Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is set to officially end his campaign today, and briefly express his support for presumptive nominee Mitt Romney (he’s expected to make an official official endorsement in a week or so), and while blunting the impact of a Gingrich endorsement is like trying to stop a runaway freight train made of balsa wood, the Obama campaign has made the effort anyway. The President’s reelection campaign released an ad ahead of the mini-endorsement that features some of Gingrich’s greatest Romney hits.

President Obama’s reelection campaign announced its fundraising totals for March this morning in a web video to supporters, which is how they have been making these announcements since the campaign began. In this month’s edition, various grassroots donors talked about their own small donations, and the campaign’s $53 million total for March. Combined with the $29 million raised in January and $45 million in February, Obama For America has raised an impressive $127 million in the first quarter.

The traditional gift for the 6th anniversary are either iron or wood (although unless you’re a Vulcan, you should be giving that more often than once every six years), but presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will have to settle for a couple of YouTube videos from the Obama campaign and progressive SuperPac American Bridge. The groups took markedly different approaches in wishing Romneycare a Happy Anniversary.

Several months ago, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign released an ad which heavily implied that someone from President Obama’s reelection campaign said they would have to “Kill Romney” with personal attacks, even though that never happened. In a just-released web ad, the Romney campaign reconstructs that lie with a bizarre, paranoid dramatization of Michigan primary night at Obama campaign headquarters.

It’s not exactly Detective Comics #27, or a first printing of the Gutenberg Bible (who knew the Police Academy movies were so rich in religious subtext?), but Friday night saw the release of the inaugural Obama For America Truth Team Tip Sheet, a collection of political bullets for supporters to fire at the watercooler, and into the social media stratosphere. Now, I just need to figure out how to get an email into a durable, acid-free plastic sleeve.

During the 2008 campaign, when then-Sen. Barack Obama had to contend with rumors that he was everything from a Secret Kenyan Muslim to a chupacabra, his campaign launched a website called “Fight The Smears.”

In 2012, that effort has been transformed into a “Truth Team,” a three-pronged effort to push back on attacks against the President, highlight his own record, and pick apart his opponents’ statements about their own records. One of those prongs is a less scary-looking version of the AttackWatch site the campaign launched in September.

This morning, Obama For America Campaign Manager Jim Messina announced, via a web video, that the Obama Victory Fund raised $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. That staggering total eclipses the expected fundraising takes of all of the President’s Republican rivals combined, and nearly triples frontrunner Mitt Romney‘s fourth quarter haul.

In a series of emails to supporters Monday, President Obama‘s reelection campaign touted the fact that its real-time donor ticker is nearing the one million mark, months ahead of when that milestone was reached in 2008. Since the President’s campaign is expected to raise over a billion dollars this election cycle, that large number of individual donors is more important than ever to burnish its image as a grassroots phenomenon, and the real-time donor counter is another innovative way to make people feel involved.

According to an email to supporters, President Obama‘s reelection campaign raised more than $70 million in the third quarter, from 606,027 donors. The total, including joint fundraisers with the Democratic National Committee, is down from the combined $86 million they raised in the second quarter, but well ahead of their $55 million goal, and miles ahead of the President’s Republican challengers.

Following the vandalism of the Obama campaign’s Los Angeles Office, which was reported widely by national media on Friday, a Republican Party headquarters in Greensboro, NC was vandalized overnight Saturday, according to reports. The Guilford County Republican Party office was defaced with messages related to the Ku Klux Klan, but the vandals also signed their work with a spray-painted “O” inside quotation marks. It was an odd flourish that, like the attack on the Obama office, has roots in the 2008 campaign.

In a continuation of a pattern of incidents during the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama‘s Los Angeles campaign office was vandalized overnight. According to reports, the office was shot at with a BB gun, and an unknown object was thrown through one of the windows. With the President scheduled to visit Los Angeles in just a few days, a Secret Service spokesman told Mediaite that they’re “aware of the incident,” and that they will be “monitoring” the LAPD’s investigation.

In teasing an upcoming America Live segment Wednesday, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly said that “the White House” launched a new website called Attack Watch, and a graphic reading “Obama Admin Launches Website to stop web ‘misinformation’” displayed throughout the segment. Love it or hate it, the Attack Watch website was launched by Obama For America, and the White House has nothing to do with it. If only there was some way to report this kind of misinformation…

The Obama campaign has launched a new version of 2008′s “Fight the Smears” website that debunked guano from every source, but with some new twists. AttackWatch.com does a 180 on the old site’s shiny, happy design, and includes a nifty crowd-sourcing feature that allows supporters (or not) to report an attack, and even to attach a file. Hmmm, we’ve got a report from a supporter named Haywood D’jablowmee, let me just open that attachment…

In an email to supporters late Wednesday night, President Obama expressed his frustration with Congress (translation: Republicans) with the succinct subject line “Frustrated.”

The email goes on to explain that “It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,” but offers little hope that his much-anticipated jobs speech next week will be the kind of ambitious masterstroke that his supporters want, and that the country desperately needs.

Several conservative blogs have taken note of a campaign email, from Obama For America Texas Campaign Director Hector Nieto, that asks Texans to submit their choices for “which part of Rick Perry‘s record you’d most like to see him held accountable for.”

Conservative blogs are interpreting this as an oppo research fishing expedition, but given the staggering resources at OFA’s disposal, it’s hard to imagine that this is anything other than a fundraising come-on.

In advance of Friday’s FEC filing deadline, Obama For America has released a video detailing the campaign’s fundraising success during the 2nd quarter of 2011. While other candidates brag about “money bombs,” President Obama‘s reelection campaign looks more like a money supernova. Campaign manager Jim Messina points out, though, that the enormity of the President’s [...]