Ron Paul lands critical Kelly Clarkson endorsement

Now that former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson has thrown her support to Ron Paul, one big question remains: Who’s going to get the Britney Spears endorsement?

Paul, in announcing this ginormous boost to his 1952 race for president, noted that Clarkson’s record sales skyrocketed after her endorsement. Which means: He might well get Britney’s support too!

Heck, if backing Ron Paul gooses record sales, everyone from the Rolling Stones to Placido Domingo will be jumping on the Ron Paul bandwagon.

And 2012 should be the year of the Twitter endorsement, which is extremely exciting, because now for the first time in history people have – without a media filter of any kind – direct, personal access to: celebrity publicists.

Take Ashton Kutcher, one of the most popular Twitterers with an estimated 7 billion followers. (It would be higher except some Tibetan monks receive poor cell phone service.)

At first, Kutcher actually had the mind-blowing idea of providing his own commentary. What was he thinking?

The problem was, he wasn’t, which is why when he got caught writing dumb stuff, he turned his direct personal contact with his fans over to his publicity staff.

So the question is, whom will Kutcher support? Will he be made aware of this? Will he be consulted?

The Holy Grail of celebrity endorsements, of course, are the Kardashians, which is why so many questions swirl around their potential pick:

Will they be voting as a bloc? Will they be voting? Do they know what voting is? Will Kim Kardashian vote while wearing a bikini, which seems to be the only thing she wears besides the occasional wedding dress?

Of course, watching the race for president this year might make us want to chuck our whole political process and name the Kardashians our royal family.

After all, they’ve got enough potential breeders there to keep the royal line going – plus we don’t have to worry about in-breeding making them any dumber.

But if they turn down the job, we can always ask Britney to be our queen. She’s ready for a career change.

LET’S HOPE GINGRICH ENJOYED ‘GLORY DAYS’: If you went to the New York Times website this past week you could see, in the magazine section, an article titled “Newt Gingrich’s Glory Days” – almost as though Gingrich really was in the midst of his Glory Days, instead of the latest occupant of the Republican Primary Dumpster.

Not that I fault the New York Times for what seems like a gaffe. Fifteen minutes or so ago, Gingrich was riding high. By no less an authority than himself, Gingrich was declared the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Now former senator Rick Santorum is the new man of the hour and he will probably remain so for the next seven or eight minutes.

And yet Romney is having a hard time closing the deal. It’s obvious the Republican Party doesn’t really like him, but there’s no one to stop him, unless someone gets the bright idea of digging up Ronald Reagan’s corpse, which, unlike Romney, hasn’t flip-flopped the last couple of decades and probably has a more life-like expression.

MINI-REVIEW: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” with Daniel Craig and Mara Rooney. Well done, if somewhat hard to follow. Some scenes are very graphic and intense, which you might not be prepared for if you haven’t read the book.