Sen. John McCain has been one of the most vocal Republicans speaking out against mistreatment of enemy combatants since the topic became salient once again upon the beginning of the War on Terror and, naturally, he was not happy to see his party so willing to use waterboarding techniques in interrogations in last Saturday’s debate. “Of course I am disappointed,” he told host John King on CNN today, arguing that waterboarding was “an affront to all the standards that we believe in” and clearly illegal as per the Geneva Conventions.

Ron Paul continues to make the case that he would be a good conservative challenger to President Obama in next year’s election, but as the congressman explained on Fox News Sunday today, he would be reluctant to support anyone else for the Republican nomination without first making sure they agreed with his principles of limited government.

On This Week today, George Will claimed that if President Obama should be hoping that the Congressional supercommittee convened to come up with a bipartisan plan to balance the budget and deal with high unemployment will fail, because he can’t run against a do-nothing Congress in 2012 if the public sees Congress is actually doing something. Christiane Amanpour showed a new ABC/Washington Post poll that shows that President Obama and the Republican Congress are roughly given the same amount of trust, 40 percent, when it comes to the issue of job creation.

On Fox News Sunday today, Chris Wallace asked Republican candidate Rick Perry about his decision to possibly skip one or more of the upcoming presidential debates. Perry argued that the number of debates being held was a bit much and seemed to indicate he could afford to brush off a few.

“I don’t want for a second for anyone to think that we didn’t screw up.” It’s been quite a long time since a presidential candidate uttered a sentence like that, but then again, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson never seemed to get a handle on what catering to Republicans during a presidential campaign consists of. Take, for example, the event that led to this declaration: his campaign completely forgetting to file for the New Hampshire ballot, resulting in a red eye from Arizona and rushing to sign into the primary a hair before the deadline.

This is the second week in a row I have watched the Sunday talk shows and been bombarded by more Chris Christie coverage than I was expecting. The prospect of Christie running for president is certainly an interesting one, but I can’t think of any candidate (not counting ex-governors of Alaska) who has garnered the kind of speculative media coverage that the New Jersey governor has received over the past several months.

On Face the Nation today, Governors Haley Barbour and Martin O’Malley got into a heated discussion over the Republican presidential candidates and whether the upcoming election would be a referendum on the economic policies of President Obama or not. Bob Schieffer asked Barbour why Republicans are so dissatisfied with the current Republican field of candidates.

After suggesting Republican voters were being “promiscuous” for cycling through their favorite candidates (or “flavors of the week”) in the presidential race, Bill Maher wondered how a hypothetical candidacy by none other than Jesus Christ would play out in modern times.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie finally broke his silence since rumors of a presidential run returned out of nowhere this weekend, speaking at the Reagan Library in California. Making the core of his speech the virtues of “leadership and compromise,” Christie delivered a speech demanding President Obama accomplish more, because “his failure is our failure, too.” It is not a garden variety gubernatorial speech, but it’s not exactly a campaign speech– striking square in Sarah Palin Iowa territory. His answer to the question? Christie directed everyone to a Politico compilation of him saying “no” repeatedly.

On Meet the Press today, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in on the Republican race for the presidency and whether New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would make a good candidate to go up against Barack Obama.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, Senator Lindsey Graham believed the presidential race would be decided by not just President Obama’s record in office, but the record and ideology of the Republican nominee.

The current reigning champ of the GOP presidential field is Governor Rick Perry, the most recent candidate to be profiled in TIME Magazine. Chris Matthews and his panel wondered if a candidate with Perry’s style and particular brand of conservatism would be able to win him the presidential nomination. Matthews even compared Perry to conservative icon Ronald Reagan, suggesting a starker difference between the two than most would think.

Former president Bill Clinton argued on Face the Nation today that President Obama has, in essence, made himself his primary opponent leading up to the 2012 presidential election, and emphasized the role of compromise in contemporary politics. Host Bob Schieffer asked Clinton if he agreed with James Carville (a former Clinton advisor) in saying that now is the time for President Obama’s team to panic and shake up their entire reelection strategy.

