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Not Excited About Romney? PoliticsApril 25th, 2012 David J. Peterson This year’s GOP primary has been an odyssey filled with sound and fury. But, like elephants who never forget, millions of Republicans are muttering “haven’t we seen this movie before?” Conservatives who were looking for a solid alternative to Democrat Barack Obama are angry and disappointed. The party rank and file was opposed to the nomination of Mitt Romney, seeing him as a weathervane – willing to adopt any position or cause to suit his ambitions.The Republican establishment, which is dominated by big business and the Wall Street elite, heard...

Now we will put to the test what was always an odd claim, namely that Mitt Romney is well positioned and well equipped to defeat Barack Obama this fall. This is a man who lost by 17 points to an incredibly weakened Ted Kennedy (people forget how vulnerable Kennedy was that year) in one of the most pro-Republican years in history, 1994 (the same year in which Rick Santorum won yet another upset victory); a man who would have been handily defeated if he had run for re-election as governor of Massachusetts in 2006; and a man who could barely...

Mitt Romney’s 1992 Democratic Primary vote for Paul Tsongas — a technocratic modernizer and reformer, but very much a Democrat — raised some Republican eyebrows last week. What hasn’t been mentioned: Romney’s vote formally enrolled him in the Democratic Party. more…For anyone who either believes in leprechauns or that Mitt Romney is a conservative this should be of significance, especially since his minions haunted this site making much of the fact that Rick Perry was a Democrat before 1989.The speculation is that Romney had originally intended to challenge Ted Kennedy in the Democrat primary then decided to run as a...

When Rick Perry announced he was running for president back on August 13, to tell you the truth I got a little excited. Now I know what you're thinking -- James you are a big Democrat, why on earth would you be excited about Perry running for president? This was my thinking: Perry would get in and he would be a major force. He was the bona fide conservative complete with a pedigree to take on Romney. With the way things are shaping up now, the convention planners might be more inclined to take a motivational speaker. Hey Rick --...

A new statewide poll by the Behavior Research Center shows businessman Herman Cain tied with Mitt Romney in a potential Arizona Republican presidential primary. The BRC Rocky Mountain Poll gives both Cain and Romney 20 percent of the vote. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is next with 9 percent. Texas Gov. Rick Perry grabs 7 percent in the GOP field.

Is there anyone sane left in the GOP establishment? Does plain old common sense and gut instinct no longer matter to those who purport to speak for the party? Have conservative principles and traditional values become nothing more than meaningless rhetoric to those so desperate to hang on to imagined power? As the Republican establishment lines up like lemmings behind Mitt Romney, it would be illuminating and in fact critical to look at the news for just the last couple of days with regard to this untethered and pliable candidate. A good place to start would be Romney refusing to...

A ghost from 1968 haunts the campaign of Mitt Romney—and no, it’s not the memory of his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, who stumbled as a leading GOP contender 43 years ago. For the younger Romney, the more worrisome blast from the past involves the campaign of Richard Nixon, who ultimately won the nomination by default but never managed to inspire real enthusiasm from the party faithful. As with Mitt, nearly all Republicans considered Nixon acceptable as a standard bearer as the former vice president positioned himself in the safe center of the party.But grassroots activists felt far...

Told you this guy was BAD news... The Inevitable One Just popped over to Intrade to check out the latest odds on the GOP primary race, and although the punters are still piling the chips high on Romney, a harsh reality was laid bare... Not this one, people... NEVER! More news/views/humor at Reaganite Republican

The Republican presidential primary contest is over. Yes, you heard us right. Despite the months of campaigning ahead; the speeches, fundraising, media proxy wars, endorsements, gaffes and dark horse speculation, there is increasingly little doubt about the Republican presidential nominee for 2012. His name is Mitt Romney. From the beginning the contest has been Romney’s to lose, and not merely because of a party predilection toward nominating the last runner up. It’s been Romney’s to lose because of a combination of his own qualities, and those of his competition. Were he in a position to be truly candid, like any...

His convenient and implausibly explained reversals on issues say all we need to know about his character. He will do or say anything to become president. We're all for transparency these days, and if anything is transparently clear about American politics, it is that Mitt Romney will do or say anything to become president. The best guess is that at heart he is an old-fashioned moderate, business-oriented Republican (just about the last one standing). But there's no knowing for sure. He may have no sincere beliefs at all. There was a piece about Romney on the front page of the...

