Mitt Romney, for many months, has been considered the inevitable nominee for the Republican Party. That is, until competitors started yo-yoing up and down the polls, and Romney only managed to win New Hampshire and appears poised to lose South Carolina tonight. On her program last night, Rachel Maddow made the point that his New Hampshire win was inevitable, and that he was in more trouble than ever with his economic resume under fire for his time at Bain.

In a preview of Wednesday’s Piers Morgan Tonight, former President Jimmy Carter surprised host Piers Morgan with his somewhat blunt (by mainstream media standards) assessment of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Speaking of Gingrich’s standing ovation moment at Monday night’s debate, President Carter told Morgan “I think (Gingrich) has that subtlety of racism that I know quite well, that appeals to some people in Georgia.”

Rick Perry‘s comment during last night’s debate about starting foreign aid to all nations at zero certainly raised some eyebrows, but particularly when he included Israel, a country with a special relationship to the United States, in that list. Governors Haley Barbour and Martin O’Malley reacted to Perry’s position on Face the Nation today; one arguing Perry’s proposal has historical bipartisan precedent, the other arguing it was an attempt to pander to right-wing extremists.

Today on The Laura Ingraham Show, host Laura Ingraham presented a remix, of sorts, juxtaposing portions of former President Jimmy Carter‘s 1979 “Malaise Speech” (also known as his “Crisis of Confidence Speech” or, perhaps, his “Generally Terrible Stuff Speech”) with recent comments made by President Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney, who has been battling for airtime with 2012 presidential maybe-hopefuls much more rambunctious and gaffe-prone than he, it’s about time he got into the “outrageous statements” game. Try as he might, he may have succeeded at a recent dinner. Speaking to Americans for Prosperity, Romney suggested we “hang” President Obama, before realizing there was a very necessary “metaphorically” missing from that sentence.

Bill Maher was not the only one to notice that this was a big week for anti-semitism. Harvard law professor and renowned defense attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote an op-ed in the New York Post today, where he suggested he’s not shocked that such bigotry is emerging from underground, and more surprisingly, expressed his opinion that former President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu were responsible for helping to legitimize Jew-bashing.

To mark the 100th birthday of late President Ronald Reagan, HBO is premiering the documentary Reagan at 9pm ET, Monday night. Director Eugene Jarecki‘s film is a clear-eyed assessment of the Reagan myth, and the reality behind it. Despite the polarizing nature of its subject, Reagan largely steers clear of extreme worship or revulsion, examining The Great Communicator’s life in cooler terms. In an exclusive interview, Jarecki spoke with Mediaite about what went into the making of Reagan, and what was left out.

Former President Jimmy Carter tells Big Think that even as the fight over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell continues, he believes Americans are ready for their first gay president (that we know of–I think we’ve all heard the rumors about “life-long bachelor” James Buchanan).

Carter says the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have done a lot to melt the resistance to non-straight-white-guys in the White House:

Dennis Miller‘s visit to The O’Reilly Factor began with offering Bill O’reilly a preview of his upcoming radio interview with President George W. Bush. During the interview, Bush imparted a few words of wisdom, “humor is important in life and if you can’t laugh, in other words if you take yourself so seriously . . . there’s a defect.” Therefore, Miller clearly thinks there is something defective with former President Jimmy Carter

Senator Jay Rockefeller confessed recently that he’d prefer a world without Fox News or MSNBC. Naturally, it didn’t take Glenn Beck too long to find an insidious left-wing scheme boiling beneath the surface: the left, Beck told Bill O’Reilly in a special Thanksgiving visit to the Factor, is planning on “sacrificing” MSNBC in a quid-pro-quo negotiation to eliminate Fox News.

What with all the brouhaha over George W. Bush‘s revealing interview with Matt Lauer, you may have forgotten that the former president’s memoir, Decision Points, has been released today. In honor of that occasion, the Daily Beast took a look at which politicians-turned-authors have moved the most volumes. At the top of their list? Barack Obama, whose two books combined have sold a staggering 4,650,000 copies.

With all the Jimmy Carter references from conservatives regarding President Barack Obama, it’s hard to keep track of just how similar the two are. Seeking the perspective of someone close enough to compare, CNN found the next best thing to President Carter himself: his vice president, Walter Mondale. Mondale told Wolf Blitzer today that it’s those teleprompters– the “idiot boards”– that are doing President Obama in.

