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As Matthew Boyle noted, the ad wars for New Hampshire are about to heat up. Here is the full-page Union Leader ad that Mitt Romney can look forward to seeing when he arrives New Hampshire tomorrow…

"I'll point at my record, and I the nice thing about New Hampshire for instance we looked at the Tea Party voters. Those who identify themselves as Tea Partiers and said, 'Who's your favorite candidate?' I have a good lead with Tea Partiers and people who consider themselves very conservative. So where I'm known pretty well, where my record is pretty well known, why I have very good support from very conservative Tea Partiers," Mitt Romney said when asked how he will make his closing argument to conservatives.

Mark Levin, being a disenfranchised Virginian, weighed in on the Virginia ballot fiasco, saying that the compliance rules were changed a month ago and that it is not the fault of the candidates. In fact, he believes the rules were changed to help shove Romney down our throats.

Conventional wisdom is that whoever wins the Iowa caucus has an encouraging boost to get the Republican nomination for president in November’s vote. Never mind that Mike Huckabee crushed Mitt Romney in the 2008 Iowa caucus, and neither went anywhere; in the 2000 caucus George W. Bush easily beat Steve Forbes and went on to win his party’s nomination; or that in 2000 Robert Dole edged Pat Buchanan and both fell by the wayside. So while winning in Iowa is a morale booster it doesn’t mean much, and will quickly be forgotten after New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. This...

Confident Romney Draws Contrast With Surging Santorum Garrett Haake - With only days to go until the GOP primary contest finally begins in earnest, a new set of polling has brought forth a new anti-Romney candidate in the race, and today for the first time, Mitt Romney was asked by reporters to draw contrast between himself, and the surging former Sen. Rick Santorum. Keeping with his tradition of rarely attacking his Republican rivals directly, Romney reminded the press that Santorum endorsed him in 2008, and that the former Pennsylvania congressman and senator spent the majority of his career in Washington....

Gingrich: Romney Would Buy White House If He Could By SHANNON MCCAFFREY — Newt Gingrich said Sunday his GOP rival Mitt Romney would buy the presidency if he could. Speaking to reporters after attending Mass at the St. Ambrose Cathedral in Des Moines, Gingrich said the amount that the former Massachusetts governor will eventually spend on his various campaigns will rival the spending of billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Romney would buy the election if he could," Gingrich said. A political action committee supporting Romney has rolled out ads attacking Gingrich in the days before Tuesday's caucuses. They...

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says he would veto legislation that would allow certain illegal residents to become American citizens. During a campaign stop in western Iowa, Romney answered "yes" when he was asked whether he would refuse to sign what is known as the DREAM Act. Romney has said before that he would oppose the legislation, which would allow some illegal immigrant youths to earn permanent residency and eventually citizenship if they attend college or serve in the military.

Romney Would Veto Immigration "Dream" Act By Jane Sutton … LEMARS, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said on Saturday he would veto a proposal granting U.S. citizenship to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, a pledge that won hearty applause from Iowa conservatives he hopes to win over. A young woman asked Romney about the bipartisan proposal known as the Dream Act, during an appearance at a crowded restaurant in Le Mars, a conservative Republican stronghold in western Iowa. "The question is if I were elected and Congress were to pass the Dream...

US election 2012: Mitt Romney On Course For Historic Double Victory Mitt Romney could strike a decisive early blow in the contest to pick the Republican party’s presidential nominee by becoming the first candidate ever to win both the first two states to vote, opinion polls suggest. By Jon Swaine 01 Jan 2012 The former Massachusetts governor leads the party field both in Iowa, where tomorrow’s caucuses will give the candidates their first test, and in New Hampshire, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday. If successful, Mr Romney would become the first Republican challenger in the modern primary...

There are currently many news stories and blog discussions about the Virginia presidential primary ballot access law. Some large blogs, such as Red State, have over 300 comments about the story. Some defend the current Virginia ballot access laws on the grounds that in past presidential elections, a fairly large number of Republican presidential primary candidates managed to qualify. But what has not been reported is that in the only other presidential primaries in which Virginia required 10,000 signatures (2000, 2004, and 2008) the signatures were not checked. Any candidate who submitted at least 10,000 raw signatures was put on...

