Newt Gingrich drew nearly 13 percent of the Colorado vote and Ron Paul drew nearly 12 percent.

As in Colorado, Santorum won in Missouri and Minnesota Tuesday by working the states harder than did his rivals. Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul mostly ignored the three contests, an understandable strategy given that none of the races assigned delegates for the Republican nomination.

Colorado caucus goers, for example, were only choosing delegates to attend a party convention later this year.

In key ways, the Colorado contest mirrored the Iowa contest that kicked off the 2012 election season. Santorum won the caucuses there in a nail biter that similarly switched back and forth between Santorum and Romney– it did so there for weeks after the votes were cast. Likewise, as he did in Iowa, the social conservative Bible-thumping former Pennsylvania senator appealed strongly to Colorado’s intense and relatively large evangelical Republican voter base, which was unlikely to swing substantially for either Mormon Mitt Romney or philandering husband Newt Gingrich.

Tuesday’s results aren’t likely to greatly influence the Republican primary race. Romney appears to be marching to the nomination slowly but surely, notching wins in states that assign delegates to the national party’s nominating convention. A month from now, the Super Tuesday contests will see ten states cast votes, seven of which are primaries that award nominating delegates, and one of those will take place in Virginia, where only Romney and Paul have qualified for the ballot and where 49 delegates stand to be won.

Indeed, the Colorado contest was significant mostly as a general election forecast. On that score, Republicans can not be too pleased.

Tea party enthusiasm swept Republicans into office around the country in 2010 but not so much in Colorado. Democrats won the governor’s office and a crucial U.S. Senate seat. After years of bashing President Obama and looking forward to the opportunity to replace him, tea partiers here seem to be a bit at sea, their enthusiasm cooled.

With 99 percent of counties reporting, fewer Republican voters appear to have turned out for the caucuses this year than they did in 2008, before the tea party movement was even born. Perhaps more significant, Mitt Romney defeated John McCain in that year’s caucuses by pulling down roughly 42,200 votes. This year, the likely eventual GOP nominee garnered a mere 23,000 votes. Romney is not likely to suddenly energize Colorado Republicans in the fall.

By contrast, Obama in 2008– admittedly a relative unknown who was running in a spectacularly close primary against Hillary Clinton– drew 80,000 votes of 120,000 cast by Colorado Democratic caucus goers.

Obama’s campaign has been working the state at a low pace but almost non-stop since then.

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Italian weekly newsmagazine “Oggi” recently tracked down Santorum’s “dyed in the wool red” relatives in Riva del Garda. His grandfather’s generation opposed Mussolini and his Black Shirt fascists in the run-up to World War II and established a solid communist-socialist family political tradition.

“There are Santorums who would be turning in their graves,” one of Santorum’s relatives told the magazine, referring to Rick Santorum’s right-wing Catholic politics.

Last month the UK Guardian got hold of the story and translated many of the quotes.

“Rick’s grandfather, Pietro, ran the local post office and had strong liberal convictions,” said Maria Malacarne Santorum, whose late husband was a cousin of the former Pennsylvania Senator.

“Back in the 1920s, he understood what was happening in Italy. He was a convinced anti-Fascist.

“The political climate was stifling and so in 1925 he left for America, to work in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.”

Mrs Santorum, who is reportedly 83 years old, said Rick Santorum should moderate his views.

“To be opposed to homosexuality and divorce is damaging. Principles count but in politics you need to be open-minded.”

Michela Santorum said “Cousin Ricky’s” radical ice cube habits shocked his Italian relatives.

“Me and my brothers were amazed at the number of ice cubes that he put in his drinks,” she said. “But he was crazy for Italian food, including polenta.”

Santorum’s candidacy has attracted support from evangelical Christian groups. It has also re-introduced the sweater vest as adult wear.

Some would say Santorum’s “denial of reality” is apparent in the fact that he seeks to put into place policies in the 21st-century United States that would outlaw non-procreational heterosexual sex, gay sex, gay legal rights, abortion and birth control. Santorum also recently told a crowd at an energy forum in Golden, Colorado, that climate change is an international hoax perpetrated by scientists in league with elected officials looking to gain control of the U.S. economy.

Colorado Republicans are attending caucuses tonight to select a candidate to run against Obama in the general election.

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Last week, the Johnstown-based group (which operates over a large swath of the northern Front Range but lists Johnstown south-east of Ft. Collins as its postal address) sent out an email blast littered with exclamation points announcing Paul’s brief visit to Denver. It also pointed caucus goers to the group’s “no rhetoric, all facts” GOP Presidential Voter Guide, a deadpan exercise in candidate demolition that leaves no doubt where the group stands.

