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By James Hohmann (
mailto:jhohmann@politico.com
jhohmann@politico.com ; Twitter: @jameshohmann)

FIRST IN SCORE - ROMNEY'S NEW IOWA AD:The 30-second spot - called "Conservative Agenda" - highlights footage of Mitt Romney looking very presidential as he talks on the stump about his plans to make government more efficient, repeal Obamacare and balance the budget. After two stops in New Hampshire Tuesday (morning in Londonderry, afternoon in Portsmouth), Romney gives an evening speech in Davenport. On Wednesday he embarks on a three-day Iowa bus tour. The gist of Mitt's pitch on the trip: I'm a conservative businessman who knows that we have a moral responsibility to stop spending more money than we take in. Watch:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=093f2a8e55a8bb370cdcda4431da58d3173c813d9da47b7b31082caf9ead5e52
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=093f2a8e55a8bb370cdcda4431da58d3173c813d9da47b7b31082caf9ead5e52 .

Happy Boxing Day from APPLE VALLEY, Minn. -After a merry Christmas back home, we're en route to Des Moines today and will be in Iowa for the next nine days.

THE WEEK AHEAD - WHAT THE CANDIDATES ARE UP TO:Rick Santorum goes pheasant hunting today and then has a 4 p.m. press conference at Doc's Hunt Club in Adel, Iowa. Newt Gingrich visits his wife's family in Wisconsin after spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at a Catholic basilica. He begins a 44-city Iowa bus tour Tuesday in Dubuque. Ron Paul has three stops scheduled for each of the last three days of the work week. After a brief hiatus from his own 42-town bus tour, Rick Perry will leave Austin and return to Iowa Tuesday, when he hits the western section of the state - with stops in Council Bluffs, Clarinda, Creston and Osceola. Michele Bachmann went home to Minnesota for a
three-day Christmas respite but returns to Iowa this week to complete her quest to get to all 99 counties before caucus day. More:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f09681f90e2cfae16f3c9313b91cbc51c9d51b3959f7273925202a6b420fa527
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f09681f90e2cfae16f3c9313b91cbc51c9d51b3959f7273925202a6b420fa527 .

** As the support Paul receives from extremists gets on A1 of the New York Times, Gingrich's campaign compares not getting on the Virginia ballot to Pearl Harbor and Missourians contemplates a 2012 with no presidential ads, here's POLITICO's Morning Score: your daily guide to the permanent campaign.

THE STAKES - FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD: In this final week of the silent primary, before months of maneuvering ends and actual voting begins, the candidate's time (and the ensuing earned media) is a campaign's most important commodity. All the ad time has long been bought up, and there's little else to shift the narrative before Iowa caucuses eight nights from now. With that in mind, we have these questions for the week ahead:

(1) Will Gingrich be disciplined enough to follow through on his planned pivot to the economy?
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=4e2a188d2b36ab71ff9f3d1c74a88d64167e629d1632a7be4a72f491a5d05e10
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=4e2a188d2b36ab71ff9f3d1c74a88d64167e629d1632a7be4a72f491a5d05e10

(2) Does the next round of Iowa polling show any signs of evangelicals coalescing behind Santorum?

(3) How low will Romney try to keep expectations during his three-day Iowa bus tour?

(4) Will Paul roll out a better answer to questions about the racist newsletters?

(5) How many of the Republican candidates will criticize Obama for his 'lazy remarks or his Hawaiian vacation?

A1 OF TODAY'S DES MOINES REGISTER - "COULD RON PAUL WIN?"That's the blaring all-caps, three-column headline on the front page of today's Des Moines Register (WIN is in RED!). "If any establishment Republicans are trying to comfort themselves by believing that Paul's support in polls will melt away on caucus night, they should consider this: In the Register's final Iowa Poll before the 2008 Republican caucuses, 9 percent of people who planned to caucus said they favored Paul. In the actual caucuses, he was backed by 10 percent of voters," Mary Stegmeir, who covers the Paul campaign for the Register, writes with Tony Leys. "He's reaping the benefit now of having run four years ago and keeping
in contact with supporters." Mary notes that Paul is getting some of the largest Iowa crowds this year - including outside the university towns where he's most popular. Also: "Paul, himself a veteran, brags that no other candidate receives as many donations from members of the military." The story:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=775ecc8010359b9ad1a5d6eeb759e921617a4536bd711e75ed147b902e3fe146
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=775ecc8010359b9ad1a5d6eeb759e921617a4536bd711e75ed147b902e3fe146 . Check out the PDF of the front page:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=741876ca44f497a40857e66574a99316126a3a4b1e2b8c746f41b3a71ebfc768
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=741876ca44f497a40857e66574a99316126a3a4b1e2b8c746f41b3a71ebfc768 .

