In the past week, Mitt Romney has rebounded and claimed the lead once again in the Republican presidential race. And with no debates for weeks, Newt Gingrich may not be able to shift voters’ opinions for a third time. So once again, the media is back to pushing the “inevitable Romney” narrative it’s had to temporarily shelve on a few occasions. On This Week today, George Will not only agreed that Romney is inevitable, but added that the GOP race is already over.

On NBC’s Today Show Wednesday morning, host Matt Lauer underscored just how nasty this 2012 Republican primary campaign has gotten, and how quickly, when he asked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to confirm whether he had received a congratulations call from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich following Romney’s victory in the Florida primary. Romney revealed that Gingrich did not call last night…or after Romney victories in Iowa (apparent victory, anyway) and New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney celebrated his Florida win with his supporters in Tampa Tuesday night, “This campaign is about more than replacing a president, it’s about saving the soul of America,” Romney said. “President Obama and I have very different visions of America. President Obama wants to grow government and continue to amass trillion dollar deficits. I will not just slow the growth of government, I will cut the spending of government. I will not just freeze government share of the total economy, I will reduce it and without raising taxes,I will finally get america to a balanced budget. President Obama’s view of a free economy is to send your money to his friends!”

The cable news channels are predicting Mitt Romney has won the Florida primary.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has made America The Beautiful a go-to rhetorical aid in his presidential campaign for some time now (in Iowa, he joked repeatedly that “corn counts as an amber wave of grain), but eschewed actual crooning on the stump. Perhaps emboldened by President Obama‘s knockout Apollo Theater performance, Romney remedied that [...]

Jon Stewart came back from the weekend with little but the Florida primary to look forward too and a cluster of polls from various points of the Republican race that showed Mitt Romney in a heated battle with Newt Gingrich for the top spot. Such a heated battle, in fact, that Stewart compared the bloodbath to a level of Mortal Kombat, one that culminated with someone’s spine broken in a video game.

On Monday morning’s Fox and Friends, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney let out another one of those “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake!” bursts of honesty which, like a burlesque revue at a leper colony, are revealing, but not in a good way. Asked if his father’s Mexican birthplace is helping him with Florida’s Hispanic community, Romney replied “You know, I wish I could claim that I’m Hispanic…”

Congressman Allen West spoke at a Florida GOP dinner last night, and had some fighting words for Democrats who are trying to mark Florida in the win column this November. He declared it a “battlefield” for citizens to stand on and tell the Democrats that their message is not going to resonate with the citizens of Florida. West called out not just President Obama, but Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and fellow Floridian Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

BBC World News anchor Katty Kay got off a cheeky one-liner that had her fellow Chris Matthews Show panelists chuckling (and in Kathleen Parker‘s case, perhaps blushing) when she assessed Florida’s importance in electoral politics by saying “It’s very big, and it swings.”

That’s probably true, but it’s fair to ask what good that does, given the state’s history of electile dysfunction.

A new poll out from Florida shows Mitt Romney with a 15-point lead over Newt Gingrich, and on ABC’s This Week today, Jake Tapper asked how Gingrich’s Florida numbers will end up impacting the rest of the race. George Will didn’t mince words, declaring right out that Gingrich does not have time on his side, and the more time he has, the more he talks, and the more he talks, the more he makes somewhat divisive remarks.

Politicians are well-known for playing standard musical fare at campaign events, but Newt Gingrich supporters who showed up early to a speech he gave yesterday in Florida would have heard a rap song playing with lyrics telling people to support Gingrich for president. The song was written by three 18-year-olds from St. Lucie, and they got permission from the campaign to play their song at the event.

Last night at a Republican fundraiser in Florida, former presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed former rival Newt Gingrich for the GOP nomination, praising him for being a “patriot” and his willingness to press ahead in the race even after “going through the sausage grinder.” Cain appeared on stage at a West Palm Beach County Republican event a week after making his “unconventional endorsement” and made a presidential endorsement that was decidedly more conventional.

