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(ABC News) Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has had a change of heart. The prominent Buckeye State Republican threw his support behind presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Friday afternoon, switching his allegiance from Mitt Romney to the former Pennsylvania senator. “To be elected President, you have to do more than tear down your opponents,” DeWine said in a statement. ”You have to give the American people a reason to vote for you — a reason to hope — a reason to believe that under your leadership, America will be better. Rick Santorum has done that. Sadly, Governor Romney has not.”

There are four candidates left standing in the GOP presidential nomination contest. But it’s really come down to a two-man race heading toward primary elections in Arizona and Michigan, then on to Super Tuesday with ten more contests and a lot more convention delegates than have been at stake so far. For recently surging Rick Santorum and Republican establishment favorite Mitt Romney, the battle at this point couldn’t be closer or more important. Michigan – Romney’s nominal home state (although he hasn’t lived there for years and was most notably governor of Massachusetts) could be make-or-break. The headline this week...

A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race. “If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity. The senator believes Romney will ultimately win in Michigan but says he will publicly call for the party to find a new candidate if he does not. “We’d get killed,” the senator said if Romney manages to win the nomination after he failed to win...

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....

“If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity. The senator believes Romney will ultimately win in Michigan but says he will publicly call for the party to find a new candidate if he does not. “We’d get killed,” the senator said if Romney manages to win the nomination after he failed to win the state in which he grew up.

LAKE JACKSON, Tex. — Once there was a challenge of a softball game from the Ron Paul clan to the Mitt Romney clan. “They didn’t show up,” Mr. Paul says. “We didn’t schedule it. We really razz them about that, ‘You guys chickened out!’ ” When Mr. Paul’s campaign jet broke down last year in Wolfeboro, N.H., Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, offered to let Mr. Paul, an aide and one of his granddaughters stay the night at their summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee. When Mr. Romney arrived later, he offered his jet to take them home to Texas. Mr....

"At a nationally televised GOP debate in New Hampshire last month, broadcast to a Sunday morning audience on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mitt Romney looked straight into the living rooms of America and told a lie. It wasn’t a major lie, perhaps more like a fib. But when Newt Gingrich challenged him about the ads that the super PAC affiliated with Romney had been running, the former governor pleaded ignorance. “I haven’t seen them,” he said indignantly. Then, barely 15 seconds later, perhaps forgetting he had just claimed never to have seen one of the ads, he offered a detailed...

Speaking at a campaign event on Monday, February 13 in Mesa, Arizona, Mitt Romney made a bold suggestion about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence: “They're either inspired by God or written by brilliant people or perhaps a combination of both.” Inspired by God? It sounds like just another sop tossed to Tea-Party constitutionalism, but Romney was in fact invoking a longstanding Mormon doctrine which views the U.S. Constitution as not only great, but literally divine.

Had evangelical Christians had their way in 2006’s Pennsylvania Senate election, then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R) would have been reelected in a landslide: among the quarter of the electorate that identified themselves as such, Santorum won 59% to 41%. The trouble for Santorum was that, of the non-evangelical three-fourths of the electorate, Santorum lost to his opponent, Democrat Bob Casey, by two to one. Santorum was defeated in that race by about 17 points — one of the worst drubbings in modern history for an incumbent senator (see chart at this link). If anything, looking at a year when Santorum did...

Presidential candidate NewtGingrich says even though rivals RickSantorum and Mitt Romney are currently leading the pack in the important primary state of Michigan — which is also Romney’s home state — the former House speaker has not given up on his chances. Gingrich, who has dumbfounded political pundits before with his repeated surges, also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Wednesday that he continues to confidently look to Super Tuesday. “I’ll be in Michigan campaigning next week — we have every reason to believe we’re going to be competing there effectively — and we’re going to have a number of...

The latest polls show former Senator Rick Santorum up by 9 points in Michigan, a state whose February 28 primary may provide much more than the 30 delegates riding on the contest. Mathematically it's not a 'must win' for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, but losing there (or even not winning by a large margin) may do irreparable damage to what was once considered his inevitable nomination. Unlike former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who expected his South Carolina victory to scare off his opponents and propel him to success in Florida (it didn't), Mr. Santorum is not relying...

