The Golden Report

6 DAYS UNTIL SOUTH CAROLINA (25 delegates)
9 DAYS UNTIL THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
16 DAYS UNTIL FLORIDA (50 delegates)

TOP STORY: Jon Huntsman is dropping out of the 2012 Republican Presidential Race.

Coming less than a week after he finished third in the New Hampshire Primary and promised supporters that he would continue in the race on to the South Carolina Primary on Saturday, and a day before candidates will gather for the latest debate of the primary season, the announcement comes as the frontrunner, Mitt Romney, looks to solidify his support and momentum into enthusiasm for a general election race against President Obama.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES’ JIM RUTENBERG AND JEFF ZELENY IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

“Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy, made plans to make an announcement as early as Monday. He had been set to participate in an evening debate in Myrtle Beach.

Matt David, campaign manager to Mr. Huntsman, confirmed the decision in an interview Sunday evening. “The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy,” Mr. David said. “That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney.”

A third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last week failed to jump start Mr. Huntsman’s flagging candidacy, aides said, and his campaign limped into South Carolina with little money. Mr. Huntsman has spent days pondering his future in the race, but aides said that he concluded he was unlikely to topple Mitt Romney or match the momentum of his Republican rivals in the conservative Southern primary.

The decision from Mr. Huntsman came on the same day that he received the endorsement from The State, the newspaper in the capital of Columbia. He had campaigned in South Carolina over the weekend, not giving any indication that the end was near.”

MORE: Huntsman will endorse Mitt Romney tomorrow, which means Romney enters tomorrow night’s debate with even more momentum.

A win by Romney in Saturday’s Primary will likely force additional candidates to drop out of the race as Republican donors and party leaders solidify their support around the nominee.

An official announcement is scheduled for 11am Monday.

CANDIDATES WHO HAVE WITHDRAWN SO FAR:

Tim Pawlenty (August 14)
Thaddeus McCotter (September 22)
Herman Cain (December 3)
Gary Johnson (December 28)
Michele Bachmann (January 04)
Jon Huntsman (January 15)

GALLUP DAILY TRACKING POLL (of remaining candidates)

• Mitt Romney 37%
• Rick Santorum 14%
• Newt Gingrich 13%
• Ron Paul 12%
• Rick Perry 5%

WHAT’S NEXT:

Tomorrow night, the 16th Republican Presidential Candidates Debate, from the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, SC, on FOX News, moderated by Bret Baier of Fox News’ ‘Special Report’ and Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal. It will air at 9pm ET and last approximately two hours.

It will be the fifth debate airing on FOX News this cycle. Previous FOX debates:

• Greenville, South Carolina (May 5th)- the first debate
• Ames, Iowa (August 11th)
• Orlando, Florida (September 22nd)
• Sioux City, Iowa (December 15th)

On Thursday night, CNN and the Southern Republican Leadership Conference are sponsoring another debate, from the Citadel in Charleston, SC.

South Carolina Republican voters go to the polls on Saturday.

Next week, there are two more Republican debates scheduled (Monday January 23rd and Thursday January 26th) leading up to the Florida Republican Primary on Tuesday January 31st.

AMERICA FOR A BETTER TOMORROW TOMORROW- the Political Action Committee started by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and now run by Jon Stewart, is up with a television ad in South Carolina. The one-minute ad buy takes aim at Mitt Romney and his record at Bain Capital, calling him “Mitt, the Riper” It’s worth watching if only to think about whether this ad, and the apparent intent of Colbert to involve himself in the presidential election in a very tangible way, will have.

THIS WEEKEND’S TOP POLITICAL STORY- A group of social conservatives convened by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, has elected to support Rick Santorum as their candidate in the Republican primaries. From POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin:

“In a conference call [Saturday] afternoon, Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins said that on the third ballot Santorum won a solid majority of votes from the movement conservatives gathered at a private ranch near Houston.

Of 114 votes cast, Santorum won 85. Newt Gingrich took the remainder.

