Paul Will Not Partake in Trump Debate

At least two Republican presidential hopefuls are declining to participate in a debate set to be moderated by real estate mogul and once presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will both skip the debate, citing concerns about the seriousness of the event.

In a campaign statement released Saturday, Paul's campaign called the debate a distraction from the real issues of the campaign.
"The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office's history and dignity," Jesse Benton, Ron Paul's national campaign chairman, said in a statement.
Benton cited Trump's flirtation with running for president himself as a factor in the decision not to participate in the debate.
"Mr. Trump's selection is also wildly inappropriate because of his record of toying with the serious decision of whether to compete for our nation's highest office, a decision he appeared to make frivolously," Benton said.
Reacting to the Paul campaign's comments, Trump slammed Paul as a non-electable candidate.
"As I said in the past and will reiterate again, Ron Paul has a zero chance of winning either the nomination or the Presidency," Trump said in a statement to CNN. "My poll numbers were substantially higher than any of his poll numbers, at any time, and when I decided not to run, due to the equal time provisions concerning my hit show The Apprentice, I was leading the Republican field." Trump announced in May he would not seek the nomination.
In his statement, Trump said he was pleased to hear that Paul and Huntsman would be skipping the debate. "Few people take Ron Paul seriously and many of his views and presentation make him a clown-like candidate," Trump said. "I am glad he and Jon Huntsman, who has inconsequential poll numbers or a chance of winning, will not be attending the debate and wasting the time of the viewers who are trying very hard to make a very important decision."
Huntsman's campaign said Friday the former Utah governor wouldn't be making an appearance at the event.
"We have declined to participate in the 'Presidential Apprentice' Debate with The Donald," Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller said in a statement. "The Republican Party deserves a serious discussion of the issues so voters can choose a leader they trust to defeat President Obama and turn our economy around."
On Friday, the conservative online publication Newsmax announced they were sponsoring the Trump-moderated debate on December 27. It will be held in Des Moines, Iowa, just days before the state holds its first-in-the-nation caucus.
Candidates for the 2012 GOP nomination have been meeting with Trump since this summer. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann have all met with "The Apprentice" host at least once. On Thursday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he would be meeting with Trump on Monday.

Cain Suspends Campaign, Effectively Ends Presidential Bid

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain told his supporters on Saturday that he’s suspending his campaign, which has become hobbled in recent weeks by accusations of sexual harassment and an Atlanta woman's claim that her and Cain carried on a 13-year affair.

While he will still be able to raise and spend campaign funds because he did not officially drop out, Cain's White House bid is effectively over. Cain said he came to the decision after assessing the impact that the allegations were having on his wife, his family and his supporters. Cain and his wife held hands as they walked up to the podium where Cain made his remarks in Atlanta. Even as he stepped aside under the weight of the allegations that have dogged him, Cain said that he was at "peace with God" and "peace with my wife."

He repeatedly called the allegations untrue and that the media spin hurts. "I am not going to be silenced and I will not go away," Cain said, announcing what he called his Plan B: A website named TheCainSolutions.com, through which he will continue to advocate for his platform.
His catchy "9-9-9" economic plan is not going anywhere, he said.
He will endorse another of the Republican presidential hopefuls soon, he said.

Recently, Cain acknowledged that Ginger White's allegations of an affair had led to a drop in campaign contributions, and a Des Moines Register poll showed his support among Republican Iowa caucus-goers has fallen to 8%, down from 23% in October.
This week, White told the news media that she and Cain engaged in an on-and-off affair for more than 13 years. She described the affair as "very casual." White issued a statement, through her attorney, after Cain's announcement Saturday.

Two women, Sharon Bialek and Karen Kraushaar had previously accused Cain of sexually harassing them in the 1990s while he was head of the National Restaurant Association. Two other women also have said Cain sexually harassed them while they worked at the association, but they have declined to be identified.

Cain told the Union Leader in New Hampshire that he repeatedly gave White money to help her with "month-to-month bills and expenses." But he denied the relationship was sexual, as White contends. He said the two were friends.

Cain's announcement comes a month before the Iowa caucuses, the first formal test of the primary season, scheduled for January 3.
New Hampshire Republican officials who supported Cain began to survey their options Saturday, with several state representatives saying their support could go to Gingrich or Ron Paul. Cain's most prominent supporter in the state, former GOP state party chair Jack Kimball, said he would wait to learn whom Cain would endorse before making his own decision.

He said in the Thursday Union Leader interview that his wife's feelings, as well as the reaction from supporters and donors, would be important factors in deciding whether he will stay the race.
Cain told the newspaper he would drop out of the race if his wife asked him to, but quickly added that she wouldn't.
Though Gloria Cain rarely makes public appearances or statements, she told Fox News last month that she believed the sexual harassment allegations were "unfounded."

New York 26th Congressional District Race

Jill Terreri spoke by phone about the New York 26th Congressional District special election taking place on May 24, 2011. The candidates are Republican Jane Corwin, Democrat Kathleen C. Hochul, and tea party candidate Jack Davis. Candidates' campaign ads were shown.

New Reports: Newt was "Cozy" with Freddie

As Newt Gingrich attempts to shrug off his political baggage, the former House speaker is under scrutiny for having close ties to health care giants and flip-flopping on his statements on health care.

The Center for Health Transformation, which Gingrich founded, raked in millions of dollars from heavy hitters like GE Healthcare and Wellpoint, as first reported by the Washington Post. The group says it does not lobby, but on its website, it touts its ability to build bridges between the federal government and private sector.

Gingrich no longer owns the company and left when he decided to run for president. But his work with the group shows that the former congressman from Georgia has yet to overcome the challenge of reconciling his two roles of businessman and politician.
He has blasted the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, saying in a video that he is “completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals,” and that he “fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation.” But the group, which Gingrich founded, actually supported imposing a mandate on those who made more than $50,000 per year.

