Romney, Gingrich, GSA: Obama tweaks them all

  Eyewitness NewsWASHINGTON -- This year's primaries, the 2008 primaries, the General Services Administration scandal, even the Secret Service and Donald Trump were targets for President Barack Obama's scattershot humor at Saturday night's celebrity studded White House Correspondents Dinner.

Even the entrance to his speech was part of his schtick. The president walked off stage just before he took the podium with an alleged "hot mic," making fun of getting caught last month on an open microphone with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

"What am I doing here," he asks off stage. "I'm opening for Jimmy Kimmel and telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian."

Once on stage, the president revisited last year's dinner.

"Last year at this time, this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world's most notorious individuals," Obama said, a seeming reference to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Instead, a picture of Trump appeared on the room's television monitors. Obama last year delivered a scathing roast of Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who flirted with running for the Republican nomination and claimed he has solved the "mystery" of Obama's birth certificate.

He took a shot at the Republican congressional leadership, whom he thanked "for taking time from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws" to attend the dinner.

Four years ago, he recalled, he was locked in a tough primary fight with Hillary Clinton, now his secretary of state. "She can't stop drunk texting me from Cartagena," he said, referring to their recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Columbia.

This year, Obama is the incumbent, but the dinner was far from a campaign-free zone. The president pointed out his similarities with the presumed nominee, Mitt Romney.

"We both think of our wives as our better halves, and the American people agree to an insulting extent," the president said.

"We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob."

The crack drew a thumbs up from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who dropped out of the presidential primary campaign earlier this month. Santorum had called Obama a snob for encouraging young Americans to attend college.

But Obama touched on serious themes as well, remembering The New York Times' Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London who died while covering the uprising in Syria.

"Never forget that our country depends on you to help protect our freedom, our democracy and our way of life," Obama said.

Then he returned to the lighter side: "I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew."

Among those who attended Saturday night's dinner were former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cast of the hit TV show "Modern Family," singer John Legend, actor George Clooney, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., director Steven Spielberg and actress Zooey Deschanel.

Proceeds from the dinner go toward scholarships for aspiring journalists and awards for distinction in the profession.

The association was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner. Some of the proceeds from the dinner pay for journalism scholarships for college students.

Several journalists will also be honored at the dinner:

- Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of The Associated Press, for winning the Edgar A. Poe Award for their stories about the New York City Police Department's widespread surveillance of Muslims after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It's the fourth major prize for the series, which has also won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a George Polk Award.

- ABC's Jake Tapper and Politico's Glenn Thrush, Carrie Budoff Brown, Manu Raju and John Bresnahan, for winning the Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential coverage under pressure. Tapper won in the broadcast category for breaking the news that rating agency Standard & Poor's was on the verge of downgrading the federal government's triple-A credit rating because of concerns over political gridlock in Washington. In the print category, Thrush, Budoff Brown, Raju and Bresnahan of Politico won for their report on the deal between Obama and congressional Republicans to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

- Scott Wilson, of The Washington Post, for winning the Aldo Beckman award. Wilson was recognized for his "deeply reported and nuanced stories, his evocative writing and his clear presentation of complex issues, particularly on the foreign policy front."

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Gingrich, Romney tangle in New Hampshire again

  By KASIE HUNTMANCHESTER, N.H. -- A combative Newt Gingrich accused Mitt Romney of "pious baloney" Sunday and charged him with hiding behind inaccurate attack ads aired by allies in the increasingly rancorous race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Targeted by his rivals for weeks, the GOP front-runner fired back in a campaign debate: "This ain't beanbag ... we're going to describe the differences between us." It was the most intense exchange of a weekend debate double-header run-up to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, won the Iowa caucuses last Tuesday by a scant eight votes over former Pennsylvania Sen.

Rick Santorum but is so far ahead in New Hampshire polls that his rivals have virtually conceded he will win.

In a slap at front-runner Romney, New Hampshire Rep. Frank Giunta announced Sunday he would endorse none of the primary candidates. Romney already has the support of the state's one Republican in the U.S. Senate and its other congressman.

