Free Republic

Yeah, Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, crushing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And OK, a CBS poll recently found him tied with Romney among likely Republican primary voters. Sure, he also scored a resounding victory in another straw poll this weekend. And Rasmussen just today released the finding that 56% of GOP voters like Cain's 9-9-9 plan. So is that enough to make the Associated Press consider Cain a first-tier candidate? Nah. On MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, AP's political editor, Liz Sidoti, sniffed "we still consider him a second-tier candidate." View the video here.

It is time to put together an intervention. Form a new group, call it "Idiots Anonymous," and open it to anyone in the Obama administration with a diploma from an elite university. If you have an Ivy League degree, you get to attend meetings at no charge. And if you're from Harvard...well, you're large and in charge of the meetings. Of course, don't expect the meetings to accomplish much. Generally, self-anointed smart people succeed largely in making themselves comfortable at the expense of what the BP chairman recently described as "small people." Witness the White House entertainment budget and growth...

Since the end of World War II, our country has had three great presidents: Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Their politics varied, but these giants stand in sharp contrast to our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. The first two presided over gravely flawed presidencies; the third is on his way to outright failure. What makes these two presidential trios so different? A recent visit to the Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., made me ask what made those great presidents great. The answer is character. The three greats...