The authors of the guide skewered Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as unreliably conservative in both fiscal matters and in checking government overreach.

The guide’s list of facts on Romney, for example, opens on “Romneycare” and underlines that the Massachusetts healthcare plan steered into law by Romney was the blueprint for tea party-detested “Obamacare.” The list then moves onto Romney’s support for the big government-style anti-free-market TARP bailouts, gun right restrictions and climate change “cap and trade” proposals. The list wraps by calling Romney a “flip flopper” on amnesty for undocumented residents.

By contrast, not a single unqualified negative comment falls into the Ron Paul list. Paul’s record on government spending is described as “stellar.” Even Paul positions typically controversial on the right, such as his anti-interventionist foreign policy and commitment to ending “War on Terror” policies and programs, are described in an unabashed positive light.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Romney:

• Passed “Romneycare” into Massachusetts law, which eventually became the blueprint for Obamacare
• Supported TARP
• Opposed Obama’s stimulus plan and urged Republicans to vote against it
• Supported Cap & Trade legislation in Massachusetts
• Has also supported his fair share of anti-gun legislation and has refused to return the National Association of Gun Rights survey
• Has a horrible record on taxes, er, should I say fees…although he opposed tax hikes as governor, he imposed a mountain of “fees” to help balance the budget
• Has a mixed record on spending.  He did successfully cut government spending during the first part of his first term, but loosened the purse strings during the later years.  During his time as governor, he did save the state millions by cutting out waste within the system, eliminating meaningless government jobs, and going after local earmarks instead of dipping into the states rainy day fund.
• Supports ethanol subsidies
• Supports “Right to Work” legislation and states
• Mitt is a flip-flopper on amnesty and ultimately supports a plan similar to Newt’s, granting amnesty for “some”.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Paul:

• Voted against TARP
• Voted against Obamacare
• Voted against Obama’s stimulus
• Voted against auto bailouts and Cash for Clunkers
• Voted against Cap & Trade
• Supports Right to Work legislation
• Has never voted to raise the debt ceiling
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Tenth amendment and states rights
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Constitution and limited government
• Strongly supports auditing the Federal Reserve
• Has an excellent record on gun control, recently being crowned the “Defender of the Second Amendment” by Gun Owners of America.  He is the only candidate remaining to have returned the National Association of Gun Rights survey with a 100% score.
• He has an excellent record on taxes, never voting for a tax increase and always supporting tax cuts across the board.  He has voted to cut taxes by $80 billion in the past 5 years, voicing his opinion that cutting taxes is the only way to stimulate the economy
• He has an excellent record on spending voting against nearly every big spending bill and was 1 of  41 congressman to vote against No Child Left Behind.
• His stellar spending record aside though, he has become a strong supporter of earmarks giving him an undesirable 29% on the Club for Growth’s rePORK card (although earlier in his career he never used earmarks).  He believes that earmarks are held to much higher accountability and that if the federal government is taking funds from his state constituents, it is his responsibility to bring the funds back to them.  He typically votes no on the same bills he is inserting his earmarks in.
• Believes we need to end the billions of dollars we spend annually in foreign aid, especially to the countries we are at war with.
• Supports securing our borders and coastlines, supports enforcing visa rules by tracking and deporting anyone who overstays their visa, opposes amnesty, and supports ending birthright citizenship.
• Believes we should bring our troops home and readdress our approach regarding the War on Terror and military spending along with the waste, fraud and corruption that may go along with it.

It’s hard to say how much influence the Northern Colorado Tea Party leaders will exert on caucus activity today, but the group’s large presence in the state’s fourth congressional district and strong support for CD4 candidate Cory Gardner in 2010 likely played a large role in Gardner’s easy victory over Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey. The group also lead the state-wide tea party support that boosted Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s U.S. Senate bid that same year, propelling him to primary victory over establishment candidate Jane Norton.

Messages to the Northern Colorado Tea Party went unanswered this week, so its loose membership in the thousands or even perhaps tens of thousands couldn’t be confirmed. Estimates, however, put state-wide tea party membership in 2010 at something like 220,000. If those numbers have been even moderately sustained, tea partiers will have a significant impact at the GOP caucuses.

There are roughly 1.08 million registered Republicans in Colorado and only roughly 10 percent of those will turn up to caucus tonight. Politically engaged tea partiers will make up a disproportionate number of attendees.