South Carolina comes next, on Jan. 21, the first Southern state to hold a primary. While it is the contest where Gingrich, Santorum and the rest of Romney's rivals face an urgent need to slow his candidacy, Romney pointedly noted that he has been endorsed by that state's governor, Nikki Haley.

Santorum finished second in Iowa, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with Gingrich fourth, Texas Gov. Rick Perry fifth and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann in last place. She has since quit the race. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman skipped Iowa in hopes of a breakout showing in New Hampshire.

The GOP contenders faced off Sunday for the second time in less than 12 hours, following their debate Saturday night in nearby Manchester.

Though aggressive in assailing Romney, Gingrich hedged when he was confronted with one of his own campaign leaflets declaring Romney to be unelectable against President Barack Obama. "I think he'll have a very hard time getting elected," was as far as he would go.

It wasn't all testy. Perry drew laughter as well as applause when he said that federal bureaucrats would experience pain as a result of his plans to cut spending, especially those in the departments of education, commerce and energy. That was a reference to his gaffe in an earlier debate when he couldn't recall the name of the third of the Cabinet-level agencies he has proposed eliminating.

Indicating he'd taken offense on another matter, Huntsman, who was Obama's ambassador to China before quitting to run for the White House, returned to a comment Romney had made the night before. Romney said then that the rest of the GOP hopefuls had been trying to oppose the administration's policies while Huntsman was advancing them.

"And I just want to remind the people here in New Hampshire and throughout the United States, he criticized me while he was out raising money for serving my country in China, yes, under a Democrat, like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy.

They're not asking what political affiliation the president is. `' As was the case Saturday night, Romney sought to shrug off the attacks from his rivals on the debate stage and worked to turn the focus onto Obama, whom he accused of presiding over an unnecessarily long recovery from recession.

Obama has been "anti-investment, anti-jobs and anti-business," he said.

But Gingrich was more aggressive than he had been Saturday night, his attacks serving as bookends to the 90-minute event.

The former speaker briefly led in the Iowa and national polls before the caucuses, before his surge was blunted by a series of ads aired by a so-called super PAC that is operated by former Romney aides and allies.

Gingrich has complained bitterly that the attacks were false, but he was asked on Sunday about a similar organization set up by his own supporters. It is intent on criticizing Romney for having run an investment firm that cost workers their jobs when it took over their companies.

Asked if he was being consistent, Gingrich said, "I'm consistent because I think you ought to have fact-based campaigns." He demanded Romney say whether the attacks against him were true.

Romney replied, "I haven't seen them, and as you know, under the law, I can't direct the ads. If there's anything in the ads that are wrong, I hope they take it out."

Yet moments after saying he hadn't seen the commercials, he recited the charges they made and said they were accurate - that Gingrich had been forced to resign as speaker, that he had once talked of finding common ground with House Democrats on climate change and that he had called a House Republican proposal to overhaul Medicare "right wing social engineering."

Gingrich said he was glad "he has said weeks later if they're wrong they should take them down."

Almost 90 minutes earlier, Gingrich called Romney a "relatively timid Massachusetts moderate" whose state ranked fourth from the bottom in job creation when he was governor.

Romney said he had created more jobs in one state than Obama had in the entire country, adding that it was important to replace "a lifetime politician" like the president with a different type of leader.

Santorum, too, took a swipe at Romney, asking why he hadn't sought re-election as governor after one term.

"Why did you bail out? And the bottom line is, I go fight the fight," Santorum said, referring to his time in Congress in the House of Representatives from a blue-collar district.

Romney jabbed back with a reference to Santorum's lucrative career in the six years since he lost a re-election campaign in 2006.

"I long for the day when instead of having people to go to Washington for 20 to 30 years, will get elected and then when they lose office, they stay there and make money as lobbyists or conducting their businesses.

"I think it stinks," Romney said.

Moments later, Gingrich appeared irked and accused Romney of using more than his allotted time to respond.

"I realize the red light doesn't mean anything to you because you're the front-runner."

"Could we drop a little bit of the pious baloney. The fact is you ran in `94 and lost (to Ted Kennedy). ... You were running for president while you were governor. ... You've been running consistently for years."

