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As a senior aide to Sam Brownback, Rob Wasinger knows first-hand what it's like to challenge Mitt Romney from the Right.  

Though Brownback's campaign never caught fire, his credentials as a social conservative leader from the Mid West meant he was an early Romney rival.  Operatives on both sides have admitted to me that the two campaigns simply didn't get along, and that they often traded barbs on the trail.  (In the past, I've written about the contentious rivalry between Brownback and Romney.)

In a phone interview with me today, Wasinger echoed what I've heard other operatives say to me off the record -- that he believes Romney's campaign is behind many of the recent attacks on Mike Huckabee:

"They've got a scorched-earth strategy, and it's not surprising they are now going after Huckabee," Wasinger told me.

According to Wasinger, the Romney campaign is a disciplined and efficient operation that effectively uses blogs and opinion leaders to disseminate negative information regarding Romney's opponents:

"They roll out these surrogates to attack other candidates ... They are particularly sensitive to anyone who questions Mitt's conversion," he tells me.   

Unlike ever before, candidates on both sides are utilizing bloggers and surrogates to spread their message.  During a typical GOP debate, my blackberry is deluged with press releases, attacks, and up-to-the-minute rebuttals from the candidates.  But while campaigns use the new media to spread their positive message, the medium is perhaps even better at advancing a negative narrative.

I can personally attest to the fact that all the major Republican campaigns, from time to time, leak negative stories to bloggers.  I suspect this is true of the other side, too.  Why do bloggers often bite?  Sometimes because they already like the candidate, but often it's because it's a win/win:  The campaign gets an attack without their finger prints on it, and the blogger gets some juicy information that (hopefully) nobody else in the world has ...

And Romney's team has clearly been at the top of their game, cultivating some of the best bloggers in the nation to help advance their message.  On a large scale, Romney communications strategist Matt Roades is famously close to Matt Drudge -- that's obviously the nuclear option.  But Romney has other blog allies, including MyManMitt, and these bloggers have obviously ratcheted up attacks on Huckabee in recent days. 

Romney Communications Director Kevin Madden says the Romney campaign has focused on a positive message, but acknowledges the Romney campaign isn't afraid to show a sharp distinction between the candidates:  "We won't hesitate to draw contrasts with other campaigns. Where there are big differences on big issues, it is important to inform the voter on those differences," he tells me.

Update:  Jennifer Ruben has a post up about Romney's latest negative ad.

The Women in White protest in Cuba Sunday.

Cuban authorities are holding ten women from Catalua for supporting a demonstration in favour of human rights yesterday morning, and it is expected that they will be deported within the next few hours.

Among the women taking part in a demonstration organised by the Damas de Blanco, a dissident movement that campaigns for the rights of Cuban political prisoners, was Francina Vila, who represents the CiU on Barcelona town council.

Around two dozen other women from Sweden, Peru and Bosnia also took part in the demonstration that was organised to coincide with International Human Rights Day.

"We are here to demand our prisoners' freedom and so the government understands it's punishing innocent people," said Miriam Leiva, wife of recently freed dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe.

The women, dressed in white and holding flowers, marched some 20 blocks through the busy streets of Havana's Miramar district to parliament headquarters, where a crowd of government supporters gathered and returned their chants of "freedom" with shouts of "mercenaries" and "worms."

Despite claims by Democrats that the earmark process has been reformed, pet projects are still easily slipped into bills with minimal, if any, oversight.

Today, an article in the Washington Post highlighted that House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer  (D-MD), inserted an earmark worth $450,000 into the 2008 education spending bill.  The earmark was intended to go to the California based “InTune Foundation Group”, a music-education nonprofit group. 

This isn’t the first earmark InTune has received; in 2005 it received $500,000 to develop lesson plans on funk music and Nobel Peace laureates.  Although, it was required to submit a report on the effectiveness of the program, InTune never did. In fact when the Department of Education tried to contact them, their phone was disconnected and the email address was out of service. 

In 2005 earmark, InTune stated that it would use some of the money to hire an educator, Joan Kozlovsky, to assess the program in 2005 and 2006.  However, according to Kozlovsky, she hasn’t heard from the nonprofit group in years.

In the face of failed evaluations and lack of compliance, Mr. Hoyer still felt it prudent to earmark an additional $450,000 of taxpayer funds to InTune. 

Not surprisingly, Maillard, current and past InTune employees have contributed at least $31,000 to Hoyer’s political action committee from 2004 to 2006.

This is outrageous, and taxpayers deserve better.  I have consistently made the argument that the connection between earmarks and contributions is widespread and ripe for abuse, this is just the latest example.

Is the earmark process reformed?  You be the judge.

... I hope Huckabee supporters realize asking for unity in the party is a tough sell for a candidate who speaks at Anti-Mormon conventions about taking this country back for Jesus. It's a little insulting.

"My point is not the Baptist faith but rather the forum a then sitting Gov. Huckabee chose to speak at. I am pretty positive there are Mormons in Arkansas he represented at the time of the speech, yet this was acceptable."

"I might add that Mormons aren't the least interested in making this about a war of religions.  The tension seems to be coming from one side of the equation."  

I have to agree with my friend Justin Hart who said, “The tension seems to be coming from one side of the equation." Indeed, it’s the side that keeps emailing this type of thing to reporters and bloggers in the hopes that they can make this about a candidate’s religion rather than about their positions on the issues.

It's true, I have a lot of friends in politics, but they wouldn't be friendly very long if they knew my business was drugs instead of gambling, which they rule that as a -- harmless vice. But drugs is a dirty business.

"We need a leader who's going to touch our souls. Who's going to make us feel differently about one another. Who's going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us," she said, echoing biblical passages.

Winfrey also touched on Christian themes that had not been highlighted in Iowa.

"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she began, adding that she was "stepping out of my pew" - television – to engage in politics.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth."

Beginning Monday, December 17, Thompson will launch a bus tour that will take him throughout the state...

"Iowa is critical to our campaign, and it may in fact be everything to our campaign," says one Thompson official. "If we don't do what we need to do in Iowa, it will be tough to compete effectively down the road."

Which begs the question: Why doesn't he just start living there today instead of waiting a week?

Thompson has said publicly that he needs to finish in the top three in Iowa. Campaign officials say that a strong third place finish--presumably behind new frontrunner Mike Huckabee and former frontrunner Mitt Romney--would likely give them enough momentum to survive New Hampshire and compete in South Carolina and beyond. A second place finish would be a victory. "Just when the interest is there the greatest, is when we'll be here the most."

"These are the kinds of things I've been talking about all of my life. Now, if the American people have other priorities, if they want someone who smiles a lot more than I do, or someone who is a better quipster than I am, who has no experience in these areas, that's for the American people to decide."

"I'm often asked why taxes are so high and government is so big. It's because the faith we have in local churches has become so small. If we'd been doing what we should have -- giving a dime from every dollar to help the widows, the orphans and the poor -- we now wouldn't be giving nearly 50 cents of every dollar to a government that's doing ... what we should have been doing all along."