Although tea party support for Paul will certainly thin Romney support, it bodes particularly ill for rival runner-up candidates Santorum and Gingrich.

Santorum at least is likely to do well among the state’s large Colorado Springs-based evangelical voting bloc.

“I ask you to reset this race,” Santorum told voters here this past weekend. “Create an opportunity for someone who can speak to Americans about what America is all about.”

Yesterday in Golden, just miles from the country’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the former Pennsylvania senator let loose a stemwinder at an energy forum in which he attacked international climate scientists as partners in a conspiracy to willfully create panic that would open up the country to totalitarian-like government control of the economy. He laced his talk with tent-revival-style reference to god’s will and man’s dominion over the natural world.

Yet it may be Gingrich who seems to be hoping most for a miracle in Colorado. He still has minimal campaign presence in the state and has spent almost no time here. His three wives and outrageous Tiffany tab won’t help him win the Focus on the Family-Tim Tebow vote and his term as House Speaker and then as Beltway-influence peddler are sure to undercut his attraction to anti-government tea partiers.

Romney, however, despite tea party and evangelical resistance, may pull off a key victory in the Centennial State. He has gained momentum from a series of recent primary victories and will be boosted here as he was this weekend in Nevada by the Mormon vote. Mormons make up roughly 5 percent of all religious adherents in Colorado, or something like a community of 140,000 believers who generally vote Republican.

Romney enjoyed 60 percent support among Colorado Republicans in 2008, burying John McCain in that year’s caucuses.

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“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told an audience at the Colorado School of Mines where he was a guest speaker Monday at the Colorado Energy Summit.

“We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create,” Santorum said to applause from the conservative crowd.

The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania argued that science has been hijacked by politicians on the left, and that climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life,” Santorum said.

Rick Santorum speaking in Golden. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Gingrich, speaking an hour before Santorum at the Colorado Energy Summit, said he regretted a TV commercial he shot with Democrat Nancy Pelosi that addressed climate change. He called it “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in five or six years. … It was stupid.” He said part of his Pelosi hangover is tied to his diminishing confidence in climate science. Asked by a man in the audience whether he believes human activities can cause climate change, Gingrich pleaded ignorance.

“I believe we don’t know. I am an amateur paleontologist. The planet has changed its temperature a number of times,” Gingrich rambled. “… If you look at the Antarctic today, you’ll figure it [must've been] a lot warmer when the dinosaurs were there. So what I’ve said in the past is I’m happy to take prudent measures that aren’t very expensive. So if we can find relatively inexpensive, safe nuclear power, I’m for it. The fact that Iowa produces 20 percent of its electricity from wind is fine. There’s a lot of things you can do with the margin. What I would not do is I would not turn the power over to bureaucracy to run the entire country. I have always opposed cap and trade …”

Newt Gingrich at the Colorado School of Mines on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Oil and gas, he said, is “so central” to the nation’s future energy portfolio.

“Environmentalists,” Gingrich added, “have been infiltrated over the last 40 years by people on the left who are against business and against local control and they use the environment as an excuse.”

Santorum, meanwhile, claimed “there is a war on fossil fuels in this country by [the Obama] administration.” Like Gingrich, the native Pennsylvanian vowed to open up more public lands to oil and gas drilling. Don’t worry, he promised, Yellowstone would be left alone. But there is a lot of Bureau of Land Management and other federal land that Santorum said would be better served by the oil and gas industry, ranching or other human uses. He cringed every time he mentioned the Endangered Species Act and blamed it for hurting business. Santorum told the story of how the Endangered Species Act is preventing the harvesting of a forest with profitable wood in his home state.

“We have the Endangered Species Act, which has prevented us from timbering all sorts of acreage there,” he said. “It’s bankrupted the school district and the like because of the government’s inability to allow for us to care for our resources. A forest in my opinion is like a garden and you’ve got to care for it. If you don’t care for it, you leave it to nature and nature will do what it does: boom and bust.”

Stressing the importance for the country to provide cheap energy to its citizens, Santorum blamed the recession not on sub-prime mortgages or the derivatives market but on spiking fuel prices.

“We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”

The nation’s energy policy is a key talking point this election season.

“This is the most anti-American energy administration we have ever had,” Gingrich said. “… You have the highest cost of gasoline in American history. And I think that if you’re an editorial writer at the New York Times and you live in a high-rise in Manhattan and you ride the subway to work, it may not occur to you that for most Americans a high price of gasoline is a real problem.”