In a remarkable slap in his home state, Rick Perry didn’t even make it past the first ballot, Perkins said.

Santorum backers were already taking to Twitter in the moments after Perkins announced the decision to tout the news. The former Pennsylvania senator, largely absent from the political conversation since finishing well behind Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and staying out of the Bain debate, is badly in need of a lift. In that sense, the endorsement is well-timed.

“It’s a validator that people who have been out there, in the fields laboring for the conservative cause, see us as someone who can not only stand and fight for the causes, but effectively fight and win.,” Santorum told reporters at his Mt Pleasant, S.C., headquarters.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES 2012 (as of 10:50pm ET):

Best Actor (Drama)- George Clooney
Best Actress (Drama)- Meryl Streep
Best Director- Martin Scorsese
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical)
Motion Picture (Comedy)- The Artist
Supporting Actor- Christopher Plummer
Supporting Actress- Octavia Spencer

TOMORROW IS MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY

Full text & audio of King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” Speech 

King’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

IN 2011, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Tomorrow, at 8am, a wreath will be laid in honor of Dr. King at the Memorial. The National Park Service has additional information and resources on the Memorial 

AND/BUT- an inscription on the Memorial was ordered changed on Friday by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe reports

“Salazar said Friday that he has told the National Park Service to consult with the memorial foundation and the King family and to report back to him within 30 days with a plan to fix the carved excerpt that turned a modest and mellifluous phrase into a prideful boast.

The paraphrase on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue comes from a powerful and poignant 1968 sermon King delivered two months before his assassination. King spoke of the “drum major instinct” as the epitome of egotism, a self-centered view of the world that he denounced. Imagining his eulogy, King used the conditional tense: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

But after the architect and the sculptor thought the stone would look better with fewer words, a shortened version was put on, composed of just 10 words with a heavy staccato beat. It was no longer a conditional statement; it was a flat assertion: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

Salazar said he thought the excerpt was not true to King’s character.”

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9 DAYS UNTIL SOUTH CAROLINA (25 delegates)
12 DAYS UNTIL THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
19 DAYS UNTIL FLORIDA (50 delegates)

ALL POLITICS EDITION

MINDMELD: Today was one of those days in the election when there wasn’t one action that happened, or moment that occurred, but rather there was an amalgamation of forces that revealed a shifting dynamic in the race.

We hinted at it at the end of last night’s Report. There began, yesterday, to be pushback from many establishment Republicans about the primary attacks against Mitt Romney and his record at Bain Capital.

Those attacks, from Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, had threatened to consume the Republican primary for the next 9 days in South Carolina, and Florida at the end of the month and possibly even prolonging a contested primary season through the spring.

Today, that pushback continued and even as new polls showed a competitive race in South Carolina, there were clear signs that the Republican Party may be moving to clear the deck and ready to appoint their nominee to face President Obama from now until the fall. 

GOP DIVIDED OVER POTENTIAL IMPACT OF BAIN ATTACKS- The Washington Post- Amy Gardner in Greer, SC- 

“Republican voters at campaign events for Romney and other candidates Thursday said they were unmoved by the arguments against Romney’s time at Bain, a venture capital company that several of Romney’s rivals have blamed for bankrupting companies and laying off thousands of workers. Most damning has been an ad campaign paid for by a group backing Newt Gingrich, featuring interviews with workers claiming to have been laid off by Bain.

On Wednesday, Perry called Romney a “vulture capitalist” — a phrase that he did not repeat on Thursday.

Romney’s rivals seemed to vacillate between continuing to criticize Romney over Bain and easing up in the face of growing pressure to do so. Gingrich, whose critiques have been the harshest of any, rarely mentioned Romney by name Thursday, sticking instead to a more general “big guy vs. little guy” theme.

Huntsman aimed his attack Thursday on a line Romney uttered Monday about firing people, rather than directly hitting him over Bain. “When you have a candidate who talks about enjoyment of firing people, that makes you pretty much unelectable,” he said.

