“The Obama campaign’s point person in New Mexico recently sent an email to supporters defending the president’s position on the debt deal and bashing the Nobel Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and the ‘Firebagger Lefty blogosphere.'” [HuffPo]

Political Wire:

Jonathan Alter says that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is conducting focus groups in preparation for a possible Republican presidential bid in 2012.

NBC:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) office shot down news — reported by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter — that the governor is conducting focus groups in preparation of a possible White House bid.

“It’s absolutely not true,” Christie spokeswoman Maria Comella told First Read.

What does seem to be true is that Rick Perry hasn’t cleared the field. Yet.

“As the presidential campaign season begins to get into full swing, radio host Rush Limbaugh is again raising questions about President Barack Obama’s personal background, wondering where all of his former girlfriends, classmates and students are.” [WND] “Limbaugh has been married four times and has no children.” [Wikipedia]

It’s not our place to be Shocked! by Rick Perry, mainly because we have standards for these things, and Deranger Rick is far from meeting them. (For the record, if you want to push our button, suggest that Barack Obama might meet Bobby Kennedy’s fate.)

So we’re still waiting to see how Rick’s act plays outside the Usual Venues, and it might be some time before we get an indication one way or another. Meantime, we are a little surprised that it’s not playing as well inside the Usual Venues as we had been led to expect. Here, courtesy of Salon’s Steve Kornacki, is the — pardon the expression — round-up:

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What is it about Republicans and thick juicy corn dogs?

Totally stolen from Joe My God. But since we still have a few nominally straight Stinquers I didn’t want to risk any sudden conversions by sending y’all over yonder.

“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home–but not for housing. They are strong for labor–but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage–the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all–but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine–for people who can afford them. … They think American standard of living is a fine thing–so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.”

Find out after the jump:

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Meanwhile, from the other half of the Batshit Ticket:

On her victory lap of Iowa [Sunday], Straw Poll winner Rep. Michele Bachmann paid repeated tribute to her local roots, and repeatedly mentioned her family reunion that day, citing it as an excuse for her late arrival at a local party event in Waterloo.

But Bachmann’s mother and two cousins told POLITICO’s Emily Schultheis that Bachmann didn’t attend the reunion, though her husband and children did. Her spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, didn’t respond to two emails asking for an explanation of the disparity.

If only our political press corps would be more diligent about fact-checking substantial claims, we’d be a lot better off.

Bachmann skipped family reunion she cited [Politico, via Political Wire]