After suggesting the current Republican primary field is a weak one, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson claimed that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is strongly considering a presidential run of his own, despite his many public statements to the contrary.

Now that the GOP race has been framed as Mitt Romney vs. Rick Perry, the media has been comparing both candidates’ records, past accomplishments, and current popularity within the Republican party. To that extent, Bill Kristol predicted today that if the Republican race is a relatively “normal” one, Perry will be the GOP nominee.

Chris Matthews today wondered how President Obama could get reelected with such high unemployment numbers to deal with. He brought up figures during the presidencies of FDR and Ronald Reagan, both of whom were nevertheless reelected. Matthews consulted the “Matthews Meter,” twelve of The Chris Matthews Show‘s regular panelists, and all but one of them agreed the president could be reelected even if unemployment stands at 8.5 percent.

During a weekend defined by the fear of the inevitable destruction of nature, Rep. Ron Paul stood out among the 2012 Republican candidates for blasting FEMA’s work during a speech and calling for America to be less dependent on the federal government, “like 1900.” As 1900 is a year defined by one of the worst natural disasters in the history of Rep. Paul’s district, Anderson Cooper took him to task tonight on the claim, demanding to know whether Rep. Paul believed the government had any role in disaster response at all.

As if the current Republican presidential field wasn’t big enough, former New York Governor George Pataki is considering a campaign of his own, according to anonymous sources close to the former governor. But how well would he fare as a candidate? Pataki has been touted as a potential candidate for the past few months, but [...]

POLITICO’s Elizabeth Titus reports Herman Cain has no objection to the idea of impeaching President Obama–in fact, he thinks it’d be “a great thing to do.” On a conference call Tuesday night with bloggers, Titus reports Cain was asked why Republicans can’t simply impeach Obama. Cain responded that it’s a matter of legislative politics. “It would be a great thing to do but because the Senate is controlled by Democrats we would never be able to get the Senate first to take up that action, because they simply don’t care what the American public thinks.”

On CNN’s American Morning, St. Louis Tea Party founder Dana Loesch broke down the emerging matchup between Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, noting that for grassroots Republican voters, “I think we’ve had one president in the last one hundred years who’s come from the House of Representatives,” and argued that “our best bets” are usually governors. Loesch said “I think that makes a really huge difference, and I think that’s something that grassroots voters are going to be paying special attention to.”

On his GPS program Sunday morning, Fareed Zakaria told viewers that he thinks “liberals need to grow up” and realize that President Obama’s oratorical gifts have their limits. The declaration has earned him sharp rebuke among liberals, but also from conservative sites like Newsbusters, each of whom see Zakaria’s premise at odds with reality.

NBC’s Chuck Todd told the crew on Morning Joe this morning the Republican presidential field may be–in the opinion of the conventional wisdom–down to a “top tier” of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, but Todd says a key question today is whether there’s “an opening” for “one more in the field.” Todd says now former candidate Tim Pawlenty was considered a voice of the establishment, or “the Chamber of Commerce candidate, if you will.” For some big money donors, the choices of Perry, Bachmann and Romney may not be satisfying, leading to a call for one more big name–a Chris Christi, for instance.

In an exclusive interview to Jake Tapper on ABC’s “This Week,” former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced that he was dropping out of the presidential race because he didn’t feel the momentum was there for him to move forward.

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is ending his presidential campaign today, after coming in third place in the Iowa straw poll yesterday. Pawlenty delivered the news to supporters via a conference call earlier today, and is expected to make the official announcement on ABC’s “This Week.”

A day after the Republican presidential candidates gathered in Iowa for what was unquestionably the most combative debate of the campaign season, Rachel Maddow examined particular claims made by the candidates to determine if they were true or false.