MSNBC host Rachel Maddow dedicated a segment of her show Friday to the potential awkwardness that might occur when Fischer follows Romney on Saturday, given the former is outspoken in his views against the LGBT community, Muslims and Mormons, and Romney is a Mormon.

“That is particularly awkward this year,” Maddow said, “because not only has Bryan Fischer managed to be outlandishly all-caps bigoted against every other group in America that you can think of, but … Bryan Fischer is really specifically bigoted against the Mormon church and against Mormons.”

More awkward than being Mormon, Romney is a mainstream Republican presidential candidate trying to court both the Republican Party and conservative establishments, Maddow said.

People for the American Way’s (PFAW) Right Wing Watch reported last week on Fischer’s radio show, where he said that the First Amendment does not apply to Mormons and that polygamy likely “will come back” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

Right before last year’s Values Voter Summit, PFAW sent letters to Romney and six other conservative leaders speaking at the event, asking them to denounce publicly Fischer’s statements against Muslims and the gay community.

In last week’s post, Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla writes:

[W]e are once again asking Republican leaders who will be attending the upcoming Values Voter Summit to denounce Bryan Fischer’s long history of unmitigated bigotry. This time we are focusing on Mitt Romney because, according to the conference schedule, he will be speaking immediately before Fischer on Saturday morning.

Our efforts in the past to get someone, anyone within the GOP or Religious Right to condemn Fischer’s relentless bigotry have not amounted to much, mainly because nobody within the movement seems to be particularly bothered by it, which is why GOP leaders continue to appear on his radio program and on stage with him at Religious Right events.

This year — as in years past — political leaders and presidential hopefuls have not responded to criticisms of AFA, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates a hate group, attending the Values Voter Summit.

Mother Jones recently put it this way:

Republican candidates have consistently played political footsie with Fischer, despite his extremism. Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain have all appeared on Fischer’s radio program, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry co-hosted a prayer rally in Houston in August with Fischer’s organization, the American Family Association. Romney’s appearance at the Values Voters Summit might help him court social conservative voters who play an outsized role in Republican primaries. But the appearance is a reminder that even a prominent Republican who has tried to stay clear of fringe right-wing conspiracy theories like those peddled by Fischer cannot succeed within the GOP without hobnobbing with extremists.

Fischer has not had many nice things to say about Romney publicly.

In a recent tweet, Fischer called Romney a “phony” and “not a true conservative.”

And in Saturday’s RenewAmerica column, Fischer criticized presidential contender Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his policy allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for in-state tuition. Fischer said Perry “needs to restore the confidence of grassroots Americans the he is the best alternative,” noting that “there is a deep and well-justified resistance among conservatives to Mitt Romney.”

Watch a clip from the Rachel Maddow show:

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Gingrich, 67, acknowledged during a Wednesday night interview with Sean Hannity that it won’t be easy to unseat Obama, but that the President’s liberal policies needed to be replaced by conservative values that will assure growth within the domestic energy industry.

“I think that this country has enormous potential to break out … but it is not a future we are going to get to until we clear away the liberal policies, the liberal bureaucracies and the Washington-centered system,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich will return to the Hawkeye State next week on a multi-city tour that includes stops in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Dubuque.

Throughout his life, Gingrich said, he’s preached citizenship, so not to run would be a “fraud.”

“We have to win the argument that President Obama has the wrong policies and those have led to the wrong outcomes,” he said.

“I think we are going to have a very clear, very vivid choice.”

Despite chalking the options before Americans up as a choice, Gingrich said that Obama will be difficult to beat.

“He will be, because, first of all, he’s going to say whatever he needs to to win,” Gingrich said. “Second, he’s going to have all the advantages of the mainstream media. He’s going to have all the advantages of left-wing billionaires like George Soros. He’s going to have all the advantages of the Hollywood crowd, and they are going to go out — and all the advantages of the unions. So they are going to try to raise a billion dollars for a very practical reason: He can’t afford to run a fair election. If he was on an equal playing field, he’d lose … on his record, on his values, on his beliefs.”