Mitt Romney's campaign in Michigan predicts a "strong finish" in the state's Feb. 28 presidential primary, but it stopped short of calling it a win for Romney in the state-by-state nominating contests. "We're going to have a very strong showing 13 days from now," said Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette in a conference call Wednesday morning. Schuette is Romney's Michigan campaign chairman. "I'm very pleased with our position," Schuette said. Asked to define what a "strong showing" is, Schuette said, "I'll let you know that Tuesday night." Romney's campaign moves to Michigan in advance of the Feb. 28 primary and...

Nobel-laureate Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and a top official from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should use his stature in the Mormon church to block its members from posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims. Their comments followed reports that Mormons had baptized the deceased parents of Wiesenthal, the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. A spokeswoman for Romney said his campaign would not comment, directing all inquiries to church officials. Posthumous baptisms of non-Mormons are a regular practice of the Mormon religion. Church members believe the ritual creates the possibility for the deceased to...

...a pair of polls...ought to be scaring the pants off of Romney’s camp. A PPP Michigan poll shows Santorum leading...by a 39-24 percent margin. The ARG poll also has him ahead, though by a smaller 33-27 percent differential. ...if any in his campaign were inclined to dismiss Santorum’s surge...this poll is proof they are dead wrong...a loss in Michigan would be fatal to [Romney's] presidential hopes...the air would go out of his inevitability balloon and Santorum would, despite his threadbare national campaign, assume the unlikely role of frontrunner. ...a defeat [in Michigan] would be considered a personal repudiation of [Romney's]...

Governor Mitt Romney has signed into law a permanent assault weapons ban that he says will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on these guns. 'Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts," Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony on July 1 with legislators, sportsmen's groups and gun safety advocates. "These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people." Like the federal assault weapons ban, the state ban, put in place in 1998, was scheduled to expire in September. The new...

“I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice...I changed my position.” [Romney] answered a Planned Parenthood questionnaire by saying he backed “state funding of abortion services.” “It was made clear to him by advisers early on in his gubernatorial race that he had to be pro-choice...” “...my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others...And you will not see me wavering on that.” Mr. Romney promised [Naral Pro-Choice America] to maintain the status quo...he surprised its leaders by...

.... Barack: Now tell me who won the Maine caucus? Bill: Mitt. Barack: Meat? I thought Maine is famous for its lobster. Bill: Yes. Barack: Then who won? Bill: Mitt. Barack: I hate meat. Lobster is juicier and more delicious. So tell me who won the Maine caucus? ..... This is part of a political comedy I have written. You can watch it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7wrO5G6x4I or visit: http://charles-dollar.blogspot.com/

Remember way back when Romney led Santorum by 16 points in Gallup’s national tracking poll? That was … four days ago. Today: Romney 32, Santorum 30, Gingrich 16. Mitt’s lucky that there’s a nice long break between Santorum’s three wins in the midwest last week and the next key primaries in Arizona and Michigan. If there wasn’t, I don’t know if even a flurry of negative ads from the Romney Super PAC death star would be enough to snuff Santorum’s momentum in time. Santorum had been planning a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race plod through the primaries, but according to Politico, he’s now thinking...

On January 22 (2012) on Fox News Sunday Mormon presidential candidate Mitt Romney answered a question from Chris Wallace regarding Mr. Romney’s generous financial gifts (tithing) to the Mormon Church. Mr. Romney said, "This is a country that believes in the Bible, the Bible speaks about providing tithes and offerings, I made a commitment to my church a long, long time ago that I would give 10 percent of my income to the church, and I’ve followed through on that commitment. And hopefully as people look at the various individuals who’re running for president they’d be pleased with someone who...

.........Verniece Zorn, a 70-year-old retired printing company worker, said she made a promise to herself years ago that if Gingrich ever ran for president, she would support him. She liked the newsletters he had sent her as a Georgia congressman. Zorn, who identifies herself as an evangelical Christian, said she has looked beyond Gingrich’s multiple marriages and acknowledged infidelities, and she believes he is the most capable leader in the race. “None of us are perfect. We all have our little hang-ups,” said Zorn, of Stockbridge. “He’s my first choice. I believe he knows more than all of them put...

