Romney: Santorum ‘on my list’ for VP

By David Edwards - RAW Story 
Thursday, April 12, 2012


It seems like probable Republican nominee Mitt Romney has already forgotten that former rival Rick Santorum recently called him a liar and the “worst Republican in the country.”

During a town hall-style event in Warwick, Rhode Island on Wednesday, Romney insisted that he had not ruled out the former Pennsylvania senator as a vice presidential nominee.

“Everybody is on my list,” the candidate told a man who asked if Santorum would be considered as a vice presidential candidate. “I’m not taking anybody off the list.”

Romney clarified: “I actually don’t have a list yet. So, I can’t say that someone is on or off my list, but I can tell you that the people that I had the privilege of running against would surely be among those I’d consider. The criteria has to be first and foremost is this a person who could be president of the United States if that were needed? And do people recognize that and see that as the kind of person who has that qualification.”

“And so he — I’ve said this before: If any of the people I ran against happened to become the nominee, I would have endorsed them and supported them for president. So, of course they’d be on that list, and he among others.”

Over the course of a bitter primary, Santorum had suggested that Romney was “lying” about his health care record, called him the “ultimate flip-flopper,” said that the country “might as well stay with” President Barack Obama, insisted that the Massachusetts Republican was a “weak candidate” and charged that he was the “worst Republican in the country.”

On Wednesday, Romney predicted that Santorum would eventually join him on the campaign trail.

“You’ll see us all come together in a powerful way, but the time for that will happen down the road as we spend more time together and hit the trail together,” Romney told Fox News. “You will see our part more united than it’s been in a long, long time in part because President Obama has taken America in such a different course than we have ever gone as a nation before.”

Watch to the video below from CNN, broadcast on April 11, 2012.

Save the Rich!

The Republicans' War on (Almost) Everyone

by ANTHONY DiMAGGIO


The remaining Republican candidates are gearing up for the March 6th Super Tuesday primary elections, with Mitt Romney carrying forward his momentum from wins in Arizona and Michigan over competitors Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul. As the primary season progresses and the race increasingly turns into a close one between Romney and Santorum, it’s worth reflecting on just how reactionary this bunch of misfits has become, and what’s at stake as their proposals are seriously by the American public.

This primary season has increasingly degenerated into a shootout between candidates seeking to prove they are the true heir to Reagan’s conservative legacy. No matter that these candidates are significantly further to the right than the tax-hiking Reagan. The myth of Ronald Reagan has become far more potent than the actual Reagan – and Republican candidates have exploited that myth to push some of the most noxious policies imaginable. A review of their statements is enlightening – and disturbing.


Mitt Romney’s Attacks on the “Entitlement Society”
As the most “respectable” and “mainstream” of this Republican clique, Romney’s positions are nothing to write home about. He has gone on record lambasting America’s “entitlement society,” a blatant stab at widely popular social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. These programs, despite being supported by a strong majority of Americans, are becoming cannon fodder for a bi-partisan system increasingly dedicated to dismantling the safety net for the masses of working, middle class, and poor Americans. Romney’s anger is targeted at an Obama administration that “has been replacing our merit-based society” with one increasingly reliant on federal welfare benefits. To prove his point, Romney cites evidence that federal payments to individual Americans increased by nearly $600 billion since 2009. He also cites census data suggesting that nearly half of Americans (a five percent increase since 2008) rely on at least one federal program such as Social Security, food stamps, worker’s compensation, some sort of housing subsidy, or unemployment benefits. Why such increased reliance should be surprising in a terrible economy is not discussed in Romney’s diatribes. His attempts to eliminate these programs are symptomatic of just how out of touch Republicans are with distressed Americans.