The media, Hannity noted, has already made mention of Gingrich’s past, including his personal life, and Gingrich responded that conservatives “aren’t going to get an even break from the elite media” and that “most Americans will look past the elite media.”

Gingrich said he would create a new contract with America by working with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

“President Obama should be ashamed of himself,” Gingrich said. “The President of the United States, a year and a half before an election, to deliberately use dishonest scare tactics demeans the United States of America. He said things about [U.S. Rep.] Paul Ryan’s budget that were falsehoods, and he said things that were deliberately divisive. He did the same thing in El Paso on immigration … by saying ‘I really want to work with you, but let me go out and lie about you for a while now.’”

Yet, his most vehement criticism was reserved for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who Gingrich described as “consistently wrong.” Members of the U.S. House, he said, should “investigate what his beliefs are.”

“[Cain] went from being unknown to a household name,” Erickson wrote in his morning wrap-up.

He gave the best one liners and a brilliant defense of his lack of elected experience. He pointed out all the guys in Washington who have been elected and asked, “How’s that working out for ya?” It was a golden moment.

Cain also shined because of his business experience. He stood out from the crowd in knowledge of private sector job creation, the effects of government regulation, etc. Chris Wallace asked him how he could be elected President. Tonight we know – through sheer force of personality….

The more the voting pubic hears of Herman Cain, the more his rivals are going to come after him. He is this year’s Mike Huckabee.

Some will see Cain less as a 2012 Huckabee and more as a 2012 Palin, in that the one-liners may come to seem less charming and more like covering as the months before the election (19 of them!) wear on.

Here’s what Cain looks like without one-liners, answering a real question. He stumbles over the facts, gathering a Cliff Notes version of events into a narrative that will support an agenda that will turn off mainstream U.S. voters.

Gawker’s take on Cain is typically toss off and spot on:

Herman Cain, if president, says he’d answer more questions about The Mission before determining whether we stay in Afghanistan. Why not just answer them now, Candidate? Oh, he’s not “privy” to classified information now, so who knows? A durable answer for any two-year presidential campaign.

Slate’s Dave Weigel was at the debate and had the same take on Cain: The motivational speaker triumphed by speaking well without saying anything.

Cain, the businessman and motivational speaker, just kept repeating that he had plans to solve problems, and the candidates with careers in politics didn’t have plans. The thing about repeatedly saying you have a plan is that an audience believes it. Cain did well in a post-debate focus group conducted by Frank Luntz for Fox News because, to use some of their words, Cain was “articulate” and he “had plans.”

Also on stage were libertarians Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. Paul is the congressman from Texas and Johnson was the governor of New Mexico. They don’t think the government should be in the business of forcing Christian conservative values on women, gay people and pot smokers. They also think the government must stop borrowing money to spend in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other words, they believe in small government. They would have a better chance of winning the presidency outright than they do of winning the GOP nomination.

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This shouldn’t be surprising. In his two successful bids for governor, Pawlenty has received 46 percent and 47 percent of the vote. The reason? Minnesota’s Independence Party, which elected Gov. Jesse Ventura in 1998 but usually acts as a spoiler, typically for the Democrats. And since edging toward a presidential bid, Pawlenty has made hard rhetorical shifts to the right — such as suggesting that health care reform might be unconstitutional — that have been ripped apart in state newspapers. In this, Pawlenty is similar to Mitt Romney — a success in his own state who would not be able to carry it after tacking hard right to become the GOP nominee.

“In 2008, we held our presidential election on Sept. 15,” Clinton said. “When the Bush administration decided not to help Lehman Bros … McCain’s chances of winning an election went from 1-in-4 to 1-in-50. The election ended Sept. 15.”