A1 OF TODAY'S NEW YORK TIMES - "PAUL DISOWNS EXTREMISTS' VIEWS BUT DOESN'T DISAVOW THE SUPPORT":"The American Free Press, which markets books like 'The Invention of the Jewish People' and 'March of the Titans: A History of the White Race,' is urging its subscribers to help it send hundreds of copies of Ron Paul's collected speeches to voters in New Hampshire," Jim Rutenberg and Serge Kovaleski write. "Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront, said in an interview that several dozen of his members were volunteering for Mr. Paul's presidential campaign, and a site forum titled 'Why is Ron Paul such a favorite here?' has no fewer than 24 pages of comments...Far-right
groups like the Militia of Montana say they are rooting for Mr. Paul as a stalwart against government tyranny...The white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists who have rallied behind his candidacy have not exactly been warmly welcomed. 'I wouldn't be happy with that,' Mr. Paul said in an interview Friday when asked about getting help from volunteers with anti-Jewish or antiblack views. But he did not disavow their support. 'If they want to endorse me, they're endorsing what I do or say - it has nothing to do with endorsing what they say,' said Mr. Paul."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=bdfeda0a4dc9dd3b4c395a1c0833df0277802b6792386c0fbb39cea17bf83121
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=bdfeda0a4dc9dd3b4c395a1c0833df0277802b6792386c0fbb39cea17bf83121

MORE PAUL SCRUTINY - THE NEWSLETTERS:The New Republic just posted 33 scanned copies of old Paul newsletters and fundraising solicitations to highlight "some especially inflammatory passages" on race, gays, conspiracies and Jews:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f8c5003ee29cc8cac6a3330e4d248a28a81b60298d21000b1f2022ab59ff6de7
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f8c5003ee29cc8cac6a3330e4d248a28a81b60298d21000b1f2022ab59ff6de7 .

ON THE BLOGS - UNCUT VIDEO SHOWS HE DIDN'T "STORM OUT" ON CNN:"The uncut version a CNN interview between Ron Paul and Gloria Borger surfaced online Sunday leading many Paul supporters to claim that the footage shows the GOP hopeful didn't 'storm out' of the interview, as some media outlets reported based off the edited version that aired on CNN," according to The Hill. "In the originally aired video, Paul seemed to walk out on Borger after a terse rebuttal. But the uncut version shows that Paul and Borger were standing up for the entire interview, and that Paul actually responded to questions about the newsletter for almost three minutes before walking off, and that the interview was likely
over." Story, with the 8.5-minute video:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fd574be482c7ce36105d9f9a1bebe25d8d05f8a6767300d149b935c319207832
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fd574be482c7ce36105d9f9a1bebe25d8d05f8a6767300d149b935c319207832 .

HUCKABEETHINKS ROMNEY'S LIKELY TO WIN IOWA:'I would probably say Mitt Romney will end up winning it today," 2008 caucus winner Mike Huckabee said on Fox News Sunday. "I think again, Ron Paul because of his organization could, and that's where Mitt is really at a disadvantage. He doesn't have the devotion. If the weather is good, Mitt Romney is in better shape. If the weather is bad and it's real tough to get out, Ron Paul will win.' The former Arkansas governor also predicted that Rick Santorum will outperform expectations: "I believe he will be the surprise candidate, not necessarily to win it, but to be in the top three or four when people don't expect him to be." Watch
the 12-minute interview with Chris Wallace:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=c00545cacd01b161c13e0f71ab5d0424d219d279d68bd96dcc76721a083651dc
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=c00545cacd01b161c13e0f71ab5d0424d219d279d68bd96dcc76721a083651dc .