Richard Winger over at Ballot Access News has an EXTREMELY interesting post (link via here) on the mess that the Virginia Republican party has found itself in over… access to the ballot in Virginia. For those coming in late, background here and here: the very short version is that the VA GOP only certified Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for its primary ballot. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich both had too many signatures tossed; Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann didn’t even try. Of the seven candidates, one (Romney) had more than enough signatures (15K) to bypass the verification...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a slight lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for president, according to a new poll. The Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday morning, shows Gingrich at 30 percent and Romney at 25 percent among Republican voters. No other candidate tops nine percent. In a head-to-head matchup, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, left, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Gingrich tops Romney by a larger margin, 47 percent to 39 percent...

Mitt Romney has a plan. A plan to solve the “immigration problem.” And it will come as no surprise to those following the GOP presidential debates that the answer of Romney — the former Governor of Massachusetts and father of the “individual mandate” — is more government. At last week’s debate, Romney announced his idea for dealing with the more than 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States in defiance of applicable federal and state laws. On stage in Sioux City, Romney laid out for Republicans his plan for a national identification card system to distinguish between...

Mitt Romney claims campaign finance laws forbid him from saying anything to stop a pro-Romney super PAC called Restore Our Future from airing attack ads targeting Newt Gingrich. The PAC has just unveiled a new hit on Gingrich in Iowa, following up on a devastating ad played repeatedly across the state. The ads are widely crediting will cutting into Gingrich's support in Iowa. In an MSNBC interview with Romney Tuesday morning, host Joe Scarborough noted that Gingrich has called on Romney to "just tell [the super PAC] to stop the attacks against Newt Gingrich. Will you do that?" "It's illegal,...

OTTUMWA, Iowa — Newt Gingrich challenged Mitt Romney Tuesday afternoon to act on his comments that he’s opposed to Super PACs. Gingrich said his rival should disown and condemn the attack ads being run against him by the Romney-friendly Restore our Future Super PAC. “Anything short of that is baloney,” Gingrich said. “We’ve got to understand these are his people, running his ads, doing his dirty work while he pretends to be above it. He can demand that every ad be positive.” Gingrich got peeved when a man asked him about a radio ad he’d just heard that described the...

Romney, An Active Man of Faith The Republican presidential candidate doesn't talk much about his role in the Mormon Church, but he served as a bishop in a Boston-area church and presided over 12 congregations as stake president. Alana Semuels December 7, 2011 In a closely-knit Mormon congregation, Ronnie Catalano was a problem Mitt Romney wanted to solve. As bishop — a position akin to priest or pastor — Romney presided over a fast-growing flock that included Catalano's wife, Sandy, a new convert. Ronnie, a cigarette smoking, wine-drinking Catholic, had accused Sandy of ruining their family by becoming Mormon. He...

The latest allegation swirling around businessman Herman Cain — that he conducted a 13-year long extramarital affair with a woman named Ginger White — could well amount to a political death blow for his already-reeling presidential campaign. And that’s bad news for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. ...Romney’s best (only?) path to the nomination is if conservatives, who seem to have decided they won’t be with him, fracture among several candidates rather than unify behind a single one. That reality is true on the national level but equally true in early voting states like Iowa and South Carolina where Romney...

"In short, the electoral experience of the last 50 years does nothing to undermine the common-sense notion that most political battles are won by seizing and holding the ideological center. In the last two presidential elections, more than 44% of voters described themselves as "moderate," and no conservative candidate could possibly prevail without coming close to winning half of them (as George W. Bush did in his re-election). The notion that ideologically pure conservative candidates can win by disregarding centrists and magically producing previously undiscovered legions of true-believer voters remains a fantasy. It is not a strategy. At the moment,...

Southfield, Mich. — As other Republican candidates have stumbled their way toward the presidential primaries, Mitt Romney has put together what would seem to be all the elements of a winning campaign: an effective staff, a robust treasury and smooth, knowledgeable performances both in debates and on the trail. But for months, the threshold of support for the former Massachusetts governor hasn't inched above a quarter of Republican voters in national polls. For many GOP voters in early primary states, hesitation about Romney comes back to one thing: their perception that he has routinely molded his views to suit the...

After months of uncertainty, Mitt Romney has decided to roll the dice and go for a win in the Iowa caucus. But the former governor is betting that he can triumph in the state without any significant support from social conservatives — normally a vital voting bloc — and is making no real effort to win them over.