I’m LDS, and I fully realize that the Mormon vote is going for Romney. He’s going to take Utah. And Arizona. Pardon me for not joining. I know the thinking. When that LDS tag is attached, members of the Church all understand that the person is honest, loving, trustworthy, etc., and all the others are questionable. I don’t buy that. I’ve seen too much of life to just accept that premise without any question. The rough approximations of the assumption of the character of LDS people are true, but in specific instances, you can’t count on that as a perfectly...

Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul. Part of the reason for Santorum's surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney's favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point...

C-SPAN's coverage of the 39th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) continues Friday with speeches by the leading presidential candidates and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. The three top GOP candidates for the Republican nomination -- former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- are taking a break from the campaign trial to address attendees. Rep. Ron Paul was invited to speak but will instead continue campaigning.

Conservative columnist and Conservative Political Action Conference fan favorite Ann Coulter took to the stage at CPAC Friday afternoon to offer some comments about her frustrations with President Obama, her support for presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and the general unattractiveness of liberal women. In response to an audience question regarding how a person could be both a women and a conservative, Coulter explained that is what true women actually are. “I think all real females are right-wingers,” Coulter said, ” and I can tell you that based on experience — and my bodyguard will back me up on this —...

“Dear Ann, In the past you have been our warrior princess of conservatism. It’s what drew millions of us to fall in love with you so many years ago….ah young love…(sigh)….where was I? OH YES! I must admit it has been mostly a long and blissful marriage dear Ann. Listening to your sweet sarcastic voice on the evening programs, cuddling in front of the fireplace with your latest book excoriating the ethically vacuous left, fighting the good fight together (you the Ann of Arc up there swinging your sword at all comers and us adulating grunts doing our best to...

PROVO -- A major new art exhibit is currently undergoing installation at the BYU Museum of Art is expected to attract 100,000 visitors and will feature art from the world of Islam. KSL was able to get an exclusive first look. The "Beauty and Belief" exhibit is expected to attract 100-thousand visitors. Works will travel to four museums in America, but they make their first stop in Provo. The exhibit team is mounting 250 works of art. A pair of 19th century mother-of-pearl doors from India were donated by the Doris Duke Foundation in Hawaii. A heavy, jewel-encrusted box from...

Rick Santorum has backtracked from his 2008 endorsement of Mitt Romney by saying he was for “anyone put McCain.” But in this 2008 interview with Laura Ingraham Santorum praised Romney at great length — contradicting some of what he says today. In the interview, Santorum calls Romney a “true conservative” and says he “is someone we can trust.”

The United States may get its first Mormon president this year, if Republican candidate Mitt Romney prevails in his bid. But in France, the Mormon faith is viewed with deep suspicion and a project to build the country's first Mormon temple is proving to be controversial.  The temple is expected to be located in the Paris suburb of Chesnay, where the temple is expected to be located.  Until recently, Chesnay was mostly known because of its proximity to Versailles, the dazzling 18th-century palace that was home to French "Sun King" Louis XIV.  But today, this small town west of Paris...

ATLANTA - Mitt Romney says he's a better tea party candidate than his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.The former Massachusetts governor lashed out at Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum on Wednesday, the day after losing contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.Romney says his opponents are members of a Republican Party that had lost its way. He says spending on lawmakers' pet projects doubled under Gingrich, a former House speaker. He says Santorum, a former senator, was a major proponent of that type of spending.Romney says the tea party movement was created to fight Washington insiders who spend too much...

A festering three-fer for the odious Martin Bashir. Not content to inflict him on the viewing public him during his own slot, MSNBC put Bashir on The Ed Show this evening, where he proceeded to slime, in one fetid fell swoop, Mormons, evangelicals, and Mitt Romney. With Schultz all too quick to agree, Bashir claimed most evangelicals wouldn't support Romney because of his membership in the LDS church. For his purposes, Bashir badly misrepresented a Mark Twain quote. Bashir claimed that "the vast majority" of evangelicals share Twain's view that the Book of Mormon is "chloroform," implying there was something...