On Wednesday’s edition of Now with Alex Wagner, perpetual motion machine and Hardball host Chris Matthews showed up to liven things up. In a segment about the current slugfest between former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Gov. Mitt Romney in Florida, Matthews (seated next to former Obama spokesman Bill Burton) called out GOP strategist Phil Musser for being a “Romney guy,” and concluded the segment by throwing host Alex Wagner off, responding to her kind outro by saying “This is how you dump guys, huh?”

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough took a moment to speak with GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, whom he’s known for some time. Santorum told the host he was gearing up to visit his old stomping grounds in Pensacola, Florida.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, reeling from his defeat in the South Carolina primary, and now trailing in the polls in Florida, has released a new ad in the Sunshine State that goes over familiar territory like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich‘s non-lobbying for Freddie Mac and his historic ethics fine, but which is punctuated with Romney’s last enduring argument for Republican voters: Barack Obama and Co. are rooting very hard for a Gingrich win.

Mother Jones has a profile up about Reverend O’Neal Dozier, a pastor who runs the Worldwide Christian Centor in Pompano Beach, Florida, who currently serves as the honorary chairman of Rick Santorum‘s Florida campaign. Dozier is a well-known social conservative who obviously shares many of Santorum’s views on issues like gay marriage, but has made rather controversial statements that have raised people’s eyebrows over his connections to the GOP candidate.

Mitt Romney‘s campaign is looking forward beyond South Carolina and straight down to The Sunshine State. In an effort to court Florida’s Spanish-speaking contingency — particularly, it would appear, Miami’s Cuban population — Romney’s new ad features Cuban-born politicians Mario Díaz-Balart, Lincoln Díaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, as well as Romney’s son, Craig, all speaking entirely [...]

Current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich referenced a popular (among right-wingers) but baseless attack against President Obama this weekend during a speech in Naples, Florida. Challenging the President to a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates, Gingrich told the crowd “If he (President Obama) wants to use a teleprompter, that would be fine with me.”

Unfortunately for Newt, he specifically referenced health care, a subject for which we already have a reliable debate preview.

After two 12-year-olds shared a kiss on the school playground, an administrator at Lee County, Florida’s Orange River Elementary School called… The students’ teachers? Their parents? A squad of ruler-wielding nuns? No: The sheriff’s office.

The Washington Post is having an identity crisis. It isn’t their identity that is at play– it’s Sen. Marco Rubio‘s, one they challenged because the Senator misstated the exact date of his parents’ exodus from Cuba. Those few years, they contend, turn the exodus into an emigration, and their trauma into fraud. Sen. Rubio responded in kind, writing in a column in Politico that it was “an insult to the sacrifices my parents made.” He’s wrong– his parents aren’t the ones the Post has insulted, but the parents of all million or so Cuban-American exiles, and the intelligence of its readers.

On Monday’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert came up with a solution for saving the billions of jobs that John McCain says we’re losing over regulation, legalizing “dwarf tossing.”

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann appeared on CNN’s State of the Union today, and Candy Crowley suggested that the congresswoman’s campaign may be “imploding” because of her poor showing in recent polls following her victory in the Iowa straw poll only several weeks ago. Bachmann countered that Crowley’s assertion was “completely inaccurate.”

Several Republican candidates are planning on boycotting Univisión’s proposed January 29th debate in Miami after a report surfaced that the network allegedly tried to blackmail Florida Senator Marco Rubio into an exclusive interview. Governors Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, and Rep. Michele Bachmann have announced they will boycott.

In a replay of a scenario that played out on the Democratic side in 2008, four early Republican primary states are threatening to move their primary dates in response to Florida’s Wednesday announcement that they’ll hold their primary on January 31. The prestige of the early primary, and the attendant relevance, are strong enticements, but before any more states decide to get in on the action, they ought to remember how things turned out for the Democrats of Florida and Michigan in 2008.

Fans of the prison reality television program Lockup got some sad news this week, as Florida governor Rick Scott canceled a contract with the series arguing that the prison officials signing it did not have the authority to do so. Somewhere along the line, rumors began to circulate that Scott did so in retaliation for MSNBC, and specifically Rachel Maddow, who has often criticized his government. Donning a prison uniform, Maddow tossed to the Friday night airing of Lockup with a special edition of “Debunktion Junction,” disproving any claim that the issue was related to her.