Several Republican strategists said the verdict is still not in on how damaging the Bain narrative will be for Romney, whose wins in New Hampshire and Iowa earlier this month have cemented his position as the front-runner of the Republican field.”

NEWT WEB AD COMPARES MITT TO DUKASIS & KERRY- includes clips of both Sen. Kerry and Gov. Romney speaking French. As you watch this ad, remind yourself that it is a Republican that produced it 

GINGRICH will be interviewed by NBC’s David Gregory this Sunday on Meet The Press

GINGRICH’S SUPER PAC, WINNING OUR FUTURE, IS UP WITH WWW.KINGOFBAIN.COM.Here’s some of the text. And it’s hard hitting.

“Mitt Romney.   

Was he a job creator or a corporate raider?

That’s the question this film answers.

And it’s not pretty.

Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider.

His firm didn’t seek to create value. Instead, like a scavenger, Romney looked for businesses he could pick apart.

Indeed, he represented the worst possible kind of predator, operating within the law but well outside the bounds of what most real capitalists consider ethical.

He is exhibit number one the left wants to use in the coming election to give capitalism a bad name.

He and his friends at Bain were bad guys. Any real capitalists should disavow Romney’s ‘creative destruction’ model that made him wealthy at the expense of thousands of American jobs.”

TOP TALKER- John McCain rips into Mike Huckabee, reliving the end of the 2008 Republican Primary 

“I respect him, but that’s totally false. It’s totally, patently false. And for him to say something like that, maybe it makes him feel better. … All I can say to Gov. Huckabee is good luck on your programming on Fox, but you’re not telling the truth.”

TOP TALKER II- Laura Bush today to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

“Former first lady Laura Bush wishes there were one more candidate in the Republican presidential primary: Jeb Bush.

Speaking to a sold-out Sarasota audience on Wednesday, Bush said she had hoped that her brother-in-law and former Florida governor would have jumped into the race this year.

Husband George W. Bush “and I wish he would,” Laura Bush said when asked if Jeb Bush will run for president someday. “We wanted him to this time.”

TOP TALKER III- Rudy Giuliani on Fox & Friends this morning- calling out Gingrich and Perry for their attacks on Romney “What the hell are you doing, Newt?” he asked

THE LATEST SOUTH CAROLINA POLLING FROM INSIDER ADVANTAGE: ROMNEY +2

• Romney 23%
• Gingrich 21%
• Santorum 14%
• Paul 13%
• Huntsman 7%
• Perry 5%

LATEST GALLUP TRACKING POLL FOR GOP NOMINATION NATIONALLY: ROMNEY +19

• Romney 34%
• Santorum 15%
• Gingrich 14%
• Paul 13%
• Perry 5%
• Huntsman 2%

WALL STREET FROM CNBC- Stocks End Higher, Nasdaq Logs 6-Day Gain

• DOW up 22
• NASDAQ up 14
• S&P 500 up 3

FINALLY…TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT, BUT STEPHEN COLBERT WANTS TO RUN IN SOUTH CAROLINA

From POLITICO’s Mike Allen [a guest on this evening’s Colbert Report]

“I am proud to announce that I am forming an exploratory committee to lay the groundwork for my possible candidacy for president of the United States of America of South Carolina,” Colbert said during the Thursday evening show, several hours before airtime on Comedy Central.

“This is a difficult decision. I’ve talked it over with my money. I’ve talked it over with my spiritual adviser.”

Trevor Potter, the former Federal Election Commission chairman, acts as Colbert’s lawyer and was a guest on the show. “

You cannot be a candidate and run a super PAC,” Potter said. “That would be coordinating with yourself.”
Colbert’s super PAC is Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. His 501(c)4 is the Colbert Super PAC SHH [as in “shh”] Institute.

The stunt was part of Colbert’s continuing effort to expose what he considers absurdities in U.S. election law.