A.B. Stoddard

The political tin ear President Obama displayed in siding with the women in his administration on new healthcare regulations requiring contraception coverage for employees of church-affiliated institutions is remarkable. And though it is early in the campaign and Obama will eat crow and retreat on the issue, he won't be able to cool the heat the controversy sparked — Obama will hear about this mistake from now until Election Day. Catholics and Republicans will see to it.

Mitt Romney is poised to take the Nevada caucuses easily Saturday — snore. He could win again on Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Yet no matter how many contests he wins, the guy has problems.

As Newt Gingrich tries to revive his faltering presidential campaign, he is echoing criticism of Romney that Romney's own supporters are saying behind closed doors. Willard Wealthy Well-Bred Romney is no average American. Not only can he not fake it, he has become an admaker's dream as he makes more and more statements drawing attention to it. The disconnect that exists between most voters and an unemployed guy who makes more than $50,000 a day in income from investments would be staggering any time, but in tough economic times he is rapidly becoming a handy foil for President Obama should he win the nomination and face Obama in the fall.

South Carolina's primary Saturday will produce a dramatic outcome, no matter the winner and the results. Mitt Romney could win and be the comeback kid. Rick Santorum could win and have scored victories in two of the first three presidential contests. Newt Gingrich could win and make history for winning South Carolina after losing Iowa and New Hampshire badly.

Blowback from Newt's super-PAC ads against Romney, attacking him for being a corporate raider, is even gustier than expected. Now even his own benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, is sending sources out to defend him against criticism of Gingrich's Bain video. Gingrich continues on, trying to win South Carolina on the premise that he can eclipse Romney as the true conservative, and insists the scrutiny of Romney's Bain years is necessary. No matter that the Democratic National Committee had already started calling Romney a "job cremator" instead of a job creator. Cute, huh?

MANCHESTER, N.H. — On Sunday morning, if you read the paper or watched television, to check in on the GOP 2012 nomination battle, you would have heard that none of former Gov. Mitt Romney's rivals attacked him at the ABC News debate on Saturday night, that he would walk to the nomination, that the Rick Santorum surge was ebbing, and that former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman made a fool of himself by speaking Mandarin at a GOP debate.

John Podhoretz wrote in the New York Post Saturday night that it was over. "That's a wrap. I'm calling this thing. Unless something terrible comes out about him in the next few weeks, Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee."

For the first time in a while, President Obama is enjoying a pretty good week.

The jobs picture brightened slightly Friday, and though 200,000 new jobs still aren’t enough to keep pace with population growth and a healthy number of the unemployed have stopped looking for work, brighter beats darker any day. The full picture of forecasts for growth, particularly in the critical housing industry, remains worrisome and weak. But politically the metric for the public, and for Obama's political fortunes, is the unemployment number, and this month that number went down to 8.5 percent for the first time in three years. He can and will call it progress.

In the words of Rick Santorum, "game on." The former senator's surprise victory in Iowa Tuesday has thrown a wrench in Mitt Romney's plans to win New Hampshire and go on to convince South Carolinians there is no longer another choice for a nominee. Suddenly a choice has emerged, and once again three in four Republicans made it clear in Iowa they want to support someone other than Romney.

The good news for Romney — he didn't come in third, Texas Gov. Rick Perry hasn't dropped out, and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) didn't choose to endorse Santorum in her concession speech and urge her supporters to back him. No one has won South Carolina since 1980 without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire first — that means Gingrich won't either. But Santorum certainly could.

Ouch. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a hideous job on any day, trying to keep his fractured conference together, but yesterday was one for the history books. In conceding on the payroll tax extension package the Senate had passed and his conference had opposed all week, Boehner made clear he had fought for fighting's sake, and that doing the right thing isn't always easy — which he reiterated several times. But it was clear he knew his conference has reached the point of diminishing returns with their lonely, losing payroll tax cut battle.

There are indications that tensions arose between House GOP leaders over this fight, and that Boehner should have known last Friday, when the two-month payroll tax cut extension was first introduced behind closed doors, that it would present problems for his conservative members. Yet Boehner allowed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), with whom he works quite closely and has known for many years, to believe that passing a bipartisan bill and leaving town was fine. He was bucked by his members on Saturday, then chose to stick by them as they walked off a political cliff.

It's five days before Christmas, and let's admit it, for Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the gift that keeps on giving.

Romney may have lined up endorsements from the Des Moines Register, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), but Paul's lead in Iowa polls is worth far more. Indeed, the more people who approve of Paul — instead of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) — the less of a threat there is that Gingrich can block Romney's long, bumpy and bloody road to the nomination.

What a night — the last debate before GOP voters head to the caucuses in Iowa on Jan. 3 to cast the first votes in the Republican primary of 2012 was, at least in some ways, good for all the candidates. The front-runner, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), had the crowd roaring when he talked about the need to start the Keystone pipeline and President Obama's political calculation in opposing it and again with his attack on our judicial system. The audience loved that Newt, and his applause was thunderous. But there was no applause for his explanation of his well-paid relationship with Freddie Mac. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) argued his $1.6 million earnings from the government-sponsored entity were paid-for influence-peddling, helping the GSE fight a public-relations battle with Republicans who opposed it. Gingrich attempted to deflect the confrontation by claiming Bachmann was factually wrong, but his answers didn't even prompt staff to clap on his behalf.