USAToday’s Susan Page reports from Cedar Rapids that Mitt’s support for the troop surge in Iraq isn’t an open ended commitment.  Somehow the MSM will spin this to the point Mitt will be painted as supporting total withdrawal immediately. 

Fox has more on the Romney Girls.  Shameless marketing – but very effective. 

The AP has Mitt out front in the Washington State GOP money race. 

There are many people whom I believe qualified to judge the honesty of another individual.  The Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi is not among that group.  She spent four years sniping at Mitt while he was governor and she just can’t help but recycle her work from that era.  Memo to Joan:  Originality.  Try some.  End Memo. 

Speaking of people who have trouble piecing together two coherent sentences, Jimmy Breslin has a point in his latest Newsday piece.  I’m sure it has something to do with Mitt and politics, but between the 11 mentions of Mormon and the not-so-subtle reference to Rudy’s vision of Mitt coming out of the Manhattan Temple, I’m not sure what that point was supposed to have been. 

Via Evangelicals for Mitt I found the latest Evans & Novak Political Report which tries to make sense of the national polling data in light of Mitt’s good numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Well worth the read. 

Blogfather Hugh takes the AP and Rachel Griffith (anti-war activist and cheap shot questioner) to task for both asking the “why aren’t your grown sons in the military” question and the way the AP reported the exchange.  Once upon a time, MSM luminaries like the AP controlled what was printed and how candidates appeared to the public.  That time has ended. 

Mike Gallagher, having already dug himself well into the pit of religious bigotry, calls in the steam shovel to help him on his way down.  Memo to Mike:  The only people seeing the need to “scrutinize” the religious beliefs of people running for secular political office are those who can’t see their way clear to writing about issues that actually matter.  Sadly, you’ve been in the former category for years now.  End memo. 

The Washington Post’s Cillizza and Balz have a puff piece on Mike Huckabee.  Huckabee has learned from Cheap-Shot Sam that a good way to garner headlines is to snipe at the Tier 1 candidates – especially Mitt.  Pollsters say people like Huckabee but feel he can’t win the primary, let alone the general election.  They’re right. 

The AP’s Liz Sidoti has a roundup of who’s taking shots at Mitt and what ammunition they’re using.  The long and the short of that issue is Mitt can take more than they can dish out.