Debating whether the government should have let Lehman fail is a worthy pursuit, and one best debated by economists and policymakers still probing the near-collapse of the country’s financial system. For Clinton, however, it’s a different matter. Blaming Lehman keeps Clinton from giving any credit to Obama for winning on the merits of his campaign. It helps take the focus even further away from Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful primary campaign, and Bill Clinton’s own role in stirring up controversies that detracted from her effort.

Coming from a more neutral observer, these kind of comments about Lehman might be worth pondering further. Coming from Clinton, they sound more like self-serving revisionist history.

Gov. Sarah Palin (WDCpix)

As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin looks to 2012, she’ll have plenty to learn from 2008.

If Palin hopes to pull off a victory in four years, she will need to live up to her reputation as a popular, galvanizing political figure.

The Republican Party base had high hopes for the Alaska governor when she was tapped by Sen. John McCain to be his running mate. After her rousing speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September, many Republicans believed they had found their silver bullet to defeat the Democrats in November. They asserted that she would have a “Palin effect” — rallying the base, particularly evangelical voters, as well as disaffected women, many of whom had supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic Party primary.

Now that the exit polls are in, the ballots are counted and the election is over, it’s clear that the Palin effect did not come to fruition. She did not bring out the base in high enough numbers to defeat Sen Barack Obama. In fact, more Republicans stayed home this year than in 2004 in critical battleground states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana. Religious voters swung more heavily Democratic this year, despite hopes that Palin’s evangelical background would resonate with them. Women voters, meanwhile, flocked to Obama. Only a small percentage of disgruntled Clinton supporters went Republican, even in states like Pennsylvania, where Republicans hoped to peel off sizable numbers of Democrats.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

This is not a recipe for success in 2012.

If Republicans bank on Palin four years, she will need to inspire the groups that showed her lackluster support at the polls last week. She will need the base to come out for her in force. A win will require regaining lost ground with swing voters, including suburbanites, who strayed from the GOP. Palin will also need to shore up support among independent voters, who leaned Democratic this year.

“The two biggest groups she needs to improve her respectability with are independent voters and suburban voters,” said Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm. “Those are the two biggest groups Republicans lost the most ground with since 2004.”

Palin’s views on abortion — which she opposes in almost all cases, including rape and incest — made her an instant hit with social conservatives. McCain had not appealed to the group as President George W. Bush had in the last two elections. Palin assured these voters their views would be represented in the White House.

Despite her conservative appeal, though, fewer Republicans came out to vote in key states this cycle.

Jensen, whose polling firm is based in North Carolina, said that Obama’s win in the state hinged on increased turnout in urban centers, particularly among black voters.

Jensen said the McCain campaign could have won the state had Palin’s events been more strategically planned. Obama made some inroads with rural voters, but Palin proved more appealing overall with rural residents.

One problem for McCain was that fewer Republicans turned out to vote in rural areas of North Carolina.

“They needed to exclusively send [Palin] out to the rural parts of the state where Republicans under-performed this year,” Jensen said, noting that Palin was in Richmond the last week of the campaign. “She certainly could have done more for the ticket in those parts of the state.”

Her appeal to women didn’t pan out either. Overall, the McCain-Palin ticket only picked up 43 percent of the female vote, compared to the 48 percent that went for Bush in 2004.

Two days before Election Day, CNN released a national survey showing that Palin was a two-point drag on the GOP ticket overall. A New York Times survey reached a similar conclusion.

“The end effect [of Palin running] was to make it impossible for McCain to win,” said Joel Goldstein, a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law. “The choice reflected poorly on McCain’s decision-making abilities. I think it made it impossible for him to attract the Democrats and the independents that he needed.”

Among independent voters, Democrats did better this year than in the last two presidential elections. The Republican ticket trailed Obama by 8 points among independents. Obama picked up 52 percent of independent voters, while McCain only took 44 percent, according to CNN exit poll numbers.

