Most of the news from the race  before the voting highlighted the shortcomings of the various contenders: Gingrich’s jewelry-buying habits, Rick Perry’s debate meltdowns, Herman Cain’s personal troubles. This was happening as the party’s image had already been dented by the unpopularity of the GOP in Congress. THE LINK

BIKE TRAILS IN THE DC AREA

THE TERRYREPORT: It is, actually, worse than Dionne, who favors Dems and liberals, states in his  column. The opposing Republican candidates have given voters a laundry list of reasons not to vote for any of the candidates. The pandering to the far right and the tea pot crowd has been blatant and borderline embarrassing, if one happens to be a moderate or an indepedent. Huntsmann scored a major point against Romney, and, really, all of the rest, when it said it was Romney’s attitudes that represented the divisions along partisan lines in America. Romney had been critical of Huntsmann for serving as Obama’s (and America’s) ambassador to China. Romney was merely echoing the far right sentiment that Huntsmann had sold out by working for a Democratic president.  Clearly, Huntsmann’s retort hit Romney in a soft spot. Here’s betting that issue doesn’t come up again in the primary debates.