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While discussing the current crop of GOP candidates that are still standing after the Iowa caucuses and why Republican voters can't stand Mitt Romney and settled on Rick Santorum instead, David Brooks offered up this bit of infinite wisdom on The Charlie Rose Show on Santorum and who the Republican Party represents.

ROSE: But the great columnist at The New York Times David Brooks said the following. America does not want to see Harvard Law vs Harvard Law in the general election. So square that.

BROOKS: Yeah, well I think that's the key to Rick Santorum's perpetuation. He rose because he's a social conservative, but he's not only a social conservative. He's also a genuine working class kid. His grandfather was a coal miner as he says. His dad came over, was an immigrant and got an education through the G.I. Bill and he represented west Pennsylvania, the dying steel towns there.

And so he genuinely has these working class roots and what he said last night after his victory, or pseudo victory speech about the dignity of labor, that's marrying sort of social conservative values to the economy. And he talks about we can't have a growing economy without strong families, without strong communities.

And he lived that basically in the Senate. And so this country has had a lot of pseudo populists, coming up rising, but only getting so far... people from Mike Huckabee... ugh... even Dick Gephardt on the Democratic side. And if he can marry the social conservatives message with a really, an economic conservative, a really more populist working class message, and just sent off a working class vibe, he could do well because the Republican Party is the party of the working class.

Oh yeah... since when? You know, one can argue legitimately about what's left of the Democratic Party that still represents the working class, but there is still a large progressive base in the Democratic Party and in the Congress that does still represent the working class. The Republican Party has been a wholly owned subsidiary of big money, the wealthy elites and the richest among us entirely for some time now.

And if anyone wants an example of what's wrong with a great deal of our politics, our media and how they frame issues and how Republicans vote, it's exactly what Brooks was describing here where maybe a “pseudo populist” like Santorum can fool enough rubes into voting for him because they think he shares their “values."

The subtext of that which doesn't get discussed of course if that those "values" actually mean telling women what they can do with their bodies and whether they can use birth control, or telling people who they can have sex with, or demonizing the poor by playing off of racial divisions.

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Keith Olbermann takes us through a list of some of Rick Santorum's greatest hits of the last year after his win this week in the Iowa caucuses. Keith was joined by blogger and author Dan Savage who reminded everyone that Rick Santorum gay bashing isn't Santorum's only hobby. As Savage noted, "the straight bashing is part and parcel for Santorum too."

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Poor old Newt. Live by the sword, die by the sword. After a disappointing fourth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Newt Gingrich complained about all of the negativity from his rivals in the GOP primary race and then proceeded to rip into Ron Paul and Mitt Romney during his speech in Iowa this Tuesday evening.

Here's a bit more from the AP -- Gingrich vows to fight on after poor Iowa showing

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is blasting former Gov. Mitt Romney as someone who can't bring enough change to Washington.

Speaking on Tuesday after a fourth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich said Romney is a nice man but incapable of doing what's necessary to fix the country. He also criticized Romney for running a negative campaign.

Gingrich said the race for the GOP nomination was just beginning. He vowed to go on and said he is the candidate to create change.

Gingrich congratulated two other contenders — Rick Santorum and Ron Paul — but said he will air contrasts between himself and Romney.

Gingrich is really not happy about all of the ads that were run against him over the last few weeks. I look for this to get really ugly in the upcoming month. Despite the fact that Gingrich is largely responsible for the nasty rhetoric we see from Republicans now and that he taught the art of relentlessly attacking your political opponents as your enemy, he's not too happy having those tactics being turned back in his direction, and he looks like he's taking the attacks personally. I look for him to go after Mitt Romney relentlessly in the near future. Pass the popcorn if Gingrich stays in the race, which it appears he's going to do for now.

His buddies over at Fox were already completely writing off his fourth place finish along with Ron Paul's close third and calling this a two-man race. I think they're all firmly in Romney's camp now, so I would expect to see them start pressuring Gingrich to drop out of the race.

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James Carville with the quote of the day while discussing the three way tie among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum as the vote counting during the Iowa caucuses progressed:

CARVILLE: There is one screaming, huge story here tonight and that is these Republicans just don't want to vote for Mitt Romney. I mean it's like you're trying to give a dog a pill. They keep spitting it up. Now, they're going to eat the pill, 'cause Romney's going to eventually be the nominee, but...

And it's the same thing he had before and he's got a weaker field. It just don't matter where he comes in, they don't want to vote for him.

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While opining over Andrea Mitchell's coverage of the Iowa caucuses where she made the statement that they were too white and too Evangelical to be representative of the rest of the country and weren't always good at selecting the eventual GOP presidential nominees, Bill O'Reilly guest Bernard Goldberg could not argue that her coverage was an example of media bias as some on the right have done, and Goldberg even called her statements "factually correct."

That didn't stop him from taking a swipe at MSNBC's upcoming prime time coverage of the Iowa caucuses and of MSNBC in general with O'Reilly trying to paint them as some "far left network."

GOLDBERG: Fox is going to be covering this with journalists. CNN is going to be covering the election night with journalists. MSNBC is covering it with five commentators whose views range from far left, to really, really far left.

Yeah, unlike that "fair and balanced" coverage we get from Fox that just loves President Obama and Democrats. And here's part of O'Reilly's response.

O'REILLY: They know their only hope tomorrow night is to get the people who hate the Republican Party...

GOLDBERG: Bingo.

