Bobby Jindal

Today's Wall Street Journal takes a look at Bobby Jindal's education reform proposals and concludes that the Louisiana Governor's is actually making a serious attempt to challenge the public education monopoly:

Drudge has a story about Obama getting off of Air Force One in Arizona, greeting Republican governor Jan Brewer, and immediately giving her a piece of his mind. Evidently our president did not appreciate something Brewer wrote about him. According to the pool report, they had a testy exchange from which the president walked away as Brewer was still speaking.

Baton Rouge

The Hill: "Romney rushes to clarify his comments on union bargaining legislation"

National Review: "Rick Perry’s Rough Draft"

This morning, in reference to the Republican presidential primary, the boss commented: "The race seems to be more open and fluid than conventional wisdom has it." The boss also noted, according to the latest CBS/New York Times poll, "81 percent of GOP primary voters [are] in play." Considering that the first caucus/primary is only

Hot on the heels of this morning's announcement of former Minnesota governor and former presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty's endorsement of Mitt Romney, the Perry campaign pulls out the stops to make sure they don't get one-upped ahead of tonight's debate:

1. C'mon, you knew this would happen, right?  Gallup finds a 10-point shift in party preferences toward the Democrats in the last week, which nobody else found: 

Joe Biden is in the Gulf today, and Bobby Jindal talked to NBC about his problems with federal response:

As he waited for Biden to arrive, Jindal -- in an exclusive on-camera interview with NBC News this morning -- said his message to the vice president is that the federal government "needs a greater sense of urgency" and that it needs to treat the disaster "like a war and either lead or get out of the way."

There's a Voyeur joke in that headline, I'm sure of it...

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference starts today, and Newt Gingrich is the featured speaker on the first night of the three-day conference, 2012 early speculation extravaganza.

His message? Move beyond the perennial Democratic pejorative, the Party of No:

Texas governor Rick Perry’s impressive primary victory over Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is a signal. After the midterm election this November, the field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 (or later) is going to get bigger and possibly better.

It's never too soon to begin speculating about the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Today's peg: The fundraising figures released over the weekend by the likely candidates' political action committees. The big winners were Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. Romney's PAC raised $2.9 million in 2009 and has $1.1 million on hand. While she got off to a relatively late start, Palin raised $2.1 million and has slightly less than a million on hand. Coming in third was Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who raised $1.3 million and has slightly more than $800,000 on hand.

Mike Huckabee lags behind in the money race--while he raised the same amount as Pawlenty in 2009, he has less than $200,000 on hand. Even so, Huckabee leads the early polls: according to this Public Policy Polling survey, he even leads President Obama by one point. Obligatory disclaimer: Polls mean absolutely nothing at this point in the game. Remember: Rudy Giuliani led the national polls throughout 2007.

Last night Virginia governor Bob McDonnell delivered the GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union address. It was the third time in five years that a Virginian delivered the response to a State of the Union--clearly Virginia is an electoral battleground! You can read a transcript of McDonnell's speech here, in case Obama put you to sleep before McDonnell appeared on television.