What follows is a dispatch from Joe Muto, otherwise known as the Fox Mole. It was to be the third in a series of anonymous columns Muto was planning on writing for Gawker from inside Fox News. After being discovered yesterday evening, Muto was fired by Fox effective today. Soon he will write a fuller accounting of his time at Fox and why he chose to leave in the way that he did.
Now that Rick Santorum has dropped out and Newt Gingrich can't afford to be on the ballot in certain states, it seems that the Romney vs. Obama general election match up is all set. To kick off their coverage, the Daily Show placed correspondents at Romney and Obama headquarters to survey where each candidate stands at the start of the main event. Turns out, they're in basically the same place.
Among the two minutes of behind-the-scenes Mitt Romney footage that Gawker's Fox Mole released today is a brief moment in which, contemplating changing his tie, Mitt Romney jokes, "I'll take the pink one." Buzzfeed Politics posits that Mitt's pink tie moment constitutes a "gay guy impression." Does it?
What follows is the inaugural column of a person we are calling The Fox Mole—a long-standing, current employee of Fox News Channel who will be providing Gawker with regular dispatches from inside the organization.
The Washington Post reports that Rick Santorum has officially suspended his presidential campaign, which essentially concedes the GOP nomination to wealthy talking hairpiece Mitt Romney. Santorum lost to Romney in Wisconsin, Maryland, and D.C. over the past three weeks, and his campaign (as well as Romney's approach to his most formidable opponent) has shifted in recent weeks in the wake of his three-year-old daughter's illness.
On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert gave up trying to find an alternative to Mitt Romney and instead turned his attention to helping Mitt pick a running mate. Colbert has some thoughts on potential candidate Iowa congressman Steve King, with whom Colbert has some experience. The guy hates gays and the disabled, what's not to love?
Now that Mitt Romney has basically sealed the Republican nomination, you'd think the other candidates might concede defeat and offer their support. And indeed, Newt Gingrich is open about the fact that he's not going to be the Republican candidate — but that doesn't mean he's going to stop campaigning.
Mitt Romney's nomination is all but decided at this point and Bill O'Reilly has moved his show's narrative ahead to the general election. During the week on the O'Reilly Factor, he made the point that only the debates will really matter and that the rest of it is just "bloviating." Does that mean he'll tone down the rhetoric at all? Of course not.
On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took a look at one of Mitt Romney's biggest problems as he begins his battle with President Obama: capturing the Latino vote. Unfortunately for Romney, he has often been on the wrong side of issues important to Latino voters. But, with the help of Colbert's new pro-Romney TV spot, all of Romney's problems will disappear. Or be escorted to the other side of the border, either way.
Everyone knows that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for President, everyone except Rick Santorum that is. As Jon Stewart examined on tonight's Daily Show, even while suffering the crushing defeat of the three most recent primaries, Santorum still can't accept that it's over. Instead, he compared himself to Ronald Reagan in 1976, like you do.
Mitt Romney is the presumptive GOP nominee and a lot of prominent Republicans have endorsed him in recent weeks. Yet, for some reason, everyone who endorses him seems to not be truly sold on Romney, they're just picking him because there's no else. On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart broke it all down.
For a brief moment, Google News' top story was "Romney Drops Out of Race, Endorses Santorum." This is decidedly untrue — but hey, it was published by Forbes, so it must be worth something, right? Nowhere did it say this was a prank: although it should be obvious to most, we live in a country where actual people believe Onion headlines. And it's not as though this is that much more ridiculous than the Republican primary has been thus far.
Is Mitt Romney the Republican presidential nominee yet? Well, not quite. Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Rick Santorum acknowledged that the Wisconsin primary will send a "strong signal" as to where the campaign is headed. Even so, a Santorum loss will not be enough for him to drop out — not when we're all having so much fun.
While he was on vacation last week, Mitt Romney's communication director said his candidate's views were written on an Etch a Sketch and his opponents jumped on the claim, using it as evidence that Romney will say anything to win the nomination. But Stephen sees things a little differently: to him, it means that Romney has all the courage in the world and that comparing Romney to old toys will save the economy on account of Etch a Sketch's sales recently going through the roof.
It's been a bad week for Mitt Romney and a good week for Ohio Art: the latter produces the popular toy Etch A Sketch, which got a helping hand from the Romney campaign. On Wednesday, Romney strategist Eric Fehmstrom made an unfortunate analogy when asked about his candidate's ever-changing policy positions.
On tonight's Real Time, Bill Maher talked a little about the current cycle of statement and apology that we've been dealing with. In his view, we need to let people say the ridiculous shit that we can't stand because if we don't, then we will be nothing but a nation of Mitt Romneys consistent only in our desire to please and having no core beliefs whatsoever.
It's such a rarity to see one of these mashup, supercut things done well. Watch Hugh Atkin's creation, if not for the line, "the real Mitt Romney's are just masturbating," than to experience the oddly hypnotizing quality of Romney's voice set to Eminem.
