Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who considered a White House run himself, says fellow Republicans should forgive Texas Gov. Rick Perry's uneven debate performances as the GOP presidential campaign goes forward. 
 
 "It's way too early to know, or to issue, to pronounce last rites over one performance," Daniels said on CNN's "State of the Union." "There's still many of these [debates], too many maybe. ... I'd cut him some slack and give him a little time." 
 
 Daniels, who is making a round of interviews to push his new book, "Keeping the Republic," also offered some unsolicited praise for Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) for his work earlier this year with the Gang of Six senators who were working to cut spending from the federal budget. 
 
 "It's very encouraging, by the way, to hear a guy like Sen. Warner speak to it as clearly as he just did," Daniels said. "I wish he were president." ||||| White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the rise of a Conservative Party challenger in a closely watched upstate New York House election shows that the Republican Party leadership is “becoming more and more extreme, and more and more marginalized.” 
 
 “It’s rather telling when the Republican Party forces out a moderate Republican and it says, I think, a great deal about where the Republican Party leadership is right now,” Jarrett said when asked about the GOP candidates’ decision to suspend her campaign, making it more likely the Conservative will win Tuesday’s special election. 
 
 On other issues, Jarrett told host George Stephanopoulos that she sees “a great deal of momentum … on heath care,” and said the White House does not view as a setback the decision of Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s leading opposition candidate, to withdraw from a Nov. 7 runoff. 
 
 Asked what the New York development shows about the Republican Party leadership, Jarrett said: “I think it’s becoming more and more extreme, and more and more marginalized. Look at the number of people who actually say that they’re registered, consider themselves a Republican. And if that’s the direction they want to go, fine. What we’re going to do is what we’ve always done. And that is, we’re going to reach out. 
 
 “We’re going to try to include as many people to be a part of our governing process — being open, being transparent,” Jarrett continued. “And we’ll let the American people decide. And right now what you see is a great deal of momentum moving forward, for example, on health care. The American people want change. They don’t want the same old health care system that’s not affordable, that doesn’t offer coverage to everybody, that keeps escalating in cost. And what we’ve seen from the Republicans is, really, a desire to have the status quo. And, George, that’s not acceptable anymore.” 
 
 Stephanopoulos asked Jarrett if Abdullah’s withdrawal will cast a cloud over Afghan President Hamid Karzai and make it more difficult for President Barack Obama to implement his strategy. 
 
 “We don’t think that’s it’s going to add a complication to the strategy,” she said. “It’s up to the Afghan people and their authorities to decide how to proceed going forward. We watch the election very carefully. And we’re going to work with the leader of the Afghan government, and hopefully that’s going to improve the state of conditions for the people in Afghanistan and also help us as we try to bring this war to a close.” 
 
 Stephanopoulos pressed: “So this is not a complication, as far as you see it?” 
 
 “No, we don’t see it as a complication,” Jarrett replied. 
 
 Stephanopoulos asked if it’s possible that Obama’s decision for a strategy for Afghanistan will be delayed until after his trip to Asia in mid-November, and the anchor concluded from her answer that it was possible. 
 
 Jarrett said: “What the president has said consistently is, he is going through a very rigorous process. George, before he puts our men and women in harm’s way, he wants to make absolutely sure that he has a strategy. This isn’t just a matter of how many troops are sent over, although that is a very important component.” 
 
 Asked why Obama allowed television cameras to record his visit last week to Dover Air Force Base to observe coffins of fallen Americans returning from Afghanistan, Jarrett said Obama “wouldn’t have done it in public if the families had objected.” 
 
 “It’s important for us all to recognize what’s at stake,” she said. “And so when you talk about numbers like 40,000 troops … it’s a reminder about how deep the sacrifice is. And it’s something that’s open and transparent. And it was a way for him, as the president, to convey to those families — on behalf of the American people — how much we appreciate that enormous sacrifice they made.” ||||| A video clip of President Barack Obama calling America “a little bit lazy” is quickly becoming a focus of Republican campaigns, and GOP operatives say it will get plenty of play not only on the presidential battlefield but also in down-ballot congressional races. 
 