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Newt Gingrich weeps, Mitt Romney attacks Ron Paul

  By DAVID ESPO and SHANNON MCCAFFREYDES MOINES, Iowa -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wept Friday as he recalled his late mother's end-of-life illnesses, a moment of poignancy in a notably negative Republican presidential Iowa caucus campaign with four unpredictable days yet to run.

"I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich told an audience of women as he tried to regain his composure. The tears flowed as the former speaker was responding to questions about his mother from a pollster and longtime political ally.

Gingrich's emotional moment came as his rivals engaged in traditional campaign tactics, and as polls suggested large numbers of Iowa Republicans could change their minds before caucuses Tuesday night provide the first test of the 2012 campaign.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sought to marginalize his closest pursuer in most polls, saying, "I don't think Ron Paul represents the mainstream of Republican thought with regards to issues, particularly in foreign policy."

Paul gave no ground. "I really can't conceive" of intervening militarily to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said, unequivocally restating his position on an issue on which he differs with Romney and his other rivals.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, claiming momentum based on recent polls, told reporters he recently had the best fundraising day of his candidacy. Yet he also drew criticism from Texas Gov. Rick Perry for advocating earmarks during two terms in the Senate.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann became the latest presidential hopeful to hold a campaign event with Iowa Rep. Steve King - and the latest to hear him say he wasn't ready to give his endorsement.

Whatever the impact of Gingrich's tears on the race for the White House, the episode seemed destined to be replayed endlessly on televisions, personal computers and hand-held devices.

That was the case nearly four years ago, when Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to choke back tears while campaigning in New Hampshire a few days before the state's Democratic presidential primary. The episode also became the subject of intense political analysis. Clinton won the primary in an upset a few days later.

Gingrich was surging in the polls a little more than a week ago, but was hit by a barrage of negative ads and has been struggling in recent days. Normally a combative politician, he shed tears as he appeared before a group of mothers and responded to a question from Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and longtime ally of the former speaker.

Asked about his mother and an event in his life that influenced his policies and views, Gingrich recalled her as happy and having friends before she ended up in a long-term care facility suffering from bipolar disease, depression and physical ailments.

"My whole emphasis on brain science comes in directly from dealing with the real problems of real people," he said, his face distorting as he began to cry. "And so it's not a theory. It's, in fact, my mother," he said.

Kathleen "Kit" Gingrich died in 2003. She was 77.

Romney, who leads in most polls in Iowa, criticized Paul in an interview with Fox News Channel.

"I don't think Ron Paul represents the mainstream of Republican thought with regards to issues, particularly in foreign policy," he said, referring to the Texan's statement that he would oppose military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

At the same time he said Paul was outside the GOP mainstream, Romney pledged to support whoever wins the party's nomination to oppose President Barack Obama in the fall.

Campaigning later in western Iowa, Paul said he would probably have difficulty voting for any of the other Republicans in the race if they win the party nomination. "They all are part of the status quo," he said.

After months of campaigning and millions of dollars in television commercials, the polls depicted a race as unsettled and unpredictable as any in the four decades since Iowa's caucuses became the kickoff event in presidential campaigns.

A pair of surveys in the last five days suggested upwards of a third of all potential caucus-goers had not firmly settled on a candidate of choice.

The same polls made Romney the front-runner, and his decision to leave for a quick trip to New Hampshire and then return to Iowa and stay through caucus night projected optimism.

Paul views on Iran have been called into question this week by numerous other contenders, and Gingrich went so far as to say he would not vote for the Texan.

To some extent, Paul stands alone in the field because of his libertarian-leaning views. He does not want the government to have the power to ban abortions, for example, and has called for the legalization of some drugs that are now outlawed.

That has left Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Bachmann to vie for standing as Romney's chief opponent in the competition for evangelical voters and other conservatives.

Even before the caucuses, Romney and the rest of the field were looking ahead to New Hampshire's primary on Jan. 10 and the first two Southern contests later in the month, in South Carolina and Florida.

But there was maneuvering yet to come in the state that precedes them all.