A number of news sources are currently reporting that Jimmy Carter has been taken to a Cleveland hospital following health problems on a flight. He was in Ohio for a signing of his new book White House Diary. The 85 year old former president had been making the rounds of numerous media outlets in support of the book, including a jovial appearance last week on The Daily Show.

When Bill Clinton appeared on the Daily Show last week, he kept things all business, giving an intricate discussion of the ways America can fix its economy. His Democratic presidential predecessor however, was there to have fun. Jimmy Carter, promoting his new book White House Diary, was jovial from the beginning, telling Jon Stewart that he was looking forward to the Rally to Restore Sanity. He even joined in on the media’s favorite pastime of the moment; making fun of Christine O’Donnell.

In 2008, an ailing Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that focused, in part, on the political issue closest to his heart: health care. “This is the cause of my life,” he said, adding that he hoped one day soon, “will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American—north, south, east, west, young, old—will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

But according to former President Jimmy Carter, Kennedy himself is to blame for Americans’ lack of coverage.

Apparently traveling to North Korea to free an American citizen who has mysteriously stumbled across the North Korean border is the new right of passage for former U.S. Presidents. Just over a year after President Bill Clinton made his much-heralded trip to the country to rescue journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling reports have surfaced that former President Jimmy Carter is set to travel there to rescue imprisoned American school teacher.

If you needed further evidence that the American right has gone off the rails, Right Wing News (last seen publishing their Conservative New Media Spank Bank) has just put out their list of the 25 Worst Figures in American History (as selected by 43 conservative blogs). Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh could only make it to #9 on the list, while Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama earned the top two spots, respectively. Worst of all, though, is that Snooki doesn’t seem to have gotten a single vote. (h/t Doug Mataconis)

President Obama delivered his first Oval Office speech last night, and it went over like an oil-infused pelican. Everyone from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, to our own Frances Martel, laid into the speech with the gusto of a chin-impaling bull. Admittedly, the speech didn’t solve all of our problems (and if there’s anyone who could have solved all of our problems with a speech, it’s Barack Obama), but the specific criticisms I’ve read seem childish, and ignore important subtexts.

In a refreshing display of bipartisan nepotism, the AP and the New York Times ran nearly simultaneous pieces yesterday exploring the political successes of the grandchildren of the two most controversial presidents of the ’70s (sorry, Gerald Ford). New York Congressional candidate Chris Nixon Cox and Georgia State Senate candidate Jason Carter are taking up their grandfathers’ footsteps and, surprisingly, it’s Cox who seems much more willing to flaunt his pedigree on the campaign trail.

Much like LOLCats and Kanye West, the “Miss Me Yet?” billboard phenomenon is the meme that keeps on giving. The next chapter of this compelling story takes us all the way down to Texas, where Jimmy Carter fights back.

Funny Or Die has produced a video featuring a star-studded cast of actors who previously portrayed US Presidents on Saturday Night Live. Jim Carrey‘s turn as Ronald Reagan and Dana Carvey‘s George Bush recall a kinder, gentler, and perhaps funnier era of SNL political satire. The message behind the video? Promoting finance regulatory reform (and reminding viewers that much of the financial mess in which Obama finds himself, was inherited from previous administrations?)

Pack up the picket signs and stop what you’re brewing: the American Prospect has officially declared the Tea Party Movement dead. Correspondent Mark Schmitt has released a shocking piece highlighting the short half-life of right-wing populists movements in America that is sure to put many on the left at ease knowing that the Tea Parties will be done before they know it.

When Foreign Affairs wrote in its recent issue that in a worst case scenario, Barack Obama‘s foreign policy would end up looking like Jimmy Carter‘s, the former president was rightfully pissed. Who wants to be considered to a worst case scenario? But then Sean Hannity got a hold of the story and suddenly the narrative is “Carter Angered to Be Compared to Obama.” Clever, but not quite right.

Happy New Year, Mr. President. As if last night’s panicked closure of Newark airport over an idiotic security breach wasn’t an inauspicious enough beginning to Obama’s new year in Washington, yesterday the Feds discovered a President Obama effigy hanging in a Georgia town. To make matters worse the town happened to be the hometown of former President Jimmy Carter.

Former President Jimmy Carter last night reiterated his belief that much of the anger directed at President Obama is racially motivated. Only this time Carter was a tad more specific, targeting those “demonstrators” as who describe Obama “as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that we should have buried Obama with Kennedy” as having a “racist attitude.” Sound like anyone you know?