WATCH THE WEATHER -IOWA'S FORECAST: "While it's too early to forecast precisely what the weather will be in Iowa on January 3, long-range climatological models indicate a warmer and drier January across the Midwest, according to CNN Meteorologist Sean Morris. There is a strong La Nina in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America, which typically causes winter storms to move across Canada instead of the lower 48 and keeps Arctic air bottle up North of the U.S.-Canadian border." More fromCNN:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=43c8cea2e5b79384d953118a1eccec3bcf651db67f30e87a671ff115cdd79687
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=43c8cea2e5b79384d953118a1eccec3bcf651db67f30e87a671ff115cdd79687 . Here is the seven-day forecast for Des Moines onWeather Underground:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=4c23db73c3023a3d3627dac88b2d07f6a176d73162d9d7204077884edcdb0926
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=4c23db73c3023a3d3627dac88b2d07f6a176d73162d9d7204077884edcdb0926 .

"IOWA, SO QUIET" - THE BANNER ON DRUDGE RIGHT NOW:"Campaign headquarters have hardly been buzzing with activity, unlike the around-the-clock nature of past contests. Candidates have barely visited the state, compared with years when most all but moved here," Des Moines Register alumni Tom Beaumont, now the Associated Press' man in Iowa, writes in a wire story getting a lot of play this morning. "Long-time Republican activists here, who often joke that they like to meet the candidates several times before deciding, have barely seen the candidates once, much less at all, andno campaign has more than 20 paid staff in the state."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=668191e050b3f093ae9378a08663e818d16b858168d411aa85711f3f7bca3229
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=668191e050b3f093ae9378a08663e818d16b858168d411aa85711f3f7bca3229

STILL FLUID - "IOWANS CAN'T STOP CHANGING THEIR MINDS":The Washington Post's Dave Fahrenthold, one of the best writers at 1150 15th St., looks at "Iowa's epic case of political indecision" with five vignettes of undecided voters. There's the activist, the broke guy, the businessman and the grandmother. "This political promiscuity is a little embarrassing, for people who picture themselves in a state-sized Norman Rockwell painting: America's sober, decisive First Voters," Dave says.
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=dd023bdf960d7cb971c7e3bf98042478b631f33f11ecf3788198624ac7d7aa40
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=dd023bdf960d7cb971c7e3bf98042478b631f33f11ecf3788198624ac7d7aa40

FLORIDA TALKER - EARLY VOTING MEANS STATE CANNOT BE NEGLECTED:"More Florida Republicans - about 370,000 - already have requested absentee ballots for the Jan. 31 primary than the number of Republicans who voted in the 2008 Iowa and New Hampshire contests combined," Adam Smith, the top political reporter in the Sunshine State, writes in Monday's St. Petersburg Times. "The ever-growing volume of votes cast before the primary in Florida is one of the factors that make the state a very different challenge from the earliest elections... 'Under the old model in Florida, a campaign would work toward a 72-hour program going into Election Day,' said Republican strategist Brett Doster, who is leading
Romney's Florida effort. Now, ballots come in right after the start of the new year, followed by a lull, then more absentees, then early voting, then the primary. In theory that means a successful statewide campaign in Florida requires a formidable campaign apparatus to chase absentee ballots to bank as many votes as possible.But there's a little secret that most professional campaign operatives in Florida prefer not to acknowledge: It's not at all clear the ground game matters much in a presidential election.Florida's GOP primary results will be driven much more by national momentum - the results in Iowa and New Hampshire and what's being broadcast on Fox News - than
by campaign get-out-the-vote efforts."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fc8e0de8a0edd147b4254175121a4aa575500acba71f245537f90f18d59eb71f
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fc8e0de8a0edd147b4254175121a4aa575500acba71f245537f90f18d59eb71f

THE FIREWALL HOLDS - ROMNEY UP 22 IN GLOBE NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL:A Boston Globe poll published Sunday puts Romney at 39 percent. Gingrich and Paul tie at 17. Huntsman is in fourth at 11 percent. "Despite Romney's lead, the contest in New Hampshire remains in flux. Only a quarter of likely voters have definitely made up their minds, and nearly half of all voters remain undecided," the Globe writes. "In the heated days ahead, both Romney and Gingrich could be fighting over the same voters. The reason: A plurality of Romney supporters said Gingrich would be their second choice, and most Gingrich supporters said Romney would be theirs."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=23b00f5eb15ba239286067994b3e9a1774104fed186cd8be5e20069cb771b5e7
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=23b00f5eb15ba239286067994b3e9a1774104fed186cd8be5e20069cb771b5e7