 Obama was talking about America’s pursuit of foreign investment, but the context may not matter as much as the punch line. 
 
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 reset Allen on Obama's 'lazy' remark Perry calls Obama 'privileged' POLITICO 44 
 
 “Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy?” Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said in a campaign ad released Wednesday. “That’s pathetic.” 
 
 Rival Mitt Romney struck in less expensive fashion on Tuesday: “Sometimes, I just don’t think that President Obama understands America,” he said at a campaign event. 
 
 One tier down, several Republican congressional candidates, including Senate hopefuls from swing states, such as Heather Wilson of New Mexico and George Allen of Virginia, are already using the comment on the trail. 
 
 While it took the word “lazy” a few days to amble into the political sphere — Obama was speaking at last weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Hawaii — it is now spreading across the campaign landscape on winged feet. Republicans say it’s another example in a troubling trend of the president trash-talking his own country, and they warn that the video is now sitting in the vault, ready to be rolled out for campaign ads at all levels next fall. Moreover, some Democratic strategists privately concede that it was a bad moment for the president, even if it’s harder to pin the remark on other Democrats. 
 
 “You will definitely see more of it,” said Carl Forti, a former top official at the National Republican Congressional Committee who is a founder of political consulting firm Black Rock Group. “It’s definitely something campaigns will use.” 
 
 Regardless of the narrow scope of foreign investment, one Democratic strategist suggested Republicans would be guilty of political malpractice if they didn’t run it on a loop. 
 
 “I would bang that drum like I was in Occupy Wall Street,” said the strategist, who requested anonymity to speak freely about how to campaign against Democrats. 
 
 But Bill Burton, a former White House spokesman who co-founded the super PAC Priorities USA, said it is “laughable” for Romney and others to take the president’s remark out of context and use it as a political weapon, arguing that Republicans have run a “deeply negative and depressing campaign” that lacks optimism about America’s future. 
 
 A former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Burton said the potential impact on congressional races is “pretty overstated.” 
 
 The controversy started when Obama, responding to a question about impediments to foreign investment, attributed the perception to a lack of motivation in the United States. ||||| Business executives and others who’ve met with President Barack Obama in recent days describe a president who’s supremely confident that he’ll come out on top of a fiscal cliff deal — with Republicans bending to his will on tax increases for the wealthy and Democrats sucking up deep spending cuts. 
 
 These people say Obama is dismissive of the idea that deduction limitations and loophole closings alone are a sufficient or even desirable way to achieve the $1 trillion or more in new revenue he is seeking. And they say the president believes his relentless public campaign — which continued Wednesday and hits the road on Friday — along with widespread support in polls for letting the top George W. Bush-era rate cuts expire will overwhelm any remaining GOP resistance. 
 
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 (Also on POLITICO: Cliff dive doesn’t appeal to White House) 
 
 “For him the question on top rates isn’t just about fairness, it’s about math,” said one top financial services executive, who like others interviewed for this story declined to be identified by name in order to speak candidly about private meetings. “You might be able to get a similar amount of revenue but all of the deduction closings would create their own problems. Closing the mortgage deduction could hurt the housing market, for example. His commitment to rate increases is absolutely unshakable and he believes the politics are firmly on his side.” 
 
 The executive and others briefed on White House fiscal cliff strategy say if the GOP line against marginal rate increases somehow holds between now and the end of the year, when the fiscal cliff tax hikes and spending cuts begin to kick in, the president is confident he can use a pair of bully pulpit bazookas early next year — the second inaugural address and the State of the Union speech — to blast Republicans as holding the American economy hostage to a narrow and outdated ideology. 
 
 (See also: Reid: Tie debt ceiling, fiscal cliff) 
 
 The inaugural is usually more of a positive, sweeping kind of speech, but even that address would allow the president to clearly articulate his vision in contrast to that of Congressional Republicans, these people said. 
 