Romney’s attacks are not merely rhetorical. He went on record in December of 2011 supporting Republican Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare reform, which proposed to privatize and transform it into a program in which seniors are required to purchase their health insurance from private providers. The Ryan plan was widely condemned for threatening to end Medicare as we know it, with the vouchers being wholly inadequate to cover rising private health care costs. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported, the Ryan plan would decrease Medicare coverage by increasing the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67, while contributing to growing costs. Federal voucher subsidies for private health insurance would grow at only the rate of inflation, which has increased at a slower rate than the growth of health care costs in the last few decades. By relying on a voucher system, the federal government would redirect a massive amount of taxpayer money to private health insurers, while reducing access and quality of care for the elderly. As the Congressional Budget Office estimates, by 2022 (the first year a voucher system would be implemented), a 65 year old voucher recipient’s costs would more than double from $6,150 to $12,500.


Newt Gingrich’s War on Teachers and Children
Not to be outdone by Romney’s reactionary politics, Newt Gingrich has done the unthinkable by suggesting that Americans return to the good old Dickensian days when children enjoyed the human “right” to engage in child labor, rather than remain in repressive public schools dominated by “nearly criminal” teachers unions. Condemning child labor laws as “stupid,” Gingrich has offered a “radical” proposal that public schools be allowed to fire their union janitors and empower children to take their place: “Most of these schools ought to get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Gingrich has also condemned union teachers, accusing (specifically the city of Los Angeles’ teacher union) of “protecting bad teachers” and for “almost criminal” behavior – presumably suggesting that there is some positive (albeit undocumented) correlation between unionization of schools and poor student performance. For the record, there is no evidence suggesting that unionization is correlated with lower student performance, nor is there evidence that unionized public school teachers are overpaid when compared to those of equal education in the private sector, or that private charters schools (which conservatives claim are the solution to underperformance in public schools) perform any better than public ones. Incendiary language, however, speaks louder than facts or data in the Republican primaries. It’s far easier to scream at public school teachers and condemn them as lazy. It’s easier to condescendingly advise Occupy Wall Street protesters (as Gingrich does) to “take a bath” and “get a job” than it is to propose effective solutions for improving education of for creating jobs at a time when reports indicate (as recently as mid 2011) that there are five workers for every available job in the U.S. economy.

Newt has also renewed George W. Bush’s dead-on-arrival plan to privatize Social Security. One would have hoped that this proposal would never again see the light of day, especially after the 2008 economic collapse demonstrated the tremendous dangers of casino style gambling with worker’s retirement funds. Privatization schemes represent a boon for Wall Street, but a massive risk for Main Street. These risks alone should be enough to give us pause, not to mention the tremendous costs of privatization to the federal government – considering that taxpayers would have to find a way to fund not only current retirees’ checks, but also investment accounts for those still working today. That privatization schemes represent a major expansionof federal spending and responsibility, however, are an afterthought of a Gingrich candidacy more interested in looting Social Security for private gain.

Rick Santorum, Hero of the Right-Wing Fringe
Pick the issue, and Rick Santorum is far to the right of the American people – and even rank-and-file members of the Republican Party. Voting record analyses from citizens groups such as Americans for Democratic Action suggest that Santorum was among the most reactionary of Republicans in terms of his voting record in the U.S. Senate. It’s not hard to see why after looking at his 2012 campaign rhetoric. Santorum opposes the entire Medicare system, and favors Paul Ryan’s privatization plan, arguing that “we should not have a government-run health care system on Medicare or anything else, because it completely distorts the market. It’s top down. It’s not the way America works best.” Of course, government also would remain intimately involved in Medicare under the Ryan plan, with taxpayer dollars being redirected from a government funded and paid insurance system to a government-funded, privately profitable system. The only difference between Ryan’s plan and the current system is that government would no longer pay for seniors’ insurance by themselves, but would funnel that money through private insurance middlemen, who could charge radically more for the same service. This would allow costs for insurance to rise, while doing nothing to “get government out of Medicare.” Quite the contrary, government debt obligations would likely increase as seniors (most of which are on fixed incomes) would be unable to pay their insurance premiums. This prescription, then, is yet another plan for increasing government spending subsidies for the private sector, under the guise of promoting “small government” and privatization.