Allies of Gingrich announced they were airing a 30-minute program in Iowa produced by Newsmax, a conservative media outlet.

It features Michael Reagan, son of the former president, who calls the former speaker "a person who we believe will help continue my father's legacy."

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Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont and Kasie Hunt in Des Moines, Brian Bakst in Early and Mike Glover in Ames contributed to this report.

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Romney team shifts tactics as Gingrich climbs

The Mitt Romney campaign is making an immediate shift in tactics, a move that is necessary because, as one Republican close the campaign put it, “What they are doing now isn’t working.”

At an event in Arizona, Romney himself said you will see more ads, you will see him making sure the contrasts between himself and Newt Gingrich are “loud and clear.” And Romney himself said you will be seeing more interviews and press conferences.

Some other changes you will see soon?

Integrity: When former Vice President Dan Quayle spoke about the importance of Romney’s integrity “when he’s in public life. When he’s in private life,” that was no accident. Romney will not go after Gingrich on personal issues, but ABC News has learned that you can expect to see Romney surrogates making fairly direct references to Gingrich’s tumultuous past, in the vein of what Quayle did. You can also expect to see Ann Romney and the Romney family on the trail much more, especially in South Carolina, to create a visual contrast. Their presence on the trail “speaks for itself.”

Temperament: The Romney team sees Gingrich’s temperament as a weakness. Romney himself will highlight the importance of temperament by discussing his record as a leader. Surrogates are likely to go after Newt directly. The question that will be posed is, “Who do you want to make decisions?” One Romney adviser added, “Gingrich is everything people don’t like about Washington.” Romney might not try to directly rough-up Gingrich at the ABC News debate Saturday in Iowa, but he will try to establish that contrast in leadership and temperament and hope Gingrich digs a hole for himself. “Gingrich never does well when he’s doing well,” a Romney aide said.

Money: You will see the Romney team begin to utilize their huge financial advantage. One Republican says expect ads in South Carolina soon. Not because they think it will guarantee victory (polls show them trailing there), but because they are concerned with keeping it close. Florida and South Carolina are shaping up to be areas of concern right now.

Organization: The Romney team will flex its organizational muscle, especially in Florida where they have an extensive infrastructure. The campaign just sent out an email blast touting its support in West Virginia, which does not hold its primary until May.

These are changes you will see starting today. The Romney campaign is not said to be running around scared, but as one Republican put it, “They know Newt Gingrich is someone who can win elections.”

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Gingrich, Trump to meet

  Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK -- Newt Gingrich will become the fifth Republican presidential candidate to meet with Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich to meet.

The two are scheduled to meet in New York City later today.

Gingrich's campaign, ramping up its operations in early nominating states, was also meeting with former Herman Cain aides and advisers now looking for jobs. While Cain's endorsement remained up for grabs, Gingrich and his rivals were looking to schedule one-on-one meetings this week with the former pizza executive.

Gingrich, the former House speaker from Georgia, has so far been the biggest beneficiary of Cain's slide. A Des Moines Register poll conducted Nov. 27-30 and released late Saturday found the former House speaker leading the GOP field with 25 percent support, ahead of Paul at 18 percent and Romney at 16.

A separate NBC News/Marist poll showed Gingrich beating Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 26 percent to 18 percent, among Republican caucus attendees in Iowa.

Gingrich also is enjoying national popularity that could give him the momentum he needs to overcome deficiencies in the organization of his campaign. At the same time, Gingrich says he knows his surge in the polls could disappear if his opponents stage a comeback.

Real estate giant Trump says Romney "doesn't get the traction" he needs to nail down the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump, who will moderate a GOP candidate debate on Dec. 28, says Romney struggles to stay in front, saying "I don't know what it is."

Trump said accusations that Romney flip-flops on issues are absurd, saying "we all change our minds on things."

He brushed aside decisions by both Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman to stay out of the debate, calling them "joke candidates."

Trump says "a lot of Republicans, top Republicans, asked me to do the debate." And he also says that if he isn't satisfied the GOP is putting up a viable candidate against President Barack Obama, he'd again consider running himself.

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