Only 540 days to go...

It's a Republican news day...

First up, great news!! A Newt '08 campaign is a "great possibility"!!! Woohoo!!!! Run, Newt, Run!!!!!

The more people saw him the less they liked him:

Gingrich proved more popular as a revolutionary than as a leader. Like Wright, he became entangled in an ethics imbroglio that eventually led to his reprimand by the House in 1997 and a $300,000 penalty.

After the Republicans in Congress shut down the government in 1995 in a showdown with President Bill Clinton, Gingrich's popularity plunged, never to return to the heights of 1994. By 1996, nearly six in 10 voters had an unfavorable opinion of him. Some of his top lieutenants even plotted a coup against him, but Gingrich, ever the survivor, managed to keep his job.

On Tuesday, election night, Gingrich pointed to the fact that Republicans had won House majorities in three successive elections for the first time in 70 years. But each majority was smaller than the last, and his troops became restless. Exit polls showed that 58 percent of the voters had an unfavorable view of him, while just 36 percent viewed him favorably.

Meanwhile, Greenwald points out that Fred Thompson is the perfect Republican candidate--he looks presidential like Reagan and he is completely, terribly hypocritical. IOKYAR!

...the only thing Libby did was commit perjury, obstruct justice and make false statements to the FBI and the Grand Jury. Everyone who reveres the Rule of Law and who laments its erosion knows that crimes like that are no big deal and that people who break those little laws should not be punished, but instead should be pardoned by their political comrades.

This marks an impressive evolution -- one could, if one were inclined to be negative, call it a complete reversal -- in Thompson's views on such lofty matters. Back in 1998, he foolishly thought that Obstruction of Justice was a Serious Crime, so serious in fact that a twice-elected President should be removed from office because of (never proven) allegations that he committed that crime. Back then, Thompson solemnly insisted that the lack of an underlying crime or even the lack of anything meaningful to be covered-up was irrelevant. That is because Our Respect for The Rule of Law demanded real punishment for such behavior

...

The notion that anyone, no matter how powerless, can get equal justice will be seen by some as a farce. And our rule of law--the principle that many other countries still dream about--the principle that sets us apart, will have been severely damaged. If this does not constitute damage to our government and our society, I cannot imagine what does. And for that he should be convicted.

That's the person who yesterday demanded that convicted felon Lewis Libby be pardoned. He's still parading around as the pious Protector of the Rule of Law, though he now does so as he protests the punishment of high government officials who are actually convicted -- rather than merely accused -- of obstructing justice.