D'OH - GINGRICH, PERRY NOT ON VIRGINIA BALLOT:They did not get the required 10,000 (verified) signatures needed to appear on the ballot Super Tuesday. Initially Gingrich's campaign pledged to wage a write-in campaign, but there are no write-ins allowed in primary elections in Virginia. No one in Iowa isn't going to vote for Gingrich because he got kicked off a March 6 ballot, but it's an embarrassing reminder that he's struggling to build an infrastructure to compete. This is the state where he is registered to vote and leads in the polls. In a long slog, small mistakes like this could probe pivotal.
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=6e969885af14e9f29efa43c995d079dae53219577a662153b4ad22f097db2c3c
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=6e969885af14e9f29efa43c995d079dae53219577a662153b4ad22f097db2c3c

INVOKING PEARL HARBOR - A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY?Gingrich's national campaign director Michael Krull wrote a note on Facebook about their failure. "Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action," he wrote. "Throughout the next months there will be ups and downs; there will be successes and failures; there will be easy victories and difficult days - but in the end we will stand victorious."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=028e7cfb878742c96660398c7f4bfa9ee32cb2dced9231b13e891d0a45535f10
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=028e7cfb878742c96660398c7f4bfa9ee32cb2dced9231b13e891d0a45535f10

NEW FEATURE - WHO WON/LOST THE DAY?Going forward we're going to experiment with naming losers and winners from the previous day. Sometimes it's a wash, and we don't want to force something or be unfair so we won't name a winner or loser if there's not one. When someone clearly had a bad day, we will call them out for it.

INAUGURAL LOSER - GINGRICH LOST THE WEEKEND:Nobody was active enough to win a news cycle this weekend. But the inaugural loser has to be Gingrich on Saturday. Getting kicked off his home state's ballot meant a spate of negative headlines for Gingrich over Christmas weekend, especially after he squandered a precious day of campaigning in the Commonwealth and boisterously declared Thursday afternoon that he proved his critics wrong by turning in way more signatures than needed. Comparing his plight to Pearl Harbor got him on the nightly news and kept him further off message.

IS HE RUNNING ON BILL CLINTON'S RECORD?Former Clinton aides are crying foul as Gingrich claims credit for what they see as WJC's accomplishments, Maggie Haberman writes in the story leading POLITICO this morning. "Newt Gingrich running on President Clinton's record is like the coal delivery man stealing Santa's sleigh," said Joe Andrew, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from 1999 to 2001. Maggie also has James Carville and Paul Begala, with strong pushback from R.C. Hammond, Ralph Reed and David Bossie:
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fecd31e241dd4319935c91c4f9c1adc9596000b8ac212320c05265a0344572f3
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=fecd31e241dd4319935c91c4f9c1adc9596000b8ac212320c05265a0344572f3 .

IS NEWT TOO ARROGANT?"The struggle for many Iowans is that they like what Gingrich stands for, but worry about his personality," Robin Abcarian wrote in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, with lots of voter voices.
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=410ffc4a179718a01e67180bae1600e07cc199698b31174efcbbc1c0bde665b1
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=410ffc4a179718a01e67180bae1600e07cc199698b31174efcbbc1c0bde665b1

PERRY - TAXPAYER-FUNDED SECURITY COSTS RISE:The Texas Tribune ran a long Sunday yarn on how much the state is spending to protest Rick Perry. "Online reports from Comptroller Susan Combs show that the public safety department has spent more on out-of-state trips from September to mid-December of this year - more than $1.4 million - than it did in the entire 2011 fiscal year, when it spent $1.1 million...There is no category or amount listed in the spreadsheet for overtime pay, which generally increase during out-of-state road trips," Jay Root writes. "The Legislature finally stepped in earlier this year, passing a compromise law that requires the agency to release quarterly summaries of the
amounts - including breakdowns for food, lodging and other expenses - but not to release the actual vouchers for 18 months. That will keep any detailed disclosures of Perry's security expenses out of the public eye until after the 2012 election...Perry appears to be the only candidate with a government-provided security detail."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=eb61ce2c5883ff847977a22d39a3f444ca5d99689277ac70f04f3948874774a0
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=eb61ce2c5883ff847977a22d39a3f444ca5d99689277ac70f04f3948874774a0

