Following former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty‘s dis of MSNBC’s The Ed Show during last night’s New Hampshire primary coverage, host Ed Schultz dedicated a bedtime story to him — a satire of Goodnight Moon entitled Goodnight Mitt lambasting his chosen candidate Mitt Romney. “In the great 12 million dollar beach house, there was a telephone and 250 million bucks and a picture of greedy multi-millionaire schmucks!”

The Republican Party is going through a very bizarre primary period. After a year of turmoil that saw potential candidates rise and fall, and a spectacular season of semi-weekly debates that provided more awkward moments and embarrassing gaffes than a comedy writer could dream of, all signs point to the party convening around their safest bet: Mitt Romney. But with all other avenues exhausted*, Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne is asking whether it’s time for Republicans to draft someone new into the campaign.

As the Herman Cain campaign seems to spiral increasingly out of control, many in the press are now wondering how this impacts the Republican Party as a whole and who stands to gain from Cain’s possible collapse. On The Last Word tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell asked Meghan McCain to assess the status of the Cain campaign as it currently stands, and she has some bad news for him: the speed date is over, and the Republican Party is walking out of the door.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Once considered a more base-palatable alternative to Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was forced to drop out of the race early after a slide that began with his refusal to confront Romney at a debate over “Obamneycare.” According to Howard Kurtz, Pawlenty went looking for work at Fox News shortly thereafter, but was given a resounding “Fox no!” for his troubles.

Rick Perry, Texas governor, aggressive frontrunner in the 2012 Republican race, came across as surprisingly tame during this latest round of presidential debates– this despite near-simultaneously releasing a blockbuster movie ad that makes Perry look more like action star than presidential material. On last night’s Rachel Maddow gave a full review of his debate performance, noting that the newfound timidity isn’t all that surprisingly when one realizes that the ad was created by the same man responsible for a similar endeavor by the otherwise mild-mannered Tim Pawlenty.

Rick Perry‘s campaigned launched a new campaign ad, and it’s exactly the sort of action packed trailer a candidate who runs with a gun might want. Borrowing the services of Tim Pawlenty‘s old video man, Lucas Baiano, the ad mostly forgoes biographic info in favor of setting a strong tone for his campaign. “A great country requires a better direction, a renewed nation needs a new president,” you hear him say. “The United States of America really is the last great hope of mankind.”

After defining last week’s news cycle with her attacks on the HPV Vaccine, Rep. Michele Bachmann has plenty at stake going into Thursday’s Fox News/Google debate. On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, her former campaign manager Ed Rollins didn’t mind her performance last week so much– though admitting that it hurt her– and promised that Rep. Bachmann could win the first caucus, “and if she wins Iowa, she’s still in this race.”

Stephen Colbert had some fun at Tim Pawlenty‘s expense on Monday’s Colbert Report, calling the Minnesota Governor’s endorsement of Mitt Romney “like Miracle Whip endorsing Mayonnaise.”

Rick Perry continues to poll well, and a CNN/ORC International Poll released ahead of tonight’s debate shows the Texas statesmen leading in both theoretical votes and general electability, earning the all important “nice guy” vote.

In a Fox and Friends Exclusive, former GOP hopeful Tim Pawlenty (R-Mn) has officially endorsed Mitt Romney‘s presidential bid, which could be the clearest case of subtraction by addition since the first time someone put Miracle Whip on a sandwich. To the extent that anyone noticed Pawlenty’s campaign, it was for his attack on Romney over health care, and his spectacular failure to say it to Romney’s face at a debate in June.

Shortly after coming in third place in the Iowa straw poll last month, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty bowed out of the GOP primary. Last night he appeared on The Colbert Report and explained that serious policy approach to a struggling economy and record lacked the “entertainment component” that voters were looking for in a candidate. When asked by Stephen Colbert if he considered learning to juggle, Pawlenty shot back “I thought about shooting sparks up my butt.”

Texas Congressman Ron Paul can’t remember Texas Governor Rick Perry‘s name. In what is shaping up to be the most contentious intrastate Republican presidential clash since Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann duked it out at last week’s debate, GOP frontrunner Rep. Paul mocked his governor in front of a crowd in New Hampshire today, noting that, despite his years of railing against the Federal Reserve, he had “never once suggested Bernanke committed treason,” like a certain “Southern governor.”

As predicted by many political pundits, Rep. Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll this weekend by a relatively wide margin. How did she pull it off? According to Stephen Colbert, the Bachmann campaign may have paid for the win by purchasing tickets to the event and enticing attendees with beef brisket, air conditioning and chairs! He supported this claim with clips of various political analysts making such a claim, before suggesting how this strategy will help her win the general election come November 2012.

On Sunday morning, Jon Stewart woke up to a cornucopia of material to write into Monday’s program: Tim Pawlenty‘s sad campaign goodbye, Rep. Michele Bachmann‘s straw poll victory, Rick Perry‘s vasectomy entry into the race. He somehow covered all his bases and then some tonight: finding plenty of time for the one thing the media didn’t cover: the fact that Rep. Ron Paul has emerged as a top-tier candidate in 2012.

Following cable news this weekend, it is fair to have come out of the Ames Straw Poll experience believing that the media find it highly relevant and predictive to what will happen nationally in the 2012 presidential race. That feeling is not universal, however, as Rachel Maddow proved tonight by dedicating a segment to explaining how the Ames Straw Poll was a “racket” designed to make money that ultimately could have an impact in Democratic primaries, but not Republican ones.

With Congress out of session and half a month of little to do before him, President Obama is going on a bus tour across America to meet with people and discuss the important economic troubles the nation has ahead. While he isn’t the first or last executive (or wannabe executive) to do so, Chris Matthews hesitated to support the move today, suggesting that a tour without a plan didn’t make much political sense and rounding off his doubts with what could be the worst political insult possibly in August 2011: “It seems like something Tim Pawlenty would’ve done.”

While Michele Bachmann claimed victory in the Iowa straw poll, Congressman Ron Paul came very close. The Texas congressman has attracted many passionate supporters, and yesterday an Associated Press article said he went from being a fringe candidate to “shaping the 2012 race.”

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.”

After a day of delicious fried items, political rock concerts and a series of campaign stump speeches, we finally have the results of the Ames Straw Poll. Coming out on top is Rep. Michele Bachmann with Ron Paul next, and a distant third Tim Pawlenty

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.

Following last night’s heated Republican debate, GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann chatted with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, taking some time to directly address campaign rival Tim Pawlenty‘s claim that she reminds him of President Barack Obama (if you’re just joining us after a lengthy sojourn on another planet: this was neither meant nor taken as a compliment), as well as his attacks on her record of accomplishments.

Perhaps the most heated exchanges of tonight’s Fox News debate happened 20 minutes into the show, and, shockingly enough, it involved some sharp barbs from typically placid Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. Moderator Chris Wallace, perhaps noting that Iowa was Pawlenty’s to lose to Rep. Michele Bachmann, turned the two against each other, resulting in an exchange where Rep. Bachmann called Pawlenty “a lot like President Obama,” only to have her “record of distorting facts and misstatements” thrown back at her.

To Rick Santorum, gay and straight marriage are as different as paper towels and napkins, according to an analogy he employed at a campaign stop in Iowa. In his “Rewrite” segment tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell found this comparison to be “the American politician at his worst,” trying to relate to real Americans who probably, like O’Donnell, use napkins and paper towels interchangeably all the time.