Jay Cost did a little mythbusting Monday regarding conservative support for Mitt Romney: The conventional wisdom is that conservatives are dissatisfied with Romney, whose electoral coalition is comprised mostly of moderates and even liberal voters. That might be true of conservative media elites, but the broader electorate of conservatives have been much more amenable to Romney. No doubt, Romney is dominating among moderates and liberals, but his haul is just as strong among “somewhat conservative” voters. It is only among the “very conservative” that Gingrich has a lead – although even this is much less than what one might have...

<p>Despite major gains in pop and political culture, many Evangelicals remain wary of Mormons. Just ask Latter Day Saints (LDS) church member Mitt Romney who is currently struggling to claim front-runner status as the Republican nominee. Political pundits believe the lack of Evangelical support is crippling his campaign.</p>

Mitt Romney never has bad hair days, but yesterday was truly a bad political one. How bad? Consider this: • Romney did not win a single county in either Missouri or Minnesota. • He won the Minnesota caucus by 19 points in 2008, but finished third last night—28 points behind Santorum. • He won nearly 30 percent of the Missouri vote in 2008 in a tight three-man race, but won only 25 percent last night in a race with only one opponent whom the national media had given up for dead. • He won the Colorado caucus by over 40...

Gail Collins loves telling the story of how Mitt Romney drove his family to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car — and telling it, and telling it, and telling it. The liberal New York Times columnist has mentioned the incident in print 19 times, by our count. She devoted a column to it in 2007 when Romney first ran for president. In another column, she suggested John McCain pick Romney for his running mate "so I can repeatedly revisit the time Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the station-wagon roof." She...

According to Michael Walsh, almost 20% of both Republicans and Indepedents along with 30% of Democrats have vowed that they will not vote for a Mormon for president. Yet the Republican establishment naively and foolishly believes this a non-issue. By November, chances are that many Americans will be given a first class education on the history of Mormonism, which will be very difficult to overcome at the ballot box ...

Mitt Romney has based nearly his entire presidential campaign on his experience as a businessman. "I spent my career in the private sector," Romney told Fox News in late November. "I think that's what the country needs right now." Romney has said roughly the same thing hundreds of times since. Indeed, there are campaign appearances in which he dwells on his experience as a private equity consultant and does not even mention that he was once governor of Massachusetts. Romney and his campaign aides have made the calculation that an I-know-how-to-crea te-jobs appeal will work in today's difficult economy. But...

This image says it all. A Dogs Against Romney Pack Member was stopped by the Littleton, Colorado police yesterday for having a dog crate on the roof of his car. The Pack Member , identified only as "Oredigger," was on his way to protest at a Mitt Romney event yesterday with the crate atop his car carrying a stuffed toy dog when the police officer, believing he was actually transporting a live dog on the roof of his car, stopped him. Says Oredigger, "I was pulled over for suspected animal abuse."

I thought it'd be fun to spy on this Mitt Romney live chat room to see what they're saying in the wake of his defeats. Below is your window into the mind of the Romneybots via some excerpts. They're somewhat depressed over the loss and going into attack mode on Santorum like good like Romneybots. Feel free to monitor the chat room and post any interesting tidbits here. Note all the insulting remarks towards evangelicals, "crackers," and right-wingers. Also, I was surprised to see a fair amount of them are semi-supporting Ron Paul or want him as V.P. They posted...

Mitt Romney, asked if there were any lessons learned in the wake of losing all three Republican voting contests Tuesday night, said that he simply “wasn’t there to respond” to former Sen. Rick Santorum’s attacks in the days leading up to voting. But today, speaking to reporters on a tarmac in Atlanta, where he flew from Colorado after losses in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado Tuesday night, he did not hesitate to go on offense, accusing two chief GOP rivals of behaving “like Democrats.”

Mitt Romney acknowledged on Wednesday that his path to the Republican presidential nomination is not going to be easy after three shock losses to newly ascendant rival Rick Santorum. A day after Santorum beat him in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Romney attempted to play down the results, saying his campaign did not devote a lot of time and money to the three state nominating contests and chose to compete strongly elsewhere.

