Gold for Cain and Silver for Gingrich at the Neocon Town Hall

This latest Repulican debate on national security issues was a strange episode, with CNN host Wolf Blitzer hurling questions from various odd fellows at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

Perhaps the oddest of those fellows was the once influential Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and former head of the World Bank, now reduced to the roll of question from the audience at the neocon town hall.

Looking at the Facebook support numbers, as we always do here, we score this as the fifth win in a row for Herman Cain with second place going to Newt Gingrich.

Candidate	Sun 11/13 Noon	Wed 11/23 Noon	Pickup
Herman Cain	371,583	392,326	20,743
Newt Gingrich	168,048	184,096	16,048
Mitt Romney	1,176,626	1,191,540	14,914
Ron Paul	583,074	596,853	13,779
Jon Huntsman	22,897	24,800	1,903
Gary Johnson	143,063	144,584	1,521
Rick Santorum	31,958	32,778	820
Rick Perry	170,943	171,496	553
Michele Bachmann	459,154	459,164	10

Newt Gingrich has become the man to watch, but looking at overall support he's still got a way to go to cross the Biden Line let alone overtake the support leaders in the Republican field

If Newt Gingrich stays on his current pace, he doesn't cross the Biden Line until 2/9/2012, and he doesn't catch up to Herman Cain until 3/31/2012, Ron Paul until 8/6/2012, and Mitt Romney until 8/11/2013. That assumes that the other candidates stand still, and they are continuing to build support. Newt's best hope may be that the election is held on Twitter.

Speaking of standing still, that's essentially been the case for Michele Bachmann all fall. Perhaps Rick Perry and Rick Santorum should go into that category too, as they can't even beat Gary Johnson, they guy who is not even being invited to the debates.