Santorum has also called for deep and immediate cuts to Social Security. He was a strong supporter of Bush’s 2005 effort to privatize Social Security, a red flag if there ever was one for those wondering about his long term “vision” for the program. Similar to other Republican candidates, Santorum also supports extremist positions on education that suggest a total lack of interest in increasing educational opportunity for the poor and disadvantaged. Among the most controversial of Santorum’s claims was his labeling Obama a “snob” for promoting the idea that all Americans deserve access to higher ed. As Santorum argued: “there are a lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don’t include college.” Santorum’s comment is all the more perverse (aside from his contempt for adult access to higher ed) in light of the fact that Obama has done little to deliver the $12 billion he promised community colleges in 2009. This failure is all the more tragic at a time when four year college and university funding has approximately doubled over the last decade, and as higher learning becomes a luxury under a system that only the upper middle and upper class can afford.

The current crop of Republican primary contenders has done little more than expound upon the most extreme rhetoric embraced by past contenders. Former frontrunners Rick Perry and Herman Cain gained notoriety respectively for attacking Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” and blaming the victims (the unemployed) for their failure (and alleged unwillingness) to find work during tough economic times. These candidates (past and present) are impervious to data that challenge the foundations of their ideology. Why let evidence get in the way of a good argument?

This is clearly Mitt Romney’s rationale as he attacks Obama’s “entitlement society,” and forecasts that over the next few years “we will have created a society that contains a sizable contingent of long-term jobless, dependent on government benefits for survival…government dependency can only foster passivity and sloth.” Dismissal of inconvenient facts is clearly a motivation of Rick Santorum’s when he claims that the “reach of government” spending is “systematically destroying the work ethic” of America. Such propaganda from Romney and Santorum has little to do with observable reality. In the real world, federal “welfare” spending on programs such as supplemental nutritional assistance (food stamps) amounted to a meager two percent (or $78 billion in spending of the $3.834 trillion 2011 federal budget. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families spending (formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children) accounted for just less than one percent of the federal budget. Why even focus so much energy on demonizing these programs, when they make up such a miniscule portion of the budget, the cutting of which can’t possibly be effective in trimming the $1.56 trillion in federal deficit spending for 2011? Why direct so much anger at the millions of Americans reliant on welfare spending more generally, considering that (as a recent study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows), 90 percent of welfare entitlement benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working families, rather than those who are “too lazy to work” and “don’t want a job?” To those interested in improving the state of Main Street, attacks on the poor are a red herring – a distraction from the real economic problems we face today. Unfortunately, however, such demonization fits the ideology of a bi-partisan system which has declared war on the poor, and views the state as a weapon of class war to be used against the poor and in favor of redistributing wealth from the masses to the wealthiest ten to twenty percent of Americans (who have captured most all of the income gains in the U.S. over the last thirty years).

The contemporary party system has moved greatly to the right. The Democrats are the modern day equivalent of Eisenhower Republicans, talking regularly about smaller government, budget cuts, and reducing the size of the welfare state and safety net. Modern day Republicans would be unrecognizable in their extremism to liberal Republicans of the Eisenhower or Nixon variety. None of those leaders were running on platforms to gut what’s left of the American welfare state, and they certainly knew better than to anger such a powerful voting bloc as seniors, who rightly take attacks on Medicare and Social Security quite seriously. Sadly, the party system’s drift to the right appears to show no sign of abating this election season, with Republicans all seeking to outflank each other in their embrace of reactionary politics. It will take a major rebuking of the party at the polls to beat back this most recent assault on the American safety net.

The Austerity of Hope

Paternity Over Fraternity!

by VIJAY PRASHAD


Poor Mitt Romney. He is worth “somewhere between $190 and $250 million”. Even he is not sure of his net worth. He cannot account for the gap of $60 million. CNN asked the multiple-millionaire about his economic policy. He said, “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” He has been pilloried for his callousness not only by the Democratic Party but also by his own Republican primary rivals.

