Well, thank goodness for Cornell’s legal prof, William A. Jacobson.  Professor Jacobson has unearthed a video of Nancy Reagan from the 1995 Goldwater Institute Dinner, in which she proclaims publicly that Ronnie “passed the torch” of the conservative movement to Newt and his fellow conservatives of the 1994 Contract With America forces.

Jacobson, who endorsed Gingrich rather early on, along with Thomas Sowell, is anything but “zany” or irrational.  You need to check out his site and read his fine research on Newt Gingrich:  http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/nancy-reagan-1995-ronnie-turned-that-torch-over-to-newt/

Here’s the Nancy Reagan video, courtesy of Jacobson and Youtube:

If Mitt Romney manages to win the GOP nomination, then we need to hope he is far better-prepared to handle the liberals’ anti-Mormon slime machine than he was prepared to handle intra-party jabs at his Bain record, his tax returns, and his flip-flopping.
I would be quite dishonest if I said [...]

Well, someone had to do it. Whether we like it or not, the liberals will do all they can to instil fear of Mormonism among secularists and mainline Christians alike, if Mitt Romney is the nominee. Ignoring this factor in “electability” appraisals is just not smart politics.

Yet, the Republican establishment seems to believe that if they don’t talk about it, then no one will. What an adorable fantasy.

I’ve written my first column on the subject at American Thinker, which will be posted to this site tomorrow. In the piece, I showed how some liberal super PACs and liberals in media will use Mitt Romney’s Mormonism against him in the general election.

One of the things which disturbs me most of all about Romney’s electability is that he has seemed utterly unprepared for the easily predictable attacks against his private-equity brand of capitalism, his exceptional wealth, his tax returns and his political flip-flopping record. This very unpreparedness strikes right at the heart of his supposed high-level managerial competence credential. A CEO, who gets caught flat-footed with issues that anyone with half a brain could see coming a mile away, looks like he has been riding a golden-goose luck train to get where he is. Anything but competent, especially when one considers the fact he has been running for president for 6 whole years.

What worries me most about Romney is that he seems petulant and peeved when assertively questioned. And I can’t help but wonder, then, how he will deal with the inevitable attacks against his Mormonism when they come at him fast and furious during a general election against the no-holds-barred master of Alinsky jujitsu, Barack Obama.

Will Romney become all flustered and start a defensive lecture about not having a religious test for office? If his behavior regarding Bain, taxes and flip-flopping is any indicator, then I predict he will. And that petulant squirming will make him look to the general public as anything but presidential.

Elections often turn on intangibles. Perceptions are easily manipulated in this age of propagandized media. Obama cannot run on his record with the American people. His only refuge will be in portraying Romney as too “weird” to be trusted with power and too rich to understand the plight of normal Americans. In Mitt’s Bain Capital record, his super-wealth, his opulent mansions and his bishop status in Mormonism, Obama will have struck pure gold.

Just things for all Republican primary voters to consider.

Full disclosure: I am supporting Newt Gingrich, first and foremost on the electability factor.

I’m not sure how this endorsement slipped under my radar, but I completely missed it until today.  With all the uproar about the Republican Party insiders’ dread of a Gingrich nomination, I had almost begun to think no one who had ever worked side-by-side with Newt Gingrich could stand to be in the same room with him now.

Now, after listening to former Oklahoma congressman J. C. Watts, also a Republican, calmly give his reasons for supporting Newt, I’m wondering whether a lot of the anti-Gingrich shrieks we’re hearing aren’t old personal grudges aired in public.

At any rate, this endorsement is worth a blog of its own.  Calm, cool, deliberate, reason from J. C. Watts:

Newt Gingrich is an adulterer many times over, which is old news. The second Mrs. Gingrich, scorned in favor of the third Mrs. Gingrich, is in the process of spilling the sordid divorce beans in her long-stated goal of stopping Newt’s climb to the presidency.
But I decided a couple of months ago to give [...]