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Foreign policy gaffe prompts a familiar strategy: Don’t apologize, strike back at questioner. Donald Trump’s enemies have been waiting for his Sarah Palin moment. On Thursday night, they thought they had it. Trump whiffed on a foreign policy query about the leaders of major terrorist organizations and of Iran’s Quds Force. His ignorance of General Qasem Soleimani and his inability to distinguish between the “Quds Force” and the Kurdish people immediately became the focus of the national conversation. But then the event took a distinctly Trumpian turn: The candidate not only didn’t apologize or express any regret, he launched an...

The conservative blogosphere has yet to move past the death of patron saint Andrew Breitbart, but it will get a major jolt this month from an equally provocative hero: Sarah Palin. The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has committed to delivering the keynote address at Right Online, the annual gathering of conservative bloggers and online activists organized by the Koch-backed non-profit group Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77019.html#ixzz1wsHXcWjE

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to give a full-throated defense of his former boss, President Obama, at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, where he'll make the first national speech of his current career. At another point, he'll say, "In the next four years there will be more challenges and more crises that will determine the economic vitality of the middle class and the economic future of this country. Whose character, whose judgment, do you want in that office?" He will also focus on the issue of people doing their "fair share" and middle class preservation.

This, from Bloomberg News, is the kind of scrutiny that you draw when you start getting taken seriously as a presidential candidate: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said during a Nov. 9 debate that he earned a $300,000 fee to advise Freddie Mac as a “historian” who warned that the mortgage company’s business model was “insane.” Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with the consulting work Gingrich was hired to perform for the company in 2006 tell a different story. They say the former House speaker was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf...

Was this sober political analysis, or merely an MSMer pining for the good old days of Speaker Pelosi? On Morning Joe today, touting a Politico Pelosi puff piece about her "golden touch," Mike Allen claimed it was "very possible" that Democrats would retake the House majority in 2012. View the video here.

When sexual harassment complaints against Herman Cain unfolded at the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s, the issue was all too familiarfor the trade association. In the wake of the televised 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings — and the widely publicized sexual harassment charges leveled against him by Anita Hill — American businesses had been hit by a wave of sexual harassment cases. And the restaurant industry, in particular, was hit especially hard. Industry officials saw it coming — none other than Cain himself warned as long ago as 1991 that changes in federal law resulting from...

One of the authors of Politico’s smear piece on Herman Cain about alleged “inappropriate behavior” in the 1990s was Ken Vogel. If your read any of Vogel’s pieces at Politico they are usual smear articles on either Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and other conservatives. So it’s only fitting that according to CNSNEWS, Ken Vogel is a George Soros disciple. Vogel used to work for the George Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Consider the source: Ken Vogel of Politico used to work for the George Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity in Washington and has been involved...

For Herman Cain, forget the treats; just bring on the tricks. Republican presidential contender Herman Cain is the subject of a bombshell accusation on Halloween day that he sexually harassed two women during his tenure at the National Restaurant Association. Cain stoutly denies the charges. The curious thing about the accusations against Cain are their timing. Why now? Why did Politico break the news now, as opposed to weeks before or later, if Cain secured the GOP presidential nomination? Did Politico only obtain the story now, or had it been sitting on the report for a while? Why now? Early...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you...

<p>Presidential candidate Herman Cain isn't lacking in confidence about his 2012 prospects.</p> <p>He says he expects to finish first or second in each Iowa and New Hampshire.</p>

If Mitt Romney can’t start locking up the GOP nomination now, he may never be able to. The former Massachusetts governor’s charmed path toward the presidential nomination was made even smoother Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opted out of a campaign and recommended that voters choose the candidate with the “best chance” of beating President Barack Obama. No white knight from Trenton, N.J., or anywhere else is riding into the race as the establishment’s savior. Romney’s would-be chief rival for the nomination, Rick Perry, is dropping in the polls amid doubts from conservatives and pragmatists. And the one...

The Democratic National Committee is launching a new ad campaign Monday to build public pressure on Congress to back President Barack Obama’s job plan. The television spots feature clips from Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday evening. “The next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here, the people who hired us to work for them - they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months… Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities,” Obama says in the clip. One of the ads emphasizes that the Obama...

President Barack Obama’s deficit strategy is a combination of audacity, hope and — in the eyes of Republicans — chutzpah. Obama, vilified by opponents for ducking the debt debate earlier this year, has seized the opportunity to portray himself as the champion of a $4 trillion “grand bargain” on tax and entitlement reform. This, after Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who spent months pushing the president in that direction, pulled out of any attempt to “go big” over the weekend. “Obama wants $4 trillion in debt reduction, while GOP wants only $2-$3 trillion,” wrote veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “[It] seems...

Sarah Palin may have been making the case for herself with a Facebook post last night arguing that a president must be "a strong chief executive [who] has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments." But she also sounds an awful lot like Tim Pawlenty, whose indictment against Michele Bachmann is that three-term member of Congress gives a good speech but hasn't actually accomplished anything. Wrote Palin: "Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more...

The anybody-but-Mitt Romney faction developing within the tea party may pose a problem for the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential ambitions, but some tea party organizers worry it could also backfire against the movement itself. Romney, the current Republican front runner, is viewed skeptically – at best – by many tea partiers. And disagreement over whether to actively oppose him threatens to undo the uneasy truces forged in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and undermine the fledgling movement’s influence in the GOP. The possibility of Romney winning the nomination is even reviving debate about whether activists should embrace, or even...

People know that the MSM despises Sarah Palin. Still, it was shocking to hear the dirty little secret so openly stated . . . Jim Vandehei of Politico, on Morning Joe today: "If you talk to any single reporter at any media organization that we're aware of, I don't think that anyone thinks she can be president or should be president." View video here.

News site Politico.com admitted Friday that it made an "error" in attributing a nasty quote about Rep. Michele Bachmann to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The article said: "Palin's bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: 'I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,' she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point." However, Palin never said that. Her political action committee promptly issued a statement urging the media to "quit making stuff up." "An absurd opinion piece in Politico includes a quote attributed to Governor Palin that is a total fabrication...

Politico knew they likely wouldn’t get a quote from Sarah Palin for the latest hit piece they published so they made one up. One of the authors is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virgina.Politico wrote: Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP.Palin’s bus tour had some...

Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president? The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP. Palin’s bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: “I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,” she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point. But in 1932, former New York Gov. Al...

[snip beginning of article] ... Ed Rollins, dismissed Palin as “not serious” in a radio interview. He suggested in an interview with POLITICO that Bachmann would profit from the contrast. Bachmann will “be so much more substantive,” Rollins said. “People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive.’” “I’m not afraid of Palin,” he said, adding the strategy would have been the same for Mike Huckabee. Bachmann has been laying the groundwork for this argument for months, stepping away from some of the more dramatic rhetoric that brought...