Rick Santorum, who has been a steady challenge to Romney, said that Romney’s comments about the poor “sent a chill down my spine”. Romney, who not only comes from the world of finance capital but also is its preferred candidate, has been unable to grasp the deep crisis of everyday life for millions of Americans.

The “safety net” that Romney mentioned has been frayed beyond recognition since the 1980s. One of the most grotesque problems is hunger. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that in 2010 about 17.2 million households in the U.S. did not have the resources to buy food (that is about 14.5 per cent of all households).

Additionally, about 6.4 million households reduced or disrupted their eating habits because of a lack of access to food. To seek food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed, people had sought refuge in emergency food pantries. During the recession’s early years, 2007 to 2009, use of these pantries increased by 44 per cent. The Agriculture Department’s September 2011 report on “Household Food Insecurity in the United States” showed that one in six Americans do not have the money to feed themselves. The problem is acute.

Charity fills in the gap left by an inadequate governmental response. But here the challenge is enormous. With anxiety about the economy, charitable giving has dropped significantly (by 11 per cent to the big charities). Donations to organisations that help the very poor have dropped even further. According to the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, the charities with less than $3 million to spend saw their donations fall the most. These charities, such as homeless shelters and food pantries, are the ones that serve the very poor. They are in dire straits.

The children’s TV show “Sesame Street” has introduced a new puppet, Lily, whose task is to speak on the problem of food insecurity once a week to the children who tune in. She does not get enough to eat. She will share her story with children who are in her predicament. At least the puppet is concerned for the very poor.

Paternity

Building on his surge in the Republican primaries, Santorum went to give a big speech in Colorado Springs, the heartland of the new American conservatism. Santorum, who went on to win the primaries in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, told the thousand people in the Biggs Centre that he wanted to distinguish between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The French had a three-part slogan, two of which Santorum was happy with: Liberty and Equality. The third, Fraternity, was not appropriate because it suggested that people in community would be able to create codes to live by. Santorum preferred Paternity to Fraternity, with the Father being God. God’s law should precede human law. No one amongst the Republicans challenged this anti-democratic tendency towards theocracy.

Rather than deal with the serious problems of hunger and homelessness, the right wing has tried to shift the debate toward what are known as “social issues”. These include abortion rights, marriage rights for gays and lesbians, discussions about birth control and sexuality in schools, as well as the teaching of diversity in schools. The Right remains fixated on the body and on sexuality, with a morality that is out of touch with the everyday lives of people. No wonder that one of the problems for the Right has been the constant eruption of scandals among its leadership, with this or that spokesperson for an anachronistic morality found with sex workers or with pornography (Ted Haggard? Mark Foley? anyone?--jef). Hypocrisy is the touchstone of an obsolete morality.
As part of his health care overhaul, President Barack Obama announced a rule that all health care providers (including religious hospitals) needed to provide free contraception for their employees. They did not have to provide contraception to their customers, but their employees had to be covered by federal mandates. A 2010 study in Vital and Health Statistics showed that 99 per cent of women aged 15 to 44 in the U.S. had used at least one contraceptive method. In other words, contraception use is universal among women in the U.S. It seemed as if the Obama policy was, therefore, quite straightforward and of great use to the 62 million women of childbearing age in the U.S.
Nevertheless, the Right went ballistic, calling the Obama policy an infringement on religious freedom. This is fairly typical of the Right, which masquerades its social suffocation as freedom. Santorum’s linkages between liberty and equality with the sanctity of God’s Law is an example of this unhappy marriage.

With Obama having been painted as anti-religion, it was impossible for the White House to stand firm on its principle. Harder for Obama to navigate this issue with one in five Americans of the erroneous view that Obama is a Muslim. Instead, Obama had to compromise with the Right and allow religious health care providers to sidestep this provision. Despite Obama’s surrender to the Right, Romney tried to fan the fire of this issue, “I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life in this country.”

