Free Republic

A year before Republicans pick a 2012 candidate, their presidential outlook remains muddled. Nothing exemplifies their dilemma more than the all-but-certain candidacy of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. By traditional standards, he should be the GOP front-runner. He was the 2008 runner-up, is personally attractive and professionally successful and can mount a well-financed, professional campaign. But he doesn't even have clear support within the party's mainstream wing, let alone the increasingly influential tea party faction. His problems were evident from what he said — and didn't say — when he joined other hopefuls in wooing activists at last week's annual...

See how they try to lead people into buying into certain "convention wisdom's"....this is silly and CNN knows it, and the RINO's in the party of course will claim that they support the teas party when they actually don't. "More than half of all Republicans we questioned consider themselves Tea Party supporters or active members of the Tea Party movement," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Romney tops the list among Tea Party Republicans; Gingrich is next on that list and Palin is in third." -CNN

Laura Ingraham was on the Glenn Beck radio show in the last hour this morning...While talking about potential candidates for 2012, She was asked if Romney was a "progressive" she said NO he isn't one of them at all...I've heard that she loves Romney like a Ken doll and is a Romneybot, but this is amazing! She also said that she would take Newt as President in a heartbeat! What gives?

A pickup-driving image helped put Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate, so is Mitt Romney hoping it will drive him him to the White House? The 2008 Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor drove a beat-up pickup to a New Hampshire fundraiser last night. He's also driven it to other political events as he weighs another run in 2012. Spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom says Romney has owned the Chevy since 2002 and uses it for errands around his New Hampshire lakeside vacation home.

Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney is a “major player” nipping at the heels of President Obama and stands as the GOP’s best shot to reclaim the Oval Office in 2012, a new national poll shows. “In many ways, he’s arguably the establishment front-runner,” pollster John Zogby said of a new poll showing Romney trailing President Obama by just 2 percentage points. “He’s got name recognition, he’s been through it before, and he did credibly in 2008. He’s a major player in the race.” The Zogby poll of 8,487 likely voters showed Obama edging Romney out 45 to 43 percent....

So Mitt Romney - the venture capitalist guru who never sweats - leads all Republicans in a new Zogby poll that has him within striking distance of Obama, 45-43. Can anyone be surprised? The economy’s a mess. We’re basket cases over keeping jobs and homes. Obama’s reduced to courting Whoopi and Barbara Walters today on “The View,” hoping a cozy chat will reassure the wives of independents and/or Tea Party sympathizers who’ve abandoned the president in droves. Close your eyes. Envision, for a second, the best known GOP contenders: Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul. On the Ward...

So Mitt Romney - the venture capitalist guru who never sweats - leads all Republicans in a new Zogby poll that has him within striking distance of Obama, 45-43. Can anyone be surprised? The economy’s a mess. We’re basket cases over keeping jobs and homes. Obama’s reduced to courting Whoopi and Barbara Walters today on “The View,” hoping a cozy chat will reassure the wives of independents and/or Tea Party sympathizers who’ve abandoned the president in droves. Close your eyes. Envision, for a second, the best known GOP contenders: Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul. On the Ward...

Mitt Romney continues to look like an overwhelming early favorite for the 2012 New Hampshire primary but the most surprising thing about our newest set of numbers there may be that Ron Paul's in third place, outpolling Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin (albeit by small margins.) Romney leads the way with 31% to 14% for Newt Gingrich, 13% for Paul, 12% for Huckabee, 9% for Palin, 3% for Tim Pawlenty, and 1% for Mitch Daniels. Observations from the numbers: -Among voters who are more likely to support a candidate endorsed by Sarah Palin...Romney leads...with 29% to Palin's 21%. We've written...

Whenever anyone mentions the 2012 election, inevitably the name of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney becomes a topic of conversation. And when it comes to polling data, Romney is often seen as a front-runner, forecasted to be stronger than the current occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama. Increasingly, many of those in the Republican Party think Mitt is the GOP’s “go-to” guy in the next election. I guess you’ll just have to pardon me for failing to drink the Kool-Aid regarding the former governor. I just think it’s about time somebody stated the truth about Gov. Romney. Mitt Romney...

As I type this, I am watching former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on “The Wendy Williams Show” talking about his impending talk show on Fox and am reminded, not for the first time, that quite a few presidential candidates function as if they never expected or even wanted to be president in the first place. They ran to gain a media platform. But few have done so as brazenly as Huckabee, who typically ended his homespun stump homilies with pedestrian pluckings of his bass guitar. Huckabee’s ultimate role in the 2008 race was to assist in the splintering of evangelicals...

