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.

Who: Josh Levin, Mike Pesca and Stefan Fatsis, with guest- Nate Silver What: Slate’s Hang Up and Listen, Live! Where: City Winery When: January 17, 2012 Thumbs: Up “I don’t want it to sound like a tautology” isn’t the kind of concern audibly shared at most sports panels, but while explaining how bad defenses play [...]

On Friday, the Morning Joe crew took a look into their crystal ball (sponsored by Starbucks) and glimpsed ahead into what the future may hold for big-name Democrats. Is current Vice President Joe Biden gearing up to run for another presidential run? Would President Barack Obama do well to tap Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be his 2012 running mate? Would either stand a chance if Boo were to seek the nomination?

Unlikely GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich has tried to explain away the fact that he practically invented the health insurance mandate as a practical response to the evil Hillary Clinton push for universal health care in the early 90s, but The Wall Street Journal has uncovered a 2006 newsletter that vaporizes that claim. The April 2006 edition of “Newt Notes,” which the Gingrich campaign says their candidate didn’t write, contains high praise for mandated health insurance.

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough agreed with Former President Bill Clinton’s assertion on The O’Reilly Factor that the press favored Barack Obama, saying the “press favored Barack Obama by a long shot over Hillary Clinton.”

One of the major problems facing Republican presidential frontrunners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney is their longtime support for a national individual health insurance mandate, a major pillar of the dreaded Obamacare that conservative base voters hate so much. Romney passed an individual mandate as Massachusetts Governor, and expressed support for a national mandate. Gingrich, as Romney forced him to admit, all but thought the idea up. But there is one leading presidential candidate with a long record of opposition to mandating the purchase of health insurance.

Addressing international diplomats in Geneva today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton likened gay rights to women’s rights and the struggle for racial equality. While she recognized that the U.S.’s own track record with gay rights is “far from perfect,” Clinton criticized nations that criminalize gay behavior or that tolerate violence or prejudice against the LGBT community, noting that it should “never be a crime” to be gay.

In a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Fox News contributors Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen urged President Obama to “abandon his candidacy for re-election” in favor of “the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

Their premise is that Sec. Clinton not only has a better chance to win, but “is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.”

Hillary Clinton spoke with NBC senior political correspondent Chuck Todd about her daughter Chelsea Clinton becoming his new news colleague at the network. “What – what did you think when she said, ‘I want to become a member of the fourth estate,’ this side of the line here?” Todd asked. “Well, I was a little surprised!” Clinton exclaimed. “But, you know, she -– she decided to go for it, and I’m very excited for her.”

strong>Dorothy Rodham, mother of Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, passed away early today in Washington DC surrounded by her family. She was 92 years old.

Clinton had canceled a scheduled trip to Britain and Turkey after her mother became ill. Rodham survived a challenging childhood, eventually forging her own place in life by taking various jobs, eventually becoming a homemaker and mother of three.

“This is war. And that’s how they fight it.”

That’s how Rush Limbaugh summed up his feelings on the blossoming Herman Cain sexual harassment story during his radio show today. The “they” in question are Democrats as Limbaugh conflated the Cain story with the Marco Rubio scandal from last week and said they were both examples of liberals working to destroy conservative minority members.

On Fox News’ America’s Newsroom this morning, reporter David Piper, tuning in from Tripoli, shared that some people “in the know” are suggesting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a vital role in the eventual capture of ousted — and now deceased — Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Earlier today, Politico reported that Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s campaign demanded that near-frontrunner Mitt Romney release his tax returns, which Romney’s camp says he won’t do until “next tax season.”

In a rare (these days) bit of bipartisanship, former Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement agreeing with the Perry camp, and zinging a recent Romney gaffe. If Romney does release his tax return, though, will Perry have to run it through Donald Trump to see if it’s real?