The Right has gone ballistic on contraception but is virtually silent on the home foreclosure crisis and on the criminal activity by banks. Millions of Americans have been turned out of their homes as a result of the collapse in the home mortgage market.

As part of the neoliberal transformation of the U.S., low-rent, government-provided homes disappeared from the 1980s, with the private sector coming in as the main provider of homes. But with wage incomes stagnant since the 1970s, and with little wealth in the hands of ordinary people, the only way for them to get the keys to a home was through no-money-down, balloon payment mortgages. Banks devised these schemes to ensnare desperate people into homes, and then moved their mortgages into the secondary and tertiary financial markets as securities to be traded. These securities were given good bond ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, whose culpability has not been fully addressed.

When it became clear that these securities were built on unsustainable dreams, the housing market collapsed. Banks received bailouts (along the grain of the neoliberal view that the government must make sure to remove Bad Money from the financial system and replace it with Good Money). There was no bailout for the millions of Americans. They were evicted from their homes.

Popular outrage at the criminal behaviour of the banks forced an investigation of financial activity. Banks were afraid that they would face a series of lawsuits from public interest litigants and from those among the foreclosed that might be gathered together into class action lawsuits. This was the spur for the banks to begin negotiations with the government for a deal.

The Obama administration and several Attorneys General of the different States sealed a bargain with the banks in early February, where the banks promised to pay $5 billion into a fund, which would include $21 billion taxpayers’ money. This fund would be used to pay out between $1,500 and $2,000 per borrower foreclosed upon, between September 2008 and December 2011. It is a ridiculously small amount of money both from the banks and to the victims of the foreclosure epidemic. That means the government believes that the fine to banks for forging and fabricating documents is no more than $2,000. The government decided to settle with the banks (including the worst offender, Bank of America) without any serious investigation of their offences.

Foreclosures slowed down in 2011 in anticipation of this bank deal. “Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011,” notes Brandon Moore of RealtyTrac, which follows the housing market very closely.

“The lack of clarity regarding many of the documentation and legal issues plaguing the foreclosure industry means that we are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages – particularly in States with a judicial foreclosure process. There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets. We expect that trend to continue this year, boosting foreclosure activity for 2012 higher than it was in 2011, though still below the peak of 2010.”

This is a very chilling thought, that the bank deal will not stem the foreclosure crisis but intensify it.

Occupy movement
Police action against the Occupy movement has cleared out most of the encampments. The Occupy movement has now shifted its focus towards much more focussed, local political endeavours (including fights against eviction).

One year ago, in Wisconsin, a massive social upsurge promised to open up a new dynamic in America. With the labour movement as its backbone, the Wisconsin demonstrations that began in March 2011 showed what was possible when the people refused to back down before the politics of cruel austerity (the story is captured in a new book edited by Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, It Started in Wisconsin: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Labor Protest, Verso, 2012). One hundred and fifty thousand people, mainly those affiliated with trade unions, stood in the cold and occupied the State House against their Governor Scott Walker.

Seven months later, in New York, the Occupy movement took off and spread across the country. It was grounded in the many facets of social distress in the U.S.

The initial position of both the Wisconsin protests and the Occupy movement was to change the conversation from the defence of the banks and the question of “social issues” to the broad questions of freedom and justice in the country. When the state decided to respond to these protests with police pressure, the immediate issue before the protesters was to deal with the forces of repression. The conversation around social suffocation and economic distress had to be set aside.

The battle lines were drawn between the police and the protesters, when the real contradiction is between the people (the 99 per cent) and the powerful (the 1 per cent). As cruel austerity cuts into the social lives of Americans, it is likely that the full range of issues that debilitate the well-being of Americans will return to the table. The tragedy is that neither of the two mainstream parties is capable of holding a real debate over these issues. They have other obligations, other priorities.

Back to the 80s--Hop in America!

Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman All fail to qualify for VA primary

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for Virginia's Super Tuesday primary ballot, the latest setback for a candidate whose standing in polls has been slipping.

Gingrich's campaign said he would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, though state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.

The state party said early Saturday that Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the March 6 ballot.

Failing to get on the ballot in Virginia, where Gingrich lives, underscores the difficulty first-time national candidates have in preparing for the long haul of a presidential campaign.

And it illustrates the advantage held by Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has essentially been running for president for five years. Romney's team, larger than those of most of his opponents, has paid close attention to filing requirements in each state. He will appear on the Virginia ballot along with Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who also has run a national campaign before.

Ironically, Gingrich had a slight lead over Romney in a Quinnipiac poll of Virginia Republicans released earlier in the week.

The former House speaker surged in popularity in early December and tried to use that momentum to make up for a stalled campaign organization. But his standing in polls has slipped in recent days amid a barrage of negative ads in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses begin the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

Three other candidates — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman — did not submit signatures before Virginia's deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday.

Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's primary system on Saturday, saying that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates and vowing to run a write-in campaign.

"Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates," Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement. "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."

However, according to state law, "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."

"Virginia code prohibits write-ins in primaries. He can't do it," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond.

Tobias said Gingrich may have had trouble meeting a requirement that he must submit 400 signatures from each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.

Gingrich's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing Wednesday from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he had supporters sign petitions before entering a rally in Arlington, Va.

Virginia GOP spokesman Garren Shipley said in a statement that volunteers spent Friday validating signatures on petitions that Romney, Paul, Perry and Gingrich had submitted.

"After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed. Shipley did not respond to telephone calls Saturday seeking comment.

Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests.

Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March.

Meanwhile, Virginia's Democrats said President Barack Obama's re-election campaign gathered enough signatures to get him on the state's primary ballot though he was the only candidate who qualified.

 

Washington DC Reboot!

by Ward Sutton, Village Voice

at Daily Kos

David Gergen says Many were 'Horrified' By Republican Debate

Fox News gave GOP presidential candidates $55 million in free advertising

By David Edwards - Monday, January 24th, 2011 

Being on the Fox News payroll has its advantages.

Not only did five potential Republican candidates get regular paychecks from the network last year, but they also got something even more valuable: airtime.

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters found that the five received about $55 million in free advertising over the course of more than 85 hours of appearances in 2010.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee appeared for almost 48 hours. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had nearly 14 hours of appearances.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was given close to 12 hours. Former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum and former UN Ambassador under George W. Bush John Bolton both received about six hours.

Because Huckabee hosted a show on the network, Media Matters estimated that he received the bulk of Fox News' donation at $31 million.

Advertisers would have spent about $7.5 million each for Palin and Gingrich to appear.
Santorum and Bolton received less than $5 million each in ad-value equivalency.

Each of the five has hinted at a possible presidential run in 2012.

"I'm engaged in the internal deliberations candidly," the November 21 issue of New York Times Magazine quoted Palin as saying.

The Des Moines Register reported in November that Gingrich said he was "making personal arrangements that would allow him to launch a campaign."

On November 15, Huckabee told Fox News' Alan Colmes, "The one nice thing, whether I should decide to run or not, is that more people at least would know me by what I actually believe and say, as opposed to what some opponent has defined me to be, and that's kind of encouraging."

"If I were to get into this, I would certainly not be one of the favorites, so doing well out of the box would be much more important to me than to some of the more well-known candidates," Santorum told National Review Online in October.

In September, Bolton told Fox Business Network, "I'm thinking about it."

Chris Wallace, the network's lead news anchor, revealed late last year that the network plans to turn the Republican Party's 2012 primary elections into a "production of Fox News," similar to American Idol.

That may be good news for GOP financiers but not so much for voter awareness. A University of Maryland study published last month found that extended exposure to Fox News had the tendency to confuse voters, making them more likely to believe a number of pervasive untruths.