O'REILLY: ... to watch them hate the Republican Party. But I'm not offended by that because there's no false advertising on MSNBC, I've got to tell ya'. They just flat out say, we're the far left network. We're going to get our couple of hundred thousand viewers an hour and that's what we're do and blank you if you don't like it. That's it.

GOLDBERG: That's exactly right.

I hate to break it to both of them but if they think MSNBC's coverage at night is "far left" then they don't know what the "far left" looks like, or they're pretending they don't at least. They lean towards the Democratic Party, but far left... I don't think so. I've got a few Socialists they could talk to around here if they want to know what the "far left" looks like. And calling CNN and Fox's pundits on election night "journalists" is a joke. They're pundits just like the rest of them in our corporate media. The nerve of either O'Reilly or Goldberg to be criticizing anyone else in the corporate media for biased coverage is simply laughable on its face. Sadly the two of them are counting in the misinformed Fox audience to not get the joke.

They did hit on one point I actually agree with, which is the corporate media's obsession with the horse race instead of actually covering the issues and where these candidates stand. Sadly, their own network isn't any better (and usually worse) at that than the other two they were criticizing.

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It looks like an endorsement by that "kingmaker" Rep. Steve King in Iowa is turning out to be about as important as one from the Snowbilly from Wasilla during this GOP presidential primary race.

On CNN's State of the Union, Candy Crowley still couldn't get King to commit to which candidate he wants to endorse even though we're just days away from the Iowa caucuses.

CROWLEY: You can't be in Iowa too long without hearing the name Steve King. The Republican congressman's endorsement is well quoted by some of the presidential candidates stomping through this state. But so far they've come up empty-handed. And that's including one of his good friends, Michele Bachmann.

Steve King is join meg here in Des Moines. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. I want to remind you of the last time we were together, which was in August right after the Ames straw poll, which was won by your good friend, Michele Bachmann.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE KING (R-IOWA): I, like everyone, needs to measure who would make the best President of the United States. I already know who will make the best friend. But we need to weigh who will make the best President of the United States, and I want to sit back for a while and get into September and see how these candidates conduct themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CROWLEY: Not only are we into September, we're actually into January now. We have two more days, three more -- two more days till the caucuses. Who's your choice here?

KING: OK, first I was wearing the same time, and so I need to go out and buy some ties. But it was my choice. And, you know, this is just a very tough decision. And --

CROWLEY: Why is it so tough though?

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More bad news for the Michele Bachmann campaign -- Kent Sorenson, Bachmann’s Iowa chair, defects to Paul :

Talk about fairweather friends. Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson (R), who was Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s state campaign chairman, endorsed Texas Rep. Ron Paul Wednesday night.

At a rally in Des Moines, Sorenson told the crowd, “We’re going to take Ron Paul all the way to the White House.”

He did not tell Bachmann of his decision until he was en route to the Paul rally, billed as an event for veterans.

“This is hard,” he said of his decision to leave Bachmann, explaining that he felt obligated to defend Paul against the Republican establishment. He elaborated in a statement, saying he felt Paul was the most conservative candidate who had a realistic shot at defeating former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Sorenson added that Paul campaigned for him during his state Senate race last year.

“I thought it was my duty to come to his aid, just like he came to my aid during my Senate race, which was a very nasty race,” he said.

The state lawmaker attended a Bachmann event just four hours earlier and declined to speak to the crowd, citing dental work. He was one of her earliest supporters in the state.

Paul’s campaign touted the endorsement in a press release, saying that Sorenson’s resignation from Bachmann’s team was effective immediately.

Rachel Weiner has more at The Washington Post's blog with Sorenson's full statement to the press.

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry on Thursday did his best to pander to evangelical voters in Iowa with several references to Tim Tebow, an NFL quarterback for the Denver Broncos who is credits God for his recent streak of wins.

"I'm kind of getting where I like these debates," Perry declared. "As a matter of fact, I hope Obama and I debate a lot, and I'll get there early and we will get it on!"

"There are a lot of folks out there out there, I understand it -- there are a lot of folks out there that said Tim Tebow wasn't going to be a very good NFL quarterback. There are people that stood up and said, 'Well, he doesn't have the right throwing mechanisms or he's not playing the game right.' And, you know, he won two national championships and that looked pretty good. We were the national champions in job creation back in Texas."

He added: "And so, am I ready for the next level? Let me tell you, I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses!"

That remark was met by mixed groans and applause from the conservative audience.

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Chris Wallace admitted his statement here on Fox's Your World With Neil Cavuto probably wasn't going to sit too well with Ron Paul supporters, but when asked what would happen if Paul actually manages to win the upcoming Iowa caucus, Wallace gave us what is sure to be the standard line from our Villagers in the media if Ron Paul were actually to pull out a win in Iowa.

WALLACE: Well, and the Ron Paul people aren’t going to like me saying this, but, to a certain degree, it will discredit the Iowa caucuses because, rightly or wrongly, I think most of the Republican establishment thinks he is not going to end up as the nominee. So, therefore, Iowa won’t count and it will go on.

While I agree with Wallace that it's not likely that Ron Paul is going to end up being the Republican nominee, I do find some humor in the fact our Villagers in the media are probably going to place a lot of undeserved weight on the Iowa caucus, that is not known for having a good track record with picking a presidential candidate, if one of the other frontrunners would win the early race.

If Paul ends up winning Iowa, as a whole lot of them in our corporate media have acknowledged is possible, I'm sure we have a lot more segments like this one, where they're saying Iowa doesn't mean anything to look forward to.