Still, Gingrich hasn’t made that clear. In fact, he criticized opponent Mitt Romney for implementing such a “bureaucratic” mandate in Massachusetts.
Gingrich also broke from the right when he praised his client Gundersen Lutheran Health System‘s end-of-life best practice as one that “empowers patients and families.” At the height of the health care debate in which end-of-life care became a key dividing issue between Republicans and Democrats, Gingrich stood out alone in the Republican field.

Gingrich’s other businesses are also under the spotlight. Through Gingrich Group, the former House speaker consulted for reportedly $1.8 million for eight years for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage giant that most conservatives say should be eliminated. While Gingrich has denied lobbying for them, he hasn’t provided a viable explanation of what kind of services he provided to an organization that he himself recently said should be abolished. In 2008, he demanded that President Obama and other members of Congress return the money they received from them, and more recently said Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank should be jailed for having ties with lobbyists at those organizations.

On Wednesday, Gingrich's staff offered a fuller picture of Gingrich's activities after a Bloomberg article revealed that he made about five times more than what was originally stated as a $300,000 income in 2006.

"Gingrich was given a briefing by one of the company's economists," spokesman R.C. Hammond told Fox News. As for claims Newt never flagged to Freddie that a bubble was coming, Hammond said that Gingrich's reaction after the briefing was "that's a bubble. You are creating a bubble." Though he never told the CEO directly, he did tell the company representative.

Hammond added that a dozen companies hired Gingrich to provide similar consulting as provided to Freddie, and in almost all cases the client would provide challenges and he would give advice to them on how to solve that problem. The Gingrich Group had contracts with Freddie Mac starting in 1999 but none with Fannie. The amount paid was similar to the figure he got from other companies he consulted for during that time.

Freddie itself had a robust internal and external government affairs division on the 1990s and hired a number of outside firms for lobbying and consulting services, of which The Gingrich Group was one. In 2008, Freddie fired all of its external lobbyists and dramatically pared back its internal shop.

The connections with Washington insiders and multi-million dollar corporations makes it hard for Gingrich to cast himself as an outsider and clouds his campaign, experts say.
As he rises in the polls, Gingrich’s inconsistencies are increasingly coming under the spotlight. It remains to be seen whether Gingrich can overcome these hurdles but the results of this scrutiny could be damaging, experts say.

Herman Cain Ad Controversy

Telephone lines were open for comments on 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's campaign ad featuring a testimonial from his campaign manager Mark Block, who was smoking a cigarette at the end of the message.

GOP Primary Race & Romney and Perry Campaign Ads

Molly Ball talked about the 2012 Republican presidential primary race. Topics included the role of "evangelical" voters, the latest polling data, candidates' electability, and President Obama. Campaign ads were shown.

Gerry Mandering Looking to Make an Appearance in 2012

Every decade, following the decennial census, the state legislatures of the United States are told how many representatives their state will send to the United States House of Representatives. Representation in the House is based on state population and there are a total of 435 representatives, so some states may gain representatives while others lose them. It is the responsibility of each state legislature to redistrict their state into the appropriate numbers of congressional districts.

Since a single party usually controls each state legislature, it is in the best interest of the party in power to redistrict their state so that their party will have more seats in the House than the opposition party. This manipulation of electoral districts is known as gerrymandering.

In the last 10 years, 78% of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, almost four out of every five members of Congress did not change party hands even once. In California, with 53 seats, the most in the nation, incumbents were kept so safe that only one of those seats changed party control in the past decade.
David Wasserman, a redistricting expert for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, says only 20 races for Congress are expected to be tossups in the 2012 election. That's only 20 out of the 435 seats in the House. "In general elections, it's almost rigged," he said.

The lines for seats in Congress are redrawn every 10 years after the U.S. Census measures population shifts. That process is going on now in states across the country.

Race has been used to create a political divide in the South. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana only nine Democrats are left in Congress. Only one is white. He is Georgia Democrat John Barrow, and Republican control in that state's legislature has led to his home city of Savannah being excluded from his current district.

In 2010, Republicans captured control of North Carolina's legislature for the first time since shortly after the Civil War. They drew district lines in a way to pack 49% of all of North Carolina's African-American voters in just three of the state's 13 congressional districts. That left the other 10 districts mostly white and predictably Republican.

After the GOP landslide in 2010, Illinois is the only battleground state winning or losing a seat where Democrats remain in control. Nowhere is gerrymandering more apparent than in Chicago's 4th District, where a grassy strip hardly a football field wide, stuck in between two expressways, connects the top and bottom halves of a district designed to keep a Hispanic in Congress.

In California voters have revolted. In 2010, they passed an amendment to the state constitution to take redistricting out of political hands and have a commission of citizens redraw the lines. It was forbidden to favor incumbents. As a result, more than half of California's 53 representatives were placed in the same district with another colleague for the 2012 election. As many as 15 could lose or else face retirement to avoid losing.

For three decades now, Iowa has had a nonpartisan redistricting system. Two legislative staffers draw the maps in secrecy without political interference. "In Iowa, it is understood incumbent protection is not the name of the game," one of those staffers said. Iowa, with its regular-shaped districts, will host the only 2012 House face off between Democratic and GOP incumbents. Iowa has the nation's only congressional race next year where a longtime Republican incumbent, Tom Latham, is paired against a longtime Democratic incumbent, Leonard Boswell.

Computers and GIS were utilized in the 1990 and 2000 Census by the states to make redistricting as fair as possible. Despite the use of computers, politics does get in the way and many redistricting plans are challenged in the courts, with accusations of racial gerrymandering tossed about. We certainly won't expect accusations of gerrymandering to vanish anytime soon.