Gingrich called Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan “very dangerous and very destructive.” He claimed the need for the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act underscores the EPA’s overreach.

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney was also in Colorado on Monday, giving speeches in Grand Junction and Centennial. He is scheduled to speak in Loveland on Tuesday morning. Romney, also a proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, looks primed for a big win in Colorado. He leads Republican voters in the state with 40 percent to 26 percent for Rick Santorum, 18 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 12 percent for Ron Paul, according to Public Policy Polling. Paul was in Colorado last week.

Check out this video shot at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden on Monday of Rick Santorum discussing his views on public lands, domestic energy and his problems with public education:

Here, Newt Gingrich discusses U.S. energy policy in Golden where he says, “If you want to measure what our goal is, it is to ensure that no American president ever again bows to a Saudi king …”

There was that ad from Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC, Winning the Future, which was, as Dave Weigel put it, “the sort of thing that will make a Republican voter’s bile bubble up and come shooting out of every waiting orifice.”

There was also Dan Check’s “Romney Income Calculator,” an online “game” of sorts that attracted mega-hits, in which you type in your working-person annual salary to discover how long it would take an under-taxed fortune to generate the same amount of money for Mitt “corporations are people, my friend” Romney. The tragi-comic oddly hypnotizing math works out to inform that if you make less than $100,000 a year, it takes Romney’s money about a day and a half to out earn you.

Which cast the tax plan Romney is pushing under a spotlight. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the plan would have saved Romney $4.1 million last year, effectively cutting his taxes in half. That math leads to more math, like this, for example: As president, Romney could end up paying himself $16,4 million in tax breaks over his first term in addition to earning the president’s $400,000 per year salary. So, electing Mitt Romney could cost the American tax payers $18 million in Mitt Romney’s take alone.

There was in addition, the problem of “the help.” The wealthy Romneys with their three homes appear to be stingy with their maids (or maybe they’re paying them under the table). Either way, more great news.

There was also the matter of his just plain losing voting contests. “Republican primary frontrunner” Romney lost to Santorum in Iowa and then he lost to Gingrich in South Carolina. So he has won only in New Hampshire.

Now Gingrich is tied with Romney or leading in Florida polls. The primary there is Tuesday.

Romney is no longer the frontrunner and he is not an inevitable nominee.

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The letter, signed by 45 Catholic leaders says:

Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

“At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting,” the letter adds.

“This statement is urging prominent Catholics in the race to go back and look at church teaching,” John Gehring, the Catholic outreach coordinator at Faith in Public Life, told The Florida Independent, adding “that the letter is also about poverty.”

“The Catholic bishops have been incredibly important in raising a prophetic voice that really challenges those who think that the free market alone can sort of solve our economic problems,” Gehring said. “You have Catholic conservative leaders, like John Boener, Paul Ryan, Rick Santourm, Newt Gingrich and they’ve all been looking to dismantle vital social safety nets.”

Faith in Public Life “works to promote a common good message in the media and helps progressive and moderate faith leaders to get their message out,” Gehring exlained. “We’ve done a lot of work around common ground issues on abortion, we try to talk with pro-choice leaders. We provide an alternative voice, making sure that the values debate is not one-sided. For many decades the Christian right has dominated political conversations over faith and values.”

Gehring highlighted the idea of “intrinsic evil,” adding that “a lot of people look at Catholic teaching and think about abortion as being a preeminent political issue, and that is true, but the bishops are also very clear that racism and torture — where Santorum is very bad on, Santurom has been an apologist for enhanced interrogation — are an intrinsic evil.”

He also said that Gingrich and Santorum’s “rhetoric around class and racial issues is in many ways out of line with Catholic social teaching. That is something Catholic voters will be concerned about, particularly given that both Santourm and Gingrich have not been shy about talking about the importance of their faith from a personal perspetcive and also how it shapes their political views as well.”

Color Lines, which reports on racial justice issues, reported Thursday that ”Gingrich argues that the reason so many people are on food stamps is not that the economy has thrown millions into poverty, but rather that lazy black families are getting on the dole and don’t want to work. Earlier this month, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire, ‘If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.’”

Color Lines adds: “Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years.”

On Saturday, Gingrich won the GOP primary in South Carolina by a wide margin over presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney.

The event, which was broadcast via live webcast, drew GOP candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and (then candidate) Rick Perry. Ron Paul appeared via satellite; Mitt Romney, due to a prior conflict, was unable to attend.

