Gingrich Begins Positioning Himself for Veep

Gingrich punches up at Ron Paul, more gently poking -- even tacitly endorsing -- Mitt Romney:

I think if you really stop and say to yourself, can you imagine [Paul] as president given his beliefs and his system, I think the answer is no. You couldn't imagine the American people doing that. ... Mitt Romney is a serious person and as a serious person he has some responsibility to set a decent standard ...

If you've followed Gingrich's career, you know there's nothing he takes more seriously than being "a serious person," unless maybe it's being "the idea guy" (the conflict between the two aspirations has been a problem for him). If he throws that word your way, he's either grooming you as a protege, or pitching himself to you as one. Saying that about Romney right before the Iowa caucus is essentially saying "we both know I'm out of the running; let's do lunch and talk about our future together -- soon."

New Sync Option: SugarSync

I don't think I'll ever stop singing the praises of Dropbox, my go-to sync application. If you don't have it, get it.

But, Dropbox isn't the only sync option out there. I'm trying out SugarSync right now, and it seems to work well. I'll never give up my Dropbox, but having more storage space and more backup redundancy can't hurt, right?

Same basic principle: Any files you save in designated folders on your hard drive are automagically backed up online and ported to analogous folders on all other computers that you register with the service.

So if, for example, you're working on a document on your desktop (and save it in your SugarSync folder), you can get up, walk out the door with your laptop bag, and have that document available as soon as you start your machine elsewhere ... instead of having to email it to yourself, burn it to a CD, save it on a thumb drive, whatever.

And, of course, if one of your hard drives takes a dirt nap and has to be replaced, getting your important files back is as simple as setting up SugarSync on the new drive. Got a new computer? Same deal (I used Dropbox to pretty much instantly port a bunch of my files from the old Mac to the new Mac; easy peasy).

SugarSync gives you five gigabytes free, and more for referring new users (ahem). Paid plans available for those of you with really big data sync needs.

Iowa Caucus Predictions

Because it would just be chicken to wait until any closer to make them.

My predictions:

Paul -- 24%
Santorum -- 22%
Romney -- 20%
Gingrich -- 13%
Perry -- 9%
Bachmann -- 9%
Huntsman -- 3%

Plus or minus 1% on each, of course, with the minuses more likely toward the bottom half of the field.

The RealClearPolitics polling averages for the last 10 days show Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in tight -- within 1.1% of each other and closing in around 20% each -- and Paul gaining (with Rick Santorum surging up toward them). That can only be bad news for Romney.

The caucus rules for Republicans aren't as beneficial toward "activist-enthusing" candidates as the Democratic rules are (I thought they were, but Jake Porter corrected me on that awhile back), but it's still not just "walk up and fill out a ballot." You have to listen to some speechifying, etc. before voting. That benefits Paul (and Santorum) as well. Their supporters would walk six miles in the snow, uphill both ways, then wait in line for a month, to support them. A large portion of the Romney crowd will have trouble deciding whether to spend the evening at home with some popcorn, watching Lifetime^® movies or hang out for more than 20 minutes or so for their guy.

Unfortunately for Paul and Santorum, it's not supposed to snow in Iowa on Tuesday. Matter of fact, after starting cold in the morning, it's supposed to pop above freezing for awhile. That reduces the "my supporters are like those bare-chested, purple-painted guys you see at every one of their teams' football games, even the exhibition games in Angkor Wat" advantage some, but doesn't eliminate it.

Of course, I could have this all wrong. It's happened before. The only thing I'm reasonably sure of is that Mitt Romney isn't going to come out of Iowa with anything that looks like a convincing victory. And hell, I could be wrong about that too.

Addendum: Could anyone have possibly predicted the "Santorum surge" a month ago? No? Actually, The Other McCain did ... and he's a little miffed that nobody writing about it now is acknowledging that. Thought I'd mention it both by way of "credit where credit is due" and because at my level of blog traffic a link back here from there is a sort of scale model "Instalanche" (which I like to encourage).