A few weeks ago, Glenn Beck garnered a lot of headlines by saying that the Occupy Wall Street protests would lead to people being dragged out into the street and shot. Unsurprisingly then, he was quick to see a connection when video surfaced of Muammar Gaddafi, well, being dragged out into the street and shot. Said Beck, “This is what democracy looks like.”

What a difference a week makes. Following his rocket ride to the top of the GOP presidential field, and a Bloomberg/Washington Post debate performance that made a star of his “9-9-9 plan,” former pizza mogul Herman Cain has rapidly become a media punchline. That arc culminated Sunday morning when This Week host Christiane Amanpour opened her interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by asking “Are you in Herman Cain’s famously designated ‘Beki-beki-beki-bekistan?’”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the midst of a series of news interviews yesterday when news broke that Muammar Gaddafi had been captured. So press pool cameras were rolling at the very moment that Clinton learned of unconfirmed reports of Gaddafi’s capture, which elicited a stately “wow!” Shortly there after, the same cameras captured the moment she learned that Gaddafi was dead, which had the Secretary of State joyously proclaiming “we came, we saw, he died!”

Back when Osama bin Laden was killed, a photo of the President Obama and the top national security officials awaiting details of the mission became one of the most famous pictures around (perhaps in lieu of, y’know, this one). One of the most famous parts of the dramatic picture was Hillary Clinton’s seemingly stunned expression with her hand to her mouth. However, the Secretary of State later argued that she was actually just stifling a cough.

During a diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joked with Afghani President Hamid Karzai about Republican frontrunner Herman Cain and his comments about “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”

Over the weekend, former President Bill Clinton had a several-month late birthday bash in Hollywood, lasting two nights and capped off with a seductive performance by Lady Gaga, who performed a special version of “Bad Romance” and giddily called her performance a “Marilyn moment.” Given that ostentatious displays of power and wealth are public enemy #1 on The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell‘s cringing reaction to the affair (no pun intended) should not have come as a surprise, but it was still fairly hard-hitting from one liberal to another.

Democrats are not the reason the Tea Party exists. But by ignoring the Tea Party — or in many cases, mocking it — until it was far too late, Democrats were ill-prepared to deal with the fallout that led to an unmerciful electoral defeat in the 2010 midterm elections. For instance, at one point Democrats were doing Republicans’ work for them. They figured tying the Tea Party to Republicans would yield a negative reaction from voters. Nope, not really. Instead, the Tea Party energized the Republican base and created the wave that rode the GOP to victory.

The two headline guests on Face the Nation today were Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, and while the two men did not appear together on screen, Clinton was given the chance to respond to recent compliments the former vice president gave to his wife Hillary Clinton, suggesting his comments were politically motivated.

In a bit of news that’s news to no one, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threw cold water on the possibility that she might mount a primary challenge to President Obama, then froze that water. Asked Friday, by CNN’s Alison Kosik, if she would consider running in 2012, Clinton said the chances of that were “below zero.”

“So far she hasn’t said she would, but I think it’s not a bad idea,” Dick Cheney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl in an interview aired last night, sounding hopeful that Hillary Clinton might run in challenge to President Obama, a move he thinks would “be good for the Democratic party and it might even help the Republicans.”

The former Vice President fancies the current Secretary of State “a pretty formidable individual. And I think she’s probably the most competent person they’ve got in their cabinet,” he said with what ABC called “a Darth Vader Smile.”

Conservative media watchdog Newsbusters has taken appropriate umbrage at Cartoonist Garry Trudeau‘s latest Sunday Doonesbury strip over its use of a sexist (and, frankly, lazy) joke about Sarah Palin‘s breasts. The strip feature Palin on TV telling an interviewer that her recent Newsweek cover story “shows that as president, I’d be totally ready if called on to fill out a tight sweater.”

To promote his new memoir, former vice president Dick Cheney has been making the media rounds, discussing the inner workings of the Bush administration and sharing his thoughts on the policies of the Obama administration. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Cheney if he thinks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than the current officeholder.