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A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. RedState.com founder and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote,...

Herman Cain leads presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney as the top choice of Republican primary voters in the race for the 2012 Presidential nomination. Among all voters, no one in a list of 13 possible GOP candidates leads President Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney's New Hampshire organization was rocked with the news that the candidate's top supporter in the state will no longer support him. *Snip*CNN: "Why? He thinks Romney has shifted his positions too many times over the years."

Last week, shortly before a certain ex-terrorist (now pining for the fjords) swallowed the news cycle, there were still some folks paying attention to the nascent GOP primary race. In an early stop in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney attended a forum hosted by Americans for Prosperity and moderated by Tim Phillips.It wouldn’t exactly take a modern day Nostradamus to know that Phillips was going to ask him about the health care plan he signed into law when he was the governor of the Bay State. The somewhat uncomfortable scene which then unfolded seemed to resemble a display of dancing which...

Washington — Defying his reputation as a 1950s square, the new, more casual Mitt Romney is popping up around the country as he readies a second run for president. He's going tieless on network TV, strolling NASCAR pits in Daytona and sporting skinny Gap jeans bought for him by his wife. His latest campaign book, just out in paperback, opens with a regular-guy scene: wealthy Mitt in a Wal-Mart checkout line, buying gifts for his grandsons and comparing the surroundings to Target, another discount store he says he's familiar with.

I get asked all the time why people are so cynical about politics. Here’s a great example: Andrea Saul, who was Charlie Crist’s communications director. Here’s one of her attacks on Marco Rubio: “As the truth begins to surface about Speaker Rubio’s double billing of taxpayers, lavish spending of Republican money, and, just today, excessive pork spending, no ad will be able to stop voters from seeing he is not who he claims to be. A Miami lobbyist, Speaker Rubio has proved he is just another typical politician who uses his public office for personal gain and only comes clean...

The Boston Globe has an interesting story pointing out that once-and-future GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is not trying to suck up to the Tea Party movement, a fact which distinguishes Romney from virtually every other potential Republican presidential candidate. According to the Globe: As the former Massachusetts governor lays the groundwork for a possible second presidential run, he has largely shunned Tea Party activists in key primary states, including the state he must win if he enters the race, New Hampshire. Thus far, Romney is on track to present himself as the establishment candidate--a responsible, mainstream Republican leader with...

Mitt Romney, the AP reports, has stepped down from the board of the Marriott hotel chain, another methodical step toward his 2012 run. His aides have told other Republicans that he expects to launch his campaign in April.

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...

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...

PHOENIX (AP) - John McCain is calling in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Friday. McCain and Romney are scheduled to appear together at a town hall meeting in Mesa.

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The boyhood home of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is slated to be torn down as part of an effort to rejuvenate Detroit. The 5,500-square-foot home, built in 1918 and located on a .4-acre lot in the toney Palmer Woods neighborhood, has fallen into disrepair in recent years, a neighbor said. Romney and his parents, George and Lenore, lived in the home from 1941 to 1953. Shortly after moving from the home at 1860 Balmoral Drive, George Romney became chairman of American Motors Corp. and, later, governor of Michigan. Attempts to reach Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom yesterday were unsuccessful. The...

Ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney (R) held a fundraiser in Manhattan last week and outperformed Pres. Obama's own cash grab a day later on behalf of the DCCC, another sign of trouble brewing for Dems this cycle in all corners of the country. Romney headlined an event at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on May 12 that raised $1.5M for his Free and Strong America PAC. By contrast, Obama's appearance at the St. Regis Hotel on May 13 raked in a lesser $1.3 million for the DCCC.

Mitt Romney has been the frontrunner for several months but Sarah Palin has been steadily climbing and closing the gap. It is essentially dead even, as of today, but for the first time she has a small lead and it is expected she will pull ahead. Intrade represents a type of stock market which trades in predictions regarding outcomes of future events. If you believe that Sarah Palin will be the Republican nominee in 2012, you can purchase a "contract" for the prevailing price, currently 25.8. Romney is currently 26.0. This price is determined by the contact traders themselves (anyone...

BEDFORD, N.H. - When it comes to health care, Mitt Romney is hoping to have it both ways, even as he accuses the White House of doing the same. In the weeks since President Obama and the Democratic Congress enacted their health care overhaul, Mr. Romney, the once and presumably future candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has confronted an issue that is alternately viewed as a strength and a vulnerability. As he promotes himself as a problem-solving pragmatist, Mr. Romney can justifiably point to the landmark universal coverage law in Massachusetts that he, as governor, proposed in 2006. But...

Mitt Romney has much explaining to do about his on-the-record support for liberal causes -- affirmative action and legalized abortion, just to name two -- if he hopes to fend off any conservative insurgency on his way to facing President Obama in the 2012 general election. From that standpoint, the darkest blemish on his record will no doubt be the healthcare reform bill he signed into law in 2006 while governor of Massachusetts, a program similar to Obamacare in that it levies tax penalties on those who willfully go uninsured, among other things So how might Romney defend his record...

Here is one thing I am certain about: A President Mitt Romney would never have bowed to anyone -- not to Saudi King Abdullah, not to Japanese Emperor Akihito. Here's another thing: A President Romney would not have traveled around the world badmouthing his country and making apologies for it. Here's a third: A President Romney would never have ordered the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay or lowered the American flag in Haiti.

Believe it or not, this may end up being Romney’s best argument in the primaries. Electability, pure and simple. Sure, he’ll do what he can to salve the wound that RomneyCare has left on his campaign, but that scar will be with him forever now. The difference in places like New Hampshire and Florida won’t be his posturing about repealing O-Care; potentially, it’ll be the fact that Mitt, perhaps alone among major Republican figures, stands a chance at beating The One. People will shudder at me saying that since that was also the argument for McCain, but the landscape in...