If the Republican nomination in 2012 shapes up as a two-way race between former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, expect fireworks to fly. Last week, GOP primary voters caught a glimpse of how things might play out between the two Republican heavyweights when anonymous aides from both camps exchanged pointedly personal barbs. The scuffle began when Time magazine’s Mark Halperin anonymously quoted one Romney aide in a column last Thursday, blasting Palin for her lack of substance, “She’s not a serious human being.” Another aide to the former Massachusetts governor ripped into Palin, arguing, “If...

Even as the starting bell rings for the first round of the Republican presidential free-for-all, we’ve got a couple of anonymous Mitt Romney advisors coming off the top rope, aiming elbow smashes at Sarah Palin’s back. They said she’s “not a serious human being” and “if she’s standing up there in a debate, and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she’s in trouble.” This childish and incoherent nonsense does a lot more damage to Mitt Romney than Sarah Palin. What, exactly, are the criteria for being considered a “serious human being?” Should she just give up her half-hearted...

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney has raised nearly $3.5 million for his political action committee in the first half of the year, a sum that dwarfs that of other possible 2012 Republican presidential candidates and establishes the former Massachusetts governor as a potent political force......

The November midterm elections are just four months away, but a handful of politicians are already looking far down the calendar to 2012 -- and it's starting to show. Though the 2012 presidential campaign arguably began as soon as the 2008 campaign ended, the water testing is starting to become more visible. It takes a long time to raise the millions needed to run for president and build national attention -- so with about two years to go until the conventions, a few potential candidates seem to be getting the ball rolling. The political activity is taking place in all...

Word from inside the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign team is that Romney will abandon his 2008 strategy of seeking to win over social conservatives—evangelical or born-again Christians—for whom his Mormonism is a major deterrent. In 2008, the Romney campaign had hoped the candidate’s clean-cut, family-man profile would be enough to win over socially conservative Christians, many of whom harbor deep misgivings about Mormonism fed in large part by a thirty-year campaign of “spiritual warfare” against Mormonism begun in the 1980s at Fuller Theological Seminary under the auspices of its anti-“cult” ministries. Romney’s 2008 candidacy was consistently shadowed not only...

1. Haley Barbour: Barbour's Republican Governors Association has become the story of the 2010 midterms. The RGA's second quarter fundraising numbers -- $19 million raised, $40 million on hand -- is an eye-popping total that should remind those who have forgotten about Barbour's reach in the GOP donor community. With Republicans poised to make significant gains at the gubernatorial level this fall, Barbour will almost certainly emerge with momentum after the November elections -- momentum that he may seek to channel into a presidential exploratory bid. 2. Mitt Romney: The former Massachusetts governor is slowly and methodically rolling out endorsements...

The elections of Nikki Haley, who is poised to become the first female/first Indian governor of South Carolina and Tim Scott, poised to become the second black Republican congressman to serve in Congress (and who won against a segregationist's son, Paul Thurmond) were momentous and historical for all the obvious reasons... That being said, I do not expect the lamestream media to give these stories as much coverage as they deserve mainly because their "conservatives want segregation back" mantra is quite frankly the only age-old tactic liberals have to rely on for any hope of keeping their shackles on the...

Immediately after Nikki Haley's overwhelming victory in the South Carolina Primary, we noted Team Mitt's panic over the credit Governor Palin received: It appears Mitt Romney is getting a bit nervous as a result of all the well-deserved credit Governor Palin received for helping Nikki Haley in South Carolina, both in the media and by Haley herself. In fact Romney is so nervous he feels compelled to return to South Carolina to campaign for Haley before the runoff on the 22nd. [...] This is classic Mitt Romney. When all the mud was flying and Governor Palin publicly and steadfastly stood...

It appears Mitt Romney is getting a bit nervous as a result of all the well-deserved credit Governor Palin received for helping Nikki Haley in South Carolina, both in the media and by Haley herself. In fact Romney is so nervous he feels compelled to return to South Carolina to campaign for Haley before the runoff on the 22nd. Via the Politico: Former Massachusetts GOP Gov. Mitt Romney will soon travel to South Carolina to stump for Nikki Haley in the state’s runoff of the GOP nomination for governor.

The 2012 presidential election may be 29 months away, but the potential players are stalking each other like chess grandmasters. Tonight's round of gubernatorial and Senate primaries could provide early indicators of who is most shrewdly mobilizing their pieces into position. Three states with big races on Tuesday represent potential game-changers in 2012. Iowa and South Carolina occupy key early positions in the presidential-primary calendar, while California boasts a mother lode of winner-take-all delegates. For presumed hopefuls like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee, the calculation is simple. Endorse a statewide candidate who wins (both tonight and in November's...