“We didn’t know until last night but, I did get a phone call from one of his state representatives that there was a conflict and he was unable to make it,” said Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason, who noted that Romney also had a conflict that prevented him from attending a similar forum held in Iowa. But the group has plans for additional events — at least two to be held in Florida — and Mason said he was “looking forward to having [Romney] there so he can share his conviction.”

Personhood USA leaders have come out hard against Romney, specifically for his failure to sign an anti-abortion pledge penned by the organization. Romney’s credibility on abortion was brought up several times throughout the event.

“Gov. Romney’s been on both sides of the issue of life,” Perry said, referencing Romney’s past pro-choice leanings. “It is clear to most of us that this was a choice for convenience. This was a decision that Gov. Romney made for a political convenience, not an issue of his heart.”

The candidates were questioned by a panel of anti-abortion activists, including Lila Rose, Georgia Right to Life President Danny Becker, and legal analyst Roberto Garcia Jones. And though many of the questions were identical, the candidates’ answers were not always so similar.

When asked when he believes life begins, Texas Gov. Perry answered, “I would suggest it starts at conception. I’m not a lawyer but I do have a substantial amount of common sense.” When pressed on his definition of “conception,” Perry chuckled. “When the sperm and the egg come together. … You got a different idea? I’m not a doctor either, but I did grow up on a farm.”

Gingrich’s answer didn’t elicit quite so many laughs from the crowd.

“We are fully human upon conception because all of the genetic patterns needed are in existence at that moment, and therefore the rights should attach at that moment,” he said.

Paul used his appearance to espouse his libertarian views, saying, “Liberty can’t be protected if we don’t protect life itself.”

Another topic of interest was Planned Parenthood — defunding it.

Gingrich promised that, as president, he would defund Planned Parenthood “sometime early in 2013.” Perry, who proudly said his the Texas Legislature had the “courage” to shut down 12 abortion clinics in Texas, promised that, if he was sent a bill that included appropriations for abortion, “it will be vetoed.”

Santorum, arguably the most vocal candidate when it comes to abortion issues, used his reputation to distance himself from his opponents.

“I always say it’s one thing to check the box and say you’re for life. It’s another thing to go out, stick your head out of the foxhole and lead the charge,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania.

“I think we give up too much and others have in this campaign by saying they believe that life begins at conception,” said Santorum. “I don’t think life begins at conception. I know life begins at conception.”

Personhood USA has led the push to legally define life as beginning at the moment of conception, introducing measures across the country — most notably in Mississippi, where a personhood amendment failed on the state’s November 2011 ballot but might soon receive legislative support. In Florida, a Personhood affiliate is currently working on a plan to contact every church in the state between now and the end of the year, so that each church can present the group’s personhood petition to its parishioners in January 2013.

“While there are other GOP candidates who are worthy of our support, Sen. Santorum is the man of the hour,” Dobson said in a statement released Thursday, according to the Washington Post. “His knowledge of international politics, especially Israel and the turmoil in the Middle East, is highly relevant to the dangerous world in which we live. This is why I am endorsing former Senator Rick Santorum for president of the United States, and urge my countrymen to join us in this campaign.”

Santorum, like most Christian-right American leaders, is a staunch defender of Israel and the sad history of its hardline approach to the question of Palestinian citizenship rights and statehood. He also adopts the corollary position on Middle East affairs that Iran is an enemy state to be opposed aggressively by the United States.

On the stump recently in Greenville, South Carolina, Santorum said he would launch military attacks on Iran to halt its nuclear program but said that the Israel-Palestine conflict, a leading issue in foreign affairs around the world for half a century, is effectively an Israeli domestic issue and that no state had the right to interfere on behalf of either side.

“These people are there in the state of Israel and it’s up to Israel to decide” their fate, he said of the Palestinians in response to questions from Ali Younes of al Arabiya News. Younes noted that during the conversation Santorum never once referred to Palestinians using the word “Palestinians,” seeming to adopt the Newt Gingrich line that “the Palestinians are an invented people.”

The Texas conclave of conservative leaders last week apparently failed to produce the kind of unity participants had hoped for, reportedly reflecting a long-running split in the Republican party exacerbated by this year’s primary field. Participants split roughly half and half on whether to support Newt Gingrich, who touts his record as fiscal conservative, and Santorum, the race’s staunchest social conservative.