 “He’d rather get past this and use the speeches to lay out the vision for the second term on immigration, energy, climate, broader deficit reduction and other issues, but if he has to, he will call Republicans out yet again,” said the executive, who has been in White House meetings. “And they just don’t have anything like that kind of platform to respond.” 
 
 The executive and others who attended or were briefed on White House meetings added that the president was also adamant about having dividend and capital gains tax rates rise from their Bush-era levels but was not doctrinaire about exactly where they should wind up. 
 
 The White House already sees signs that the public pressure campaign is melting GOP opposition. 
 
 The latest example comes from Rep. Tom Cole, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Oklahoma Republican said on Tuesday that the GOP should agree to a quick deal that keeps the Bush era tax rates for 98 percent of taxpayers while letting the top two rates increase. 
 
 Cole said doing so would not violate Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge signed by many Republicans because it would amount to approving a tax cut for most tax payers and simply doing nothing about the other rates, which were scheduled to expire under the legislation first pushed by Bush in 2001. ||||| Rick Perry was in full damage control Thursday morning after a debate gaffe so bad that he’s being forced to defend staying in the race. 
 
 “We’re going to continue to work,” Perry said on “Fox and Friends”, insisting he wouldn’t withdraw. “We’re going to continue to go back and talk to people.” 
 
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 But that may not be enough. Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said Thursday on CBS’s “Early Show” that Perry’s gaffe was the last straw in a string of weak debate performances. 
 
 “Normally that would not be a problem but obviously, he’d had some problems in previous debates,” said DeMint, a conservative kingmaker who’s indicated he’s not likely to endorse in the presidential race. 
 
 DeMint also suggested Perry’s brain freeze moment will be yet another distraction following the allegations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain that dominated the GOP field in recent weeks. 
 
 “It is a problem. We need to stay on message and the last week has not been good to focus on jobs and economic growth,” he said. 
 
 Like he did immediately after the debate — when he told reporters, “I’m glad I have my boots on because I sure stepped in it tonight” — Perry tried to make light of the situation. 
 
 “There are so many agencies out there that I’m like many Americans, and we would like to forget that the Department of Energy is one of those,” Perry said on the “Today” show. 
 
 Perry chuckled on-screen when producers replayed the clip of him last night freezing as he tried to remember the third federal agency he’d abolish. 
 
 By Thursday morning, his campaign launched a poll on its website asking supporters to vote on which federal agency they’d want to forget and picked up the theme in a fundraising email that says the gaffe “Just goes to show there are too damn many federal agencies.” 
 
 “The perfect candidate hasn’t been created yet,” Perry said on “Good Morning America.” 
 
 But the freeze onstage at Wednesday’s presidential debate is threatening to freeze any chance Perry had of recovering his presidential campaign. 
 
 “I would do away with Education, the — Commerce and, let’s see, I can’t. The third one I can’t,” Perry said as he fumbled with his notes. “Oops.” 
 
 With early state ad buys and a new positive messaging push, Perry’s been beginning to reposition a campaign that’s nose-dived since his first few dominating weeks in the race. Now the question is whether Wednesday’s fumble was the final nail in the coffin. 
 
 “Campaigns are so often defined by ‘moments,’ and this was a disastrous one for Rick Perry,” said GOP strategist Christian Ferry. “Can he recover? I would think normally that after the last couple months and his need to turn things around that this would be devastating, but this campaign season has been anything but predictable.” 
 
 Fellow GOP strategist Rob Collins agreed. 
 
 “Even though the audience and the other candidates found humor in a totally human moment, it hurt him,” Collins said. ||||| Editor's note: Newt Gingrich is a co-cost of CNN's new "Crossfire," which airs at 6:30 p.m. ET weekdays. A former speaker of the House, he was a candidate in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. 
 
 (CNN) -- The worst possible outcome for the country from the impasse over the continuing resolution that would prevent a government shutdown would be for House Republicans to cave. 
 