In both 2000 and 2004, Bush did better among independents than McCain this year. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry edged out Bush among the independent voters by one point. In 2000, Bush picked up 47 percent of independents, compared to Gore’s 45 percent.

Palin will need to win back these swing voters in a 2012 run.

Republican strategist Mark Corallo, who worked on the Fred Thompson primary campaign, said that his party is in desperate need of a new direction and a clear vision.

If Palin can help rebuild the party on substance, the votes will follow.

“You can’t tie your principles to the polls,” Corallo said. “You can’t tailor your vision for so-called independents. You have to present a clear vision.”

Corallo explained that the Republican losses this year were a reflection of the party giving up on principle. “The fact is,” he said, “Republicans stopped acting like Republicans.”

Corallo said that Americans want choices. In 2012, the principle will be the same.

“You have to show why you are different and why you are better,” he said. “Any politician who seeks the national stage, they have to decide where lies their political soul.”

This year, Palin wasn’t expected to appeal to swing voters so much as the conservative base.

Initially, it appeared she had. She drew sizable crowds following the GOP convention. A week after the convention, for example, Palin and McCain attracted 15,000 fans in Fairfax, Va., while just before the convention McCain’s events were only attended by a few hundred people.

But by the final weeks of the campaign, when Obama was drawing tens of thousands of fans in battleground states like Ohio and Virginia, Palin’s events were regularly attended by fewer than a few thousand.

In a column for The Wall Street Journal that ran the Friday before Election Day, Kimberly Strassel wondered if “the whole state hadn’t shown up” for a Cape Girardeau event in Missouri. According to local press reports, though, there were about 7,000 attendees. Another 1,800 supporters were turned away.

Reports about the raucous crowds helped Palin maintain the reputation of being wildly popular.

But on Nov. 4, the conservative base actually swung toward Obama in key states.

According to a New York Times exit poll analysis, Obama picked up 20 percent more self-described conservatives this year than Kerry did in 2004. An additional 8 percent of conservatives in Virginia also went for Obama.

Obama won several traditionally red states, including Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana.

“I can tell you flat out,” Corallo said, “had Palin not been on the ticket, “it would have been worse.” In response to polls that showed Palin hurt McCain’s ticket he said, “I just disagree.”

Part of Obama’s success with these red states included new support from religious voters.

Palin, an evangelical, was expected to appeal to her fellow Christian conservative voters, observers predicted when she was tapped.

But it was actually Obama who benefited from increased support from religious voters. Obama increased his support amongst Protestants by 5 percent over Kerry, according to an analysis from MSNBC. McCain dropped 6 points from 2004.

Among religious voters who attend religious services more than once per week, Obama got an 8-point boost over Kerry. McCain lost 3 points.

Palin’s hard sell to the working class didn’t seem to play well either.

“I know what Americans are going through,” Palin said on the trail in late September. “Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak,” Palin said during a campaign speech in early October, “which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite, who don’t like the idea of just an everyday, working-class American running for such an office.”

Obama won Pennsylvania handily, by nearly a 10-point margin, though Palin campaigned heavily in the state.

For Palin to win in 2012, she’s facing an uphill climb. “She really would need to improve with just about everybody but rural Republican voters,” Jensen said.

Gov. Sarah Palin (flickr)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made lemonade out of lemons today by auctioning off on the Internet the fancy wardrobe purchased for her failed vice-presidential run, and raking in more than a million dollars — which she immediately donated to the Needy Governors’ Winter Clothing Fund.

The feisty four-eyed political phenomenon evidently doesn’t plan to stop there: Papers have reportedly been filed for a new corporation specifically meant to cash in on her sudden fame with myriad money-making projects.

For example, hubby Todd will be scooping up snow from the lawn of the Palin house in Wasilla, Alaska, and molding it into souvenir “genuine Alaska Toddballs” to be sold for $10 apiece to spectators at January’s Washington inauguration ceremonies to throw at President Barack Obama.