Dobson’s opposition to Gingrich, whom he believes lacks moral standing, will be bolstered today by the views of the second of Gingrich’s three wives, Marianne. In an interview set to run tonight, she told ABC News that Gingrich cheated on her for years and pleaded with her to accept an “open marriage” before casting her aside when she was struggling with illness, as he did his first wife.

Gingrich defended himself against such charges this year by saying he was giving too much to the country to devote himself properly to the kind of family values he champions in his political life.

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he said.

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Gingrich’s ex tells Ross that Newt sought an “open marriage” after admitting to a six-year affair with a congressional aide. Like something out of a John Cheever or Philip Roth novel, she said he asked her to share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich, even as he was attempting to hound President Bill Clinton out of office for being a morally bankrupt leader based on the affair Clinton conducted with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
 
“I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do.’ He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”
 
Choice bits from the ABC news preview release:

Marianne described her “shock” at Gingrich’s behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.”
 
“He always called me at night,” she recalled, “and always ended with ‘I love you.’ Well, she was listening.”
 
All this happened, she said, during the same time Gingrich condemned President Bill Clinton for his lack of moral leadership.
 
She said Newt moved for the divorce just months after she had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, with her then-husband present.
 
“He also was advised by the doctor when I was sitting there that I was not to be under stress. He knew,” she said.
 
Gingrich divorced his first wife, Jackie, as she was being treated for cancer. His relationship with Marianne began while he was still married to Jackie but in divorce proceedings, Marianne said.

Marianne Gingrich has dished about the the former Speaker’s marital failings previously but with the ABC interview she seems intent to unburden herself fully and to torpedo Gingrich’s standing with “family values” conservative voters.

The Gingrich campaign is set to receive a boost today when Texas Governor Rick Perry withdraws and throws his support to Gingrich as a more reliably conservative candidate than frontrunner Mitt Romney.

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There has been no announcement yet from the Colorado Perry campaign, which is headed by Republican US Rep Mike Coffman (CD6). Coffman embraced Perry early in the race but has seemed to distance himself from the candidate as Perry clearly struggled on the national stage. Coffman faces reelection this year in a district recently remade from a GOP stronghold into a competitive district divided roughly equally among independent, Republican and Democratic voters.

CNN broke the news of the coming Perry announcement but Politico offered a cautionary note, referring to the disarray of the Perry campaign that has made his candidacy unpredictable.

“The discord in Perryworld was evident even as the candidate prepared to drop out.

“Top officials in Texas said they were unaware of his intentions and as late as this morning said they genuinely didn’t know whether he was still running.”

The news will come as a disappointment for a bloc of conservatives led by Erick Erickson at national Tea Party blog RedState, who have embraced Perry as a true conservative while excoriating his staff as incompetent.

Erickson wrote this morning of the inevitable end of the Perry campaign, forecasting coming events.

In a post titled “Hero or Spoiler,” he lamented the turn the primary has taken, where unreliably conservative Romney is marching to the nomination, in part because his opponents have split the anti-Romney Tea Party vote.

Yesterday, I argued that Rick Perry should leave the GOP primary in advance of Saturday’s election and endorse Newt Gingrich, who is the most logical fit in the existing field for a Perry endorsement.

The Perry campaign responded that the race would be decided by voters, not pundits behind a computer.

Fair enough. Rick Perry does not want to be seen as a quitter. But quit he will. I do not want him to quit. I urged him to stay in the race. But sadly his campaign has been unable to get the second look I thought it deserved…

It may suck, but it is reality. And we are forced at times like this to deal with reality. The reality is that Rick Perry will be quitting the race, but he is not quitting the fight, which has always been more important…

It’s not like I relish taking this position. I introduced Rick Perry at the 2011 RedState Gathering as the next President of the United States. He remains the best qualified man to be President. I would be thrilled to have him as my President. But he is polling in last place and there are three days to go. It isn’t going to happen.

But throwing his support to one of the other non-Romney candidates could help that person win.

Rick Perry will quit…. The question is whether he will quit before Saturday’s primary and help someone else win as a hero and king maker, or will he quit next week and see Mitt Romney win with Perry serving as the spoiler, keeping either Gingrich or Santorum from winning.

Perry’s joining the race for the nomination last fall generated great enthusiasm but his repeat gaffes and clear casting about on foreign policy questions conjured a sort of caricature version of George W Bush, the last Texas governor to win the White House and a man whose recently past presidency remains deeply controversial and unpopular among Americans on the right and left.

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