Americans, from sea to shining sea, are hurting and confused. We are told, daily, that everything is getting better. America's best days are still in her future. The overwhelming evidence (continually declining home prices, escalating unemployment figures, massive cuts in defense as our enemies strengthen, etc.) point in the opposite direction. What are we to believe? Several politicians, who are all fine speakers, are running for the presidency. I fear that, metaphorically, our nation has hit a massive iceberg and has an irreparable rip from bow to stern. Like the RMS Titanic, we're going down. We don't need excellent orators;...

Rick Santorum attended a rally for Mitt Romney in St. Louis in 2008. Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., threw his support this morning to Mitt Romney for president. Santorum’s endorsement was sought by all of the Republican candidates in the past year. “In a few short days, Republicans from across this country will decide more than their party’s nominee,” Santorum says in a statement released by the Romney campaign. “They will decide the very future of our party and the conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan built. Conservatives can no longer afford to stand on the sidelines in this election,...

Way before the first caucus in Iowa, conservative have been concerned that the "Republican establishment" would propel the decidedly un-conservative Mitt Romney to the GOP nomination. The mainstream media has been happy to play along, practically writing the obituary of the tea party movement and discounting conservative contenders. The president's reelection campaign has focused almost exclusively on Mr. Romney as its de facto opponent. And yet somehow, despite all the collective firepower against them, those conservative voters are making their voices heard. They may not achieve an absolute victory for a conservative candidate via the primary process, but they are...

...the Romney campaign held one such call featuring former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, a Republican who served with Gingrich... "...he really used to be erratic and I think he probably still is," "One of my feelings with him is he was always so full of himself. I mean, humility was not in his makeup. And he was cocky and arrogant and of course didn’t listen to anybody." What no one mentioned...was that in 2005 Vucanovich, the first woman ever elected to Congress from Nevada, published a memoir... "Newt Gingrich was the brightest of all the speakers with whom I served, and...

...I attended a luncheon for the Holocaust Museum...Each year I ask myself, Why am I here? ...Tis a gruesome tradition. I think of my grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Meyer Rakowski... My grandfather was the...last — descendant of a rabbinic dynasty hailing back to 11th century France. At age 82, grandpa was gassed in Auschwitz, together with 47 members of my parents' families. I last saw him two years earlier, when my parents, my brother and I were deported to Siberia. I'm retelling this old history because now, with Mitt Romney possibly becoming the Republican nominee, it's important to remember that his...

Brian Kemp will go ahead and accept Judge Malihi's decision that Barack Obama meets all eligibility qualifications and will allow him to be on Georgia's primary ballot for 2012. http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/02/georgia-secretary-of-state-brian-kemp.html

Former California Gov. Pete Wilson today endorsed Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, part of a rising move within the party to rally around the frontrunner. Romney has made a big effort to line up high-profile endorsements, although several notables, such as former Florida Gov. and conservative darling Jeb Bush, have remained neutral. Wilson, although considered a conservative in California, is viewed as fairly moderate within the current GOP. In his endorsement statement, Wilson called Romney “an enthusiastic believer in American exceptionalism” and called him “a spectacular example of it.” (American exceptionalism is a term traced back to Frenchman Alexis...

[Me: The title of the article says "hesitant," but the article says that 22% is a flat "no" in answer to the question ending with "would you vote for that person?"]Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party's nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967. [Me: Is less than 4 out of 5 really considered "vast?"]The new Gallup poll, conducted June 9-12, finds nearly 20% of Republicans and independents saying they would not support a Mormon for president....

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...

A couple of polls came out from Public Policy Polling this weekend showing that Santorum seems to be replacing Newt Gingrich as the main "not Romney" candidate in Minnesota and Colorado. There seems to be a desire to "give another conservative a chance" as well as to potentially field a candidate without as much baggage as Newt so that Mitt Romney's negative ad carpet bombing will not be as effective. I think though that this reasoning is fallacious and switching support from Newt to Santorum at this point would be a major mistake. Let's just look at what I believe...