FUN IOWA STORY - WHY POOR CANDIDATES STOP AT THE PIZZA RANCH:"Pizza Ranch stops per candidate is one sign of his or her designs on Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses, though it can also be a reverse indicator. Because the rooms are free, the chain tends to be favored by contenders low on cash," Danny Yadron wrote over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal. "Iowans say it was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who blazed the Pizza Ranch trail...Low on funds, his campaign would often pull into a Ranch at lunch hour, order a couple of pizzas and try to lure voters into the party room, said Chip Saltsman, Mr. Huckabee's former campaign manager. If the national media showed up, his staff members
would go into the main dining area and offer people free food if they moved closer to the governor. 'The center of our campaign strategy was Pizza Ranch,' Mr. Saltsman said. 'When you're sitting as an asterisk in the polls, you tend to do events where there's already a built-in crowd.'"
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=9e519dd6022fa317a8ac75b7521a3cca3da383f4e15d2e42202239e869e34cc9
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=9e519dd6022fa317a8ac75b7521a3cca3da383f4e15d2e42202239e869e34cc9

BEST SUNDAY ANECDOTE - ROMNEY'S ADVICE ON WORK-LIFE BALANCE:The lead anecdote of Jodi Kantor's Sunday New York Times story on Romney's time at Harvard business school is an insta-classic. He goes back to give a few years after graduating for a guest lecture: "'You have the same question as General Electric,' said Mr. Romney, then a young father and a management consultant. 'Your resources are your time and talent. How are you going to deploy them?' He drew a chart called a growth-share matrix with little circles to represent various pursuits: work, family, church. Investing time in work delivered tangible returns like raises and profits. 'Your children don't pay any evidence of achievement
for 20 years,' Mr. Romney said. But if students failed to invest sufficient time and energy in their spouses and children, their families could become 'dogs' - consultant-speak for drags on the rest of the company - sucking energy, time and happiness out of the students. The presentation was a hit: Mr. Romney had proved the value of family time based not on emotion but on yield. That day, Mr. Romney was not only displaying his hallmark brand of almost comically analytical reasoning but also returning to the place where he first absorbed it."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=ca5e6aca2f0f234c3eb436c36f817744b819e525ccaef550e008b8a2b9de010c
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THE RE-ELECT -

FUNDRAISING EXPECATIONS - OBAMA RAISES $60+ MILLION IN Q4:The Obama campaign "set a goal of raising $60 million in the fourth quarter of the year to benefit the Democratic incumbent's re-election and the Democratic National Committee, a campaign official said on Saturday," per Reuters."If it reaches its goal for the fourth quarter, the campaign will surpass $200 million in fundraising for 2011. Obama is not expected to attend fundraising events between now and the end of the year, the campaign official said. He headlined about 15 campaign fundraising events in the fourth quarter." You don't publicly float numbers unless you plan to far exceed them, so consider $60 mil. a baseline.
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=27e30c1b8efe10b997ed51c10e35353722e1f9561976b17be2a4a894d60f96ad
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=27e30c1b8efe10b997ed51c10e35353722e1f9561976b17be2a4a894d60f96ad

THE LANDSCAPE - ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?"If the coming election is determined by that maxim, or by most traditional measures, President Obama would seem to face bleak prospects," The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib writes in his Monday column. "Unemployment, the economic statistic that packs the most political punch, has risen to 8.6% now from 7.8% the month Mr. Obama took office...The misery index-the combination of the unemployment and inflation rates-has risen to about 12 now from 7.83 when he took office...Median family income fell in the first two years of the Obama term, after rising the previous four years...As of September, 12.6% of U.S. mortgage borrowers
had missed at least one payment on their mortgage or were in foreclosure, down from a peak of about 15% but still well above the normal range of 5% to 7% in the last two decades."