Black Ice, a consulting arm, will specialize in personal vendettas, using covert ops to go after in-laws, friends, employees -– anyone who, as the prospectus puts it, “ticks you off.” A character-assassination campaign aimed at eliminating Arizona Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz,) as a future GOP presidential candidate is allegedly the firm’s first assignment, paid for with uncashed Palin dry-cleaning, limo and lunch vouchers from the recent election contest.

Certain projects seem intended to both make money and further Palin’s political career. Although a plan to trade her governorship, her tanning bed and Todd for the disgraced Ted Stevens’ Senate seat was shot down by the Alaska Supreme Court, insiders mutter Palin may still go through with her idea of performing a “Dance of the Seven Bath Towels” for a private audience at $1,000 per head.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of a new children’s book, “Marveltown.” His other books include “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

I spent the weekend poring over the CNN exit polls from last Tuesday’s election and converting the state-by-state data for a number of demographics into my own hypothetical electoral maps.

The result is a set of maps that visualize the outcome of an election decided exclusively by the following age groups, genders, income groups, political affiliations, etc.:

Voters age 65 and older:

White voters: (A “black voters” map would be a sea of blue.)

Men:

Women:

Self-described political moderates:

Registered independents:

College graduates:

Voters earning under $50,000 per year:

Voters earning over $50,000 per year:

Voters who are “worried about economic conditions”:

Voters whose “most important issue” was the economy:

Voters whose “most important issue” was the war in Iraq:

(Note: These maps were created with the handy tool at 270towin.com.)

At RebuildTheParty.com, a coalition of young GOP operatives, including Patrick Ruffini of The Next Right and Eric Erickson of RedState.com, argue that the key to winning the elections of the 21st century lies in mirroring the Internet-based, grass-roots models established by the Obama campaign and the GOP primary insurgencies of Rep. Ron Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

In addition, their plan calls for the Republican National Committee to develop and adopt the newest technologies to serve their cause, train legions of new campaign workers and activists and focus on fielding a new generation of younger candidates. The coalition hopes to force the RNC to adopt and implement the plan ahead of the 2012 election.

2008 made one thing clear: if allowed to go unchecked, the Democrats’ structural advantages, including their use of the Internet, their more than 2-to-1 advantage with young voters, their discovery of a better grassroots model — will be as big a threat to the future of the GOP as the toxic political environment we have faced the last few years.

The time is now to set in motion the changes needed to rebuild our party from the grassroots up, modernize the way we run campaigns, and attract different, energetic, and younger candidates at all levels[...]

The challenge is daunting, but if we adopt a strongly anti-Washington message and charge hard against Obama and the Democrats, we will energize our grassroots base. Among other benefits, this will create real demand for new ways to organize and route around existing power structures that favor the Democrats. And, you will soon discover, online organizing is by far the most efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign in 2012.

I’m generally not in the business of giving Republicans advice, but I would have to agree that, structurally, adopting the plan is probably the smartest thing the GOP could do right now.

However, it appears to be lacking any recognition that on Tuesday, the American people overwhelmingly rejected the hyper-partisan rhetoric of recent elections. This plan seems to be an effort to double-down on partisanship, and it runs the risk of further alienating the non-conservative base majority of the electorate, which could push the GOP further into the wilderness if Obama has a successful first term.

That said, if the last few election cycles have taught us anything, dating back to the 2004 Howard Dean campaign, it’s that the Democrats have been light years ahead of the Republicans in developing the Internet as a tool for political organizing, communicating and fund-raising.

Progressives would be wise to take note that a new generation of Republicans is well aware of this imbalance and working actively to address it.

The judge also revealed that he had voted early on Friday and had to stand in line for more than two hours. “It was quite a civics lesson,” Williams said.

The Advancement Project, which joined in the lawsuit with the NAACP, issued a statement saying, “With 500,000 new voters and high expected turnout the burden shouldn’t be on voters, it should be on the Commonwealth to make sure voting is accessible.”