The signs are that Mitt Romney is running for president. With several Republicans edging ever closer to formally declaring their presidential candidacies, Romney told New Hampshire Republicans on Saturday that he’s the candidate who can beat Barack Obama on the central issue of the economy. ((snip)) A key hurdle for Romney among GOP primary voters will be distinguishing the health-care reform he instituted when his was Massachusetts governor from the nationwide plan championed by Obama.

The presidential field may be wide open, but one candidate is playing the role of the inevitable front-runner, as his performance at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference this weekend shows. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney brought with him to the event a large entourage that stayed for several days, while most other potential candidates dropped in and out of the conference to make their speeches and headline a reception or two. Other serious contenders brought just a few key staffers, but many didn't even have their top political aide in tow. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas...

As President Obama prepares to launch his 2012 re-election campaign, one of his top advisers admits they have no idea who might be his ultimate GOP opponent. 'This is most unfathomable Republican field in my lifetime," Obama political adviser David Axelrod tells USA Today. "I don't think anybody in the media or in either party can tell you with any degree of certainty who the Republican nominee will be." But Axelrod, who left the White House last week to begin working for the campaign, went out of his way to praise one of Obama's potential rivals, Mitt Romney. The former...

Much of the punditocracy is obsessed with Sarah Palin. It's understandable on several levels. First, she makes for good copy and has a knack for coining catchy phrases ("death panels") and new words ("refudiate" -- it's now in the dictionary). She is controversial and opinionated, so given the choice between, say, a story on John Thune and one on Palin, it's a no-brainer to choose the best-selling author, TV reality show star and Tea Party darling. But conservatives suspect there's also some mischief-making afoot -- the desire by liberal-leaning members of the media and the White House to make Palin...

On Thursday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Kathleen Parker bizarrely and inaccurately claimed that Alexander Hamilton came to the United States illegally and drafted the Constitution: "Let's remember...a lot of Americans did come through the back door such as Alexander Hamilton. He got off the boat from the West Indies, and all he did was write the Constitution and become the first Secretary of the Treasury." Parker raised this false history during a discussion of Pedro Ramirez, Fresno State University's student body president, who was outed as an illegal immigrant by a student newspaper. After playing clips from Ramirez and his opponent during...

As evidence against my skepticism of Sarah Palin’s supposed front-runner status for 2012, I give you the latest round of Public Policy Center polls: PPP’s newest batch of 2012 Republican primary polls conducted right before last week’s election finds Mitt Romney ahead in the critical early state of Florida, Tim Pawlenty surprisingly weak in his home state of Minnesota, and Sarah Palin posting leads in Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Maine. All of her leads are relatively slim, but the fact that she’s ahead of Huckabee in Texas and West Virginia is notable, and her leads in Maine (by 23...

(VIDEO AT LINK) Former Governor Mitt Romney has kept a high profile throughout the midterm election season endorsing and fundraising for GOP candidates, an effort that some analysts say has established his position as frontrunner for Republican nomination in 2012. Romney hasn’t escaped President Obama’s attention – and in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview last night, Obama compared his health care plan to Romney’s and practically announced Romney’s candidacy. Obama weighed the political costs of health care reform and said Republicans didn’t cooperate as much as he had hoped they would. “We thought that if we shaped a bill that...

Let preface this unofficial poll by saying that I am a Sarah Palin supporter through and through and will go to the mat for her if she runs in 2012. But supposing the new CNN poll showing either Huckabee or Romney would beat Obama in '12 is not a faux poll and pretending these two where the last two standing in the GOP primary in two years I'm curious as to which of the two Freepers see as the lesser of two........

Mitt Romney is shaking hands, kissing babies, making endorsements, and dropping money in every state in the nation in a way that suggests he’s in it for the long haul to 2012. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling Romney’s chances for the GOP presidential nomination. He’s a workhorse in a party addicted to, if not Thoroughbreds, at least some well-spruced Clydesdales. Romney is, as Politico notes, “an establishment kind of guy in an insurgent kind of party.” He’s putting in the work, but he’s not getting either the name recognition of a Newt Gingrich or the camera recognition of Sarah Palin. In...

George Martin has got to be still kicking himself today. Not because of his exceptional Bakersfield Business Conference: I am not aware of any event that compares to what George has been able to create. I am referring to him getting caught up in the moment and introducing Sarah Palin as "the next president of the United States." Come on! I always look forward to the Republican love fest that we call a business conference. It is the only time that I hear so much rational thought about how to clean up the mess in our state and federal governments....