Every day we ask influential politicos to send us their top three bullet points that are driving the day's conversation inside and outside Washington.

RedState.Com Editor Erick-Woods Erickson:

– Paul Ryan for President? There is buzz that he is looking at it, but he'd have Michele Bachmann's problem of history and another - after the fight over the debt ceiling, his plan raised the debt ceiling to $23 trillion. Still, it'd really make the race about ideas.

– The President says "bad luck" is to blame? Author Robert Heinlein defined bad luck years and years ago thusly: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

– What did Rick Perry say about Ben Bernanke? He said Texans "would treat him pretty ugly." That led Think Progress and other left-wing outlets to declare Perry wanted to lynch the Fed President. A few reporters from other networks have reported it almost gleefully that Perry made his first faux pas. It seems some members of the media who eschew biases against non-Christian religions, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations are perfectly happy to get wrapped up in cultural biases magnified by the Northeast Corridor of Smug. The thing is — given how Bernanke polls among Republican primary voters and independents, it'd be surprising if this actually hurts Perry.

Senior Political Columnist for TheDailyBeast.com John Avlon:

– Obama in Campaign Mode: The president's comments in Iowa yesterday gave a glimpse at the themes for Obama's re-elect. He will be running against the hyper-partisan dysfunction of Washington itself, borrowing a page from Harry Truman's 1948 crusade against the do-nothing Republican congress, but this time making the case that the far-right of the GOP is putting politics before bipartisan progress on the economy. He's already incorporating the "10-to-1" debt deal rejection at the last GOP debate and pushing for economic policies like Payroll Tax Cut extension and a free trade deal with South Korea.

– Rick Perry in the Race: He big-footed the Iowa Straw poll by announcing his campaign at the Red State conference in SC and has been shaking up the field with his obvious love of retail campaigning. The Romney campaign hinted in its initial statements what their likely push-back will be – that Perry is a career politician. But Perry's Ben Bernanke comment last night raised doubts about how his shoot from the hip style will play in the presidential arena. My guess, well in the primaries; badly in a general election.

– Bachmann's Gay Absurdity: Hot on the heels of winning the Iowa Straw poll, Bachmann took to the Sunday TV shows and found herself dodging her own record of anti-gay statements, declaring that she did not want to 'judge' gays and lesbians. But she has done just that in a steady stream of statements that presumably reflect her real beliefs. Why not own up to them? Her declaration on CNN's State of the Union that she would be inclined to re impose 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' reaffirmed her basic instincts on this issue. She is running as a fiscal conservative but her record is all about social conservatism.

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