Free Republic

By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada. (Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.) But...

One of Mitt Romney's Chicago fundraisers took on a "true confessions" feel, and the can. Romney related this his father George Romney, the former Michigan Governor, carried with him “a little pink card, and it said: this entitles George W. Romney to a lifetime of a hamburger, a shake and French fries at McDonalds.” From the pool report: The Republican presidential candidate said the card “was signed by Ray Kroc. My dad had done a little training lesson … for McDonald’s when there was just a handful of restaurants.” Mitt Romney had the card laminated for his father. “My dad,...

Criticizing his opponents’ economic policies at a New York fundraiser, President Obama made an interesting slip of the tongue tonight, identifying the GOP nominee as “George Romney.” The enthusiastic crowd at the Broadway fundraiser reacted with giggles, and a few cheers, as the president regained his composure. “Governor Romney … has had great success in his life and he’s raised a beautiful family,” the president ultimately said, correcting himself. “But he has a theory about the economy that basically says, if I’m maximizing returns for my investors, for wealthy individuals like myself, then everybody’s going to be better off.” The...

It was determined a long time ago, that hot money from all over the world would fund big business and mortgages. Forget small business, that had to continue to rely on bank deposits. Mortgages and Big Business are funded by hot money. Hence, housing bubbles and momentum trading on Wall Street. The average investor has no clue that all this is going one. One of the pioneers of this strategy was George Romney, Mitt's dad. This funding through the securitization of mortgages resulted in the first subprime lending machine. Mitt Romney believes in this, even though small business is the...

After edging out Rockefeller 51% to 49% in the winner-take-all race in California, Goldwater had a huge majority of delegates, enough to easily win the nomination at the Republican convention. George Romney set about denouncing Goldwater, and even raised a stink at the convention to have Goldwater′s delegates disqualified. Romney was accusing many of Goldwater′s delegates as being everything from racists, members of the Ku-Klux-Klan, the John Birch Society and even accused some of being Communists! Imagine that! Once Goldwater was named the presidential nominee, George Romney still worked to undermine his campaign, refusing to endorse or support him. So...

Mitt Romney, once seen as a sure bet to win the Michigan Republican presidential primary, now appears locked in a surprisingly tight race with challenger Newt Gingrich. Michigan is home turf for the former Massachusetts governor. His late father, George Romney, was a popular governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the younger Romney grew up in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. But with the state’s primary approaching on Feb. 28, Mr. Romney’s lead remains small, given his home-court advantage. A poll released last week by the Detroit Free Press/WXYZ-TV found that 31% of likely voters supported Mr....

Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, has been invoked on the campaign trail often. Newt Gingrich used his release of 12 years’ of tax records as an example to push his rival to release his own tax returns. On Thursday night, Romney mentioned the fact that his father was born in Mexico in response to Gingrich’s allegations that he is “anti-immigrant,” which raises the question: If George Romney was born in Mexico, how could he run for president?

In the wake of the devastating Detroit riots of the summer of 1967, Michigan Gov. George Romney — a liberal Republican — met the radical organizer Saul Alinsky to discuss the grievances of the urban black poor. Now Romney's son is fighting for the Republican nomination, and his main rival, Newt Gingrich, has made Barack Obama's alleged ties to Alinsky a centerpiece of his campaign.

In December 2007, Mitt Romney was asked by “Meet The Press” host Tim Russert about the history of racism in the Mormon church, which excluded African Americans from participation until 1978. Romney claimed that his father marched with Martin Luther King. Romney would also claim that he “saw his father march with Martin Luther King” in a speech about his Mormon faith earlier that month. In 1978, Mitt Romney would tell the Boston Globe that he and his father both marched with Martin Luther King. The problem is, Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan, never marched...

>Mormonism Teaches That:  The Constitution will hang by a thread, to be saved by the Mormon Church. Will the Constitution be destroyed?  No, it will be held inviolate by this people; and, as Joseph Smith said, "The time will come when the destiny of the nation will hang upon a single thread. At that critical juncture, this people will step forth and save it from destruction." It will be so. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses [JOD] Vol. 7, page 150). …And when the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single  thread, they will have to call for...

Here is a real mess, that is much more confusing than Obama's ineligiblity. It has occurred to me that Mitt Romney, may not be a natural born citizen, and may not even be a US citizen. I'll give the facts as I know them, and let you all research the Immigration Laws. When Congress started cracking down on polygamy, Miles Park Romney (Mitt Romney's great-grandfather) and many other families, left the United States, 5 March 1885, moved to Mexico and began their own settlement. Mitt Romney's paternal grandfather Gaskell Romney (1871–1955), fathered George Wilcken Romney, however, remained in Mexico until...

Before reading A Glorious Disaster my knowledge of the 1964 presidential election was shallow. I knew Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide, but I never really knew anything about the nuts and bolts of the campaign. The 1964 election is an odd one. Johnson had just become president after the Kennedy assassination (killed by a Marxist, go figure). As senator Johnson served as a conservative southern Democrat. He voted against every Civil Rights bill while he was in Congress. Johnson only shifted his opinion later because of the popularity of the measure. Johnson's ambitions were much stronger than any...

<p>Was John Kerry brainwashed? That's what we've been wondering as the new Democratic frontrunner struggles to explain his off-again-on-again-off-again support for confronting Saddam Hussein.</p> <p>Some of our readers may recall that "brainwashing" is the word that turned the late George W. Romney into a footnote in American political history. In the summer of 1967, the Michigan Governor was the leading contender for the 1968 GOP Presidential nod. Then he told a Detroit television station that during a trip to Vietnam he had had "the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get" regarding the increasingly unpopular war. Romney was quickly laughed out of the race.</p>