Rick Perry has spent a few days going out of his way to question the validity of President Obama's birth certificate, either because he has actual doubts or just wants to make some jokes with Donald Trump.

Herman Cain released an inexplicable campaign ad on Monday featuring his chief of staff smoking a cigarette. But unlike everyone else, Stephen Colbert didn't spend much time on tonight's Report trying to analyze the ad, opting instead to parody it with the three even more extreme versions.

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart brought up the increasingly extreme rhetoric being spewed by Republican presidential candidates, noting that even Pat Robertson expressed his concern about it in recent days. Of course, it's not that Robertson really disagrees with the candidates. He just wants them to keep their voices down long enough to win the general election: "The first rule of Right Club? Don't talk about Right Club."

Rick Perry stopped off at The O'Reilly Factor this evening to lay out the economic plan he announced this morning. But the interview's more amusing moments came when the Republican presidential candidate blamed his drop in the polls on the recent round of GOP debates—their general format, not his performance in them—and then took some shots at mortal enemy Mitt Romney, who will "say whatever [he needs] to say for whatever office [he's] running for."

The Obama campaign has finally launched a Tumblr, like years after the cool people got theirs. The first entry asks readers to "share the latest chart you saw that made you go 'woah.'" Dumb cat photos would be better.

What a great comedy ad that Herman Cain's campaign released yesterday, right? It's heartwarming to see one of these old, grizzled campaign hands, in this case chief of staff Mark Block, finally getting in front of the camera in his own element: Smoking a cigarette outside some building. Then there's terrible music, Herman Cain gradually smiling over the course of 10 seconds, the works. It's strange and exciting, effectiveness aside! And yet the image of this man smoking left many political writers somewhere between confused and horrified. What does the cigarette "mean"? It's today's hot topic.

Jon Huntsman, aka the Mormon ex-governor running for the Republican nomination for president not named Mitt Romney, sat down with Stephen Colbert on tonight's Report, no doubt hoping to bump up his anemic poll numbers. And while Huntsman's defense of Mormonism (people will come around, just like they did in the '60s with JFK and Catholicism), concern about economic inequality in America, and demonstration of his fluency in Mandarin made for good television, it probably won't do him much good in shoring up support with the GOP's conservative base.

That's all you need to know, folks! He's not confused, or glib, or uninterested. He's stupid. Like Forest Gump. Or Sarah Palin. He doesn't understand the things that he says. We can't all be smart, or even average. And Herman Cain isn't.

Michele Bachmann's entire team of New Hampshire staffers quit as a group last week, a development which Bachmann at first claimed was "certainly not true." That alone should tell you that it was true. But just in case there was any confusion out there, the resigning staffers sent out a press release today. It does not speak well of the Bachmann for President campaign operation.

Newt Gingrich has often expressed his desire, were he to win the Republican nomination, to debate President Obama in seven three-hour "Lincoln-Douglas style debates." These area not likely to happen, for several reasons. But Gingrich has convinced Herman Cain to debate him next month in a "modified Lincoln–Douglas debate," the modification being, what... that they both argue the pro-slavery position? Hmm.

The Republican presidential primary field entrenching into a Mitt Romney vs. Really Conservative Alternate Person contest presents a fine opportunity to see which regular employers of ultraconservative, uncompromising red meat rhetoric on the right are actually just establishment GOP operatives. Do they start fretting publicly about candidates' general election viability, or do they resist practical temptations and hold out for a true believer? In the case of haunting televangelist Pat Robertson, it's going to be the former.

Today's edition of Parade magazine features an interview with Republican presidential candidate/sultan of Texas Rick Perry, who says he went out to dinner with bloviating birther Donald Trump and now isn't totally sure if President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii or Kenya or on Mercury or what. Donald Trump is that persuasive.

Herman Cain is incredibly pro-life and doesn't personally believe that it should be allowed in special cases like rape or incest. And yet his attempts to soften the edges of this rigid position are creating, for him, a miserable self-induced error that Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are loving. Cain makes it worse each time he brings it up! What dumb new "tweak" did he unveil today?

Rep. Michele Bachmann's broke, flailing presidential campaign is now being straight-up Newtered: Her entire New Hampshire campaign team, which was only about six people, has quit. Their reason was something along the lines of 'What's the fucking point?'

Things keep getting better and better for Herman Cain, whose latest feat is winning today's Outrage of the Day contest! His poorly worded comments about abortion on Piers Morgan last night have led many to believe that he is actually pro-choice! Well, he's not. He just sucks at speaking.

Looks like Rick Perry is on Mitt Romney's list! (Right after the guy from LMFAO.) Last night, of course, Perry got Romney to show his "horror movie stepfather" side by doggedly interrupting the GOP frontrunner. Tonight, the Romney campaign put a "brutal" attack ad on YouTube—and then mysteriously pulled it. Drama!

So last night: greatest debate ever, right? The vicious babies on stage, God bless , were so busy sniping at each other about who had more Mexicans in their front yards that Anderson Cooper barely had any time to make the cheesy situational jokes that is CNN's calling card. Hoo boy, what a madcap muckfest. Then again, we're kind of worried about Mitt Romney, whose head and a good chunk of his upper torso will soon disappear in a horrific explosion.

When it comes to Republican presidential candidates, Stephen Colbert doesn't back losers. So now that Rick Perry is fading fast, Colbert must throw his allegiance elsewhere, and who better to back than Herman Cain, the main beneficiary of Perry's declining poll numbers? That was the question on Colbert's mind tonight as he vetted Cain—plus his "9-9-9" tax plan and controversial remarks about an "electrified" border fence—on the Report.

CNN's Western Republican presidential debate, held earlier tonight in Las Vegas, was quite a doozy. Of course, the highlight was Mitt Romney and Rick Perry's knock-down, drag-out fight over illegal immigration.

What's going on with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney? Perry—who more or less slept through his first GOP debates—aggressively jumped on frontrunner Romney in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, earning an enthusiastic response from Romney, who gently touched Perry and attempted to teach the Texas governor the rules. Of the debate. You can smell the testiness! All the drama, and tension, of two coked-up frat brothers arguing about politics at 6 a.m.! And poor Anderson Cooper, the supposed moderator, just sitting there there on the sidelines.