BUT - THE UPSHOT FOR OBAMA:Three years in, voters still blame George W. Bush and Wall Street more than Obama for the current economic problems. "Just over 40% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the president, but 48% hold an unfavorable view of Republicans," Seib adds. "And when Americans are asked which party is better at dealing with the economy, the two parties are rated about evenly...A record 42% of Americans call the current Congress one of the worst ever...Moreover, none of the Republicans jockeying for the right to run against Mr. Obama next year is exactly soaring in public esteem...Taken together, all these forces suggest that a close election lies ahead."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=8de62aff16a357654d84884859cf1630caa752daf18b07bd4004e96deb23dd41
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FRIDAY NIGHT DUMP - OBAMA RETURNING CORZINE CASH:"President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has returned campaign contributions from Jon S. Corzine, former chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd.," per Bloomberg. "Responding to Republican criticism that the money from the former New Jersey governor was tainted by his firm's collapse, Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee refunded the money...Corzine, 64, and his wife Sharon Elghanayan each contributed $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee and $5,000 to Obama's campaign, the maximum amounts that individuals are allowed to give...Corzine was one of 41 donors who bundled more than $500,000
this year for Obama's re-election effort...The campaign doesn't plan to return those bundled donations and will evaluate other contributions from MF Global employees on a case-by-case basis."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=e55f83ee9d78c9916e6597228a778682a8bbf34b4e9a0a95e5739bae17bb3826
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=e55f83ee9d78c9916e6597228a778682a8bbf34b4e9a0a95e5739bae17bb3826

INDIANA SENATE - LUGAR SAYS TEA PARTY COULD COST GOP MAJORITY:Richard Lugar said the GOP's hold on Indiana's Senate seat will be in danger if he loses the primary to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. "Republicans who are running for re-election ought to be supported by people who want to see that majority," Lugar said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." More from Bloomberg: "Lugar characterized the Tea Party groups as 'very conservative Republicans' and said that he had 'a very conservative voting record' in the Senate deserving of their support. He mentioned Nevada and Colorado as two states where Tea Party-backed Senate candidates won Republican primaries last year before losing the
general election to Democratic incumbents. 'There were people who claim that they wanted somebody who was more of their Tea Party aspect, but in doing so they killed off the Republican chances for majority,' Lugar said. 'This is one of the reasons we have a minority in the Senate right now.'"
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b3327ebcde276bcd2c4e4726faf6cd642307ffc9afca9fcc863f215b96c2fdde
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FLORIDA SENATE - INSIDERS EXPECT BILL NELSON TO WIN:"More than 100 of the most plugged in and experienced political observers in Florida responded to the latest St. Petersburg Times Florida Insider Poll, and seven in 10 said they expect the Orlando Democrat to win a third term," Adam Smith wrote in the Sunday paper. "Plenty of them expect a close race or qualify their predictions to say it assumes a relatively strong showing by President Barack Obama in Florida, but the poll clearly shows conventional political wisdom in this state favors Nelson. When Republican political donors and committees across the country weigh where to spend their money to try to capture the Senate, an expensive
state like Florida could be a low priority, given the early expectations."
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=51f64bbef67d6ca17b8999fa8f4e73d9c15cd0f5b34ea071525ac3fe0de760bc
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SHOW-ME THE MONEY - "RED MISSOURI MAY LOSE ADVERTISING GREEN IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE":Missouri is coming to terms with its status as a red state. A story inside Monday's Kansas City Star notes that local broadcasters will miss out on the money that has been spent to flood the airwaves the last few cycles: "Consultants in both parties say it's increasingly possible the two major party presidential candidates will not campaign heavily in the Show-Me State next fall... And if the presidential campaigns decide the state's 10 electoral votes are no longer worth the trouble, spending on TV ads in the state will plummet. In 2007 and 2008, the presidential campaigns and outside groups spent almost $21
million to buy more than 52,000 political commercials in Missouri, according to a study by CNN and its ad spending consultants." On the bright side, they've got a marquee Senate race!
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=6eafd108c30280e8f55a76f036c272819a507c5a01b703d2178d7e9bf6b9e38b
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=6eafd108c30280e8f55a76f036c272819a507c5a01b703d2178d7e9bf6b9e38b

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY:"If you're writing the history of modern conservatism, I'm at least in one of the chapters." - Newt Gingrich in a 1992 interview with Bob Woodward about his role in the 1990 budget fight
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