 This is a pivotal conflict that will define the relationship between Congress and the executive branch for the next three years. The country will be much better off if Congress does not abdicate its constitutional role and if the president cannot ignore that role. 
 
 When President Barack Obama is willing to negotiate with Russian, Syrian and Iranian leaders but unwilling to negotiate with the U.S. House of Representatives, it is time for the House to stand firm. 
 
 When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, according to unnamed sources quoted in Politico, that he will refuse to attend a negotiation at the White House because House Republicans have to cave and surrender to his terms, it is time to stand firm. 
 
 When a senior, unnamed Democratic official is quoted Monday morning calling for no negotiations and saying "it's time to punch the bully in the nose," it is time to stand firm. 
 
 Begala: Bet on Obama in shutdown showdown 
 
 When Obama spends a week making three partisan speeches attacking Republicans and then calls House Speaker John Boehner to tell him, "I will not negotiate," it is time to stand firm. 
 
 It is a sad commentary on Obama's attitude toward the elected majority of the House of Representatives that he could have a more pleasant conversation with the head of the Iranian dictatorship than with the elected leader of the U.S. House. 
 
 The left has sold itself on a false history of the 2012 election. According to the left, Obama won the election and therefore we should do whatever he wants. 
 
 This ignores that there was also an election for the "People's House" in 435 congressional districts, and the Republicans won. It also ignores the 63 million Americans who voted against his re-election and his agenda. Winning 52% does not mean he gets 100% of what he wants. 
 
 Zelizer: Government shutdown threat is getting very old, very fast 
 
 The president has decided to seek to bully and bluff his way to get what he wants. House Republicans must not abdicate their responsibilities now. 
 
 Any surrender on the continuing resolution would confirm the contempt with which Obama and Reid already hold Boehner and his Republican colleagues. This fight is about something much bigger than the Republican Party and the future of Obamacare. 
 
 It is about whether the president dictates to America's elected representatives or negotiates with them when they disagree. It will be very bad for America if a president whose hubris is astounding is reinforced in the belief that he can bully his way into getting everything he wants by making demagogic attack speeches. 
 
 The next few weeks might be painful if House Republicans insist on getting to a compromise and refuse to surrender. But the next three years will be frightening if House Republicans cave and the president learns that nothing stands between him and his ability to use overweening power outside the Constitution to advance his ideology. 
 
 This is a big moment of decision for America. Don't give in now. 
 
 Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter. 
 
 Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion. 
 
 The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Newt Gingrich.
– Mitch Daniels has some advice for those who are writing Rick Perry's political eulogy: Hold your horses. "It's way too early to know, or to issue, to pronounce last rites over one performance," Daniels said today. "There's still many of these (debates), too many maybe. ... I'd cut him some slack and give him a little time." Politico notes that Daniels also had kind words for Democrat Sen. Mark Warner's work on the Gang of Six, saying, "It's very encouraging, by the way, to hear a guy like Sen. Warner speak to it as clearly as he just did. I wish he were president." More fun on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Michael Bloomberg on President Obama's 2012 chances: "He would be a credible, formidable candidate. You're going to have a real horse race no matter who the Republican nominee is." Reince Priebus to Debbie Wasserman Schultz on 2012: "It sounds like the new slogan is no longer 'hope and change.' It's, 'Hey, it could've been worse.' Great bumper sticker Debbie, I hope it works for you." David Plouffe on a White House shakeup: "I don't expect that." Obama is "confident in his team, in the direction we've laid out here." Warner on Congress' standoff over a short-term spending bill: "It is embarrassing. The Senate is saying, 'Why should we build schools in Iraq on the credit card but expect that rebuilding schools in Joplin, Mo.,'" will be paid for. Warner blames "a group, more centered in the House, in terms of some of these Tea Party Republicans, who say on every issue, 'We're going to make this a make-or-break.'" Lindsey Graham on Pakistan: "We need to put Pakistan on notice. We're going to have to put all options on the table. including defending our troops. It's now a time of choosing, so I hope they choose wisely."