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Instead of appealing to voters to vote for him based upon x,y and z, he panders for votes by trying to increase his opponents negatives (as in FL) above his own by massively outspending them on negative ads. This approach has led to his negatives skyrocketing and his positives declining among independents and moderates. Fivethirtyeight and others have been monitoring this, and it isn't pretty. With each battle won (temporarily in Iowa and now Florida), he is headed to surpassing Obama's negatives or having lower positives (some show he already has) and he will ultimately lose against Obama if he...

This morning I authored a Vanity Post declaring that under no circumstance would I vote for Romney. Even though I am a lifelong Republican and have NEVER voted for a Democrat in my 60+ years, I am finished with the biased liberal media (including Fox) and the Republican establishment selecting my (losing) candidate. Here are some of my reasons: In 1976, a sitting MODERATE Republican president named Gerald R. Ford ran against a two-bit peanut farming liberal Georgia governor and LOST. 1n 1992, a sitting MODERATE Republican president named George Bush ran against a liberal Arkansas governor with a history...

In 1989, Bain Capital purchased controlling interest in Damon Corporation, a medical testing company located in Needham, Massachusetts. During the time that Bain held its ownership of the company Mitt Romney personally sat on the Board of Directors. And during that same period, Damon Corporation was busy submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicare to the tune of millions of dollars charged for unnecessary blood tests. ... By the time Damon pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Government of $25 million - and paid a total of $119 million in what was, at that time, the largest penalty of its...

It wasn't really a TARP style bailout - worse - Romney's Bain placed a $10 million dollar liability with the taxpayers. All this while he benefited $4 million dollars directly... The facts of the Bain & Co. turnaround are a little more complicated, but a Bostin Globe report from 1994 confirms that Bain saw several million dollars in loans forgiven by the FDIC. Fact remains an FDIC bailout only occurs when the Fed and politicians agree, not to mention the bailoit comes from funds paid by every bank customer who eats highet costs as a result of funds going to...

"...Mitt Romney says he saved Bain & Co. but he didn't tell you the day he took over he had his predecessor fire hundreds of employees or the way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million dollars. According to the Globe, Romney's company failed to repay at least $10 million dollars to a failed bank and the rest of us had to absorb the loss. Romney, he and others made $4 million dollars in this deal which cost ordinary people $10 million dollars. Mitt Romney - maybe he's just against government when it helps working...

In the Republican presidential candidate debates this weekend, Mitt Romney repeated his claim that he is an effective leader who created a "net net" of 100,000 jobs while he was working in the private sector. But three recent reports, by the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and by Fact Check.org, the nonprofit nonpartisan project run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania say that the Romney campaign has yet to offer convincing proof to back up the claim. ... It hardly seems plausible to suggest that he created the positions that make up the current...

Gordon Gekko Romney is being taken to task over his proclivities, and activities at Bain. To make it short, Romney engaged in what is commonly known as asset-stripping. My point in this thread isn't to delve into the minutiae of what asset-stripping entails, but rather to point out that Romney is attempting to pigeonhole Gingrich as being anti-free market capitalism through the use of a false choice: If Gingrich doesn't support what Romney did at Bain, then he is anti-free market capitalism. Romney's false choice... And all the while, Romney is trying to use a smokescreen to cover what he...

Romney: "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..."

Romney has a record where he touted his belief system, policy proposals, etc, when running for U.S. Senator against Ted Kennedy. He has a record as governor. But Romney says ignore THOSE specifics - here is who I claim to be now, and what I claim to stand for. And he says now to take him at his word about who he is and what he stands for. But he is low on specifics, especially tonight, and throughout the debates, Romney has been heavy on platitudes and speaking moatly in generalities (I will restore America, America can be great again,...

Don't be conned into nominating Mitt Romney.

"I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..." [then a reporter takes Romney to task].

Several news reports have it that Romney did not win the Iowa Caucuses. Mr. True supposedly has a photo showing 2 votes for Romney, not 22, on a piece of paper. Barring any objective, verifiable proof that shows more than 12 votes mistakenly being credited to Santorum, Romney lost. On the flip side, if Romney did win, the Weekly Standard, in a news piece entitled "Answers from Iowa," says that Romney's 24.6% in the Iowa Caucuses was the worst ever (for either party) for a candidate winning the Iowa Caucuses. Romney spent millions in Iowa, had the worst percentage ever,...

Though Romney is personally not working with any pro-Romney super PAC(s), can Romney at least tell them or ask them to cease any potential negative attack ads aimed at Gingrich or someone else? If he doesn't, is he still taking the high road? Secondly, how could pro-Romney forces ask pro-Obama forces to do the something if they won't? How can pro-Romney RINOS and CINOS berate Obama surrogates for saying something about Romney if pro-Romney surrogates do the same to GOP candidates?

... Mitt Romney set a new all-time record for the lowest winning share of the vote (for either party) in the Iowa caucuses - 25 percent [24.6%] - one point lower than Bob Dole's 26 percent level of support in 1996. That's well below the 31 percent tally that every previous Republican winner except for Dole had achieved... Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich both matched or surpassed the 13 percent level of support that John McCain on his way to winning the Republican nomination received in Iowa... Lastly, Romney failed to equal the 25.2 percent share of the vote that...

Mitt Romney edged Rick Santorum by a mere 8 votes in Tuesday's caucuses - a margin that amounted to a tie in the crucial opening act in the 2012 presidential race and propelled the newly reshaped contest to New Hampshire and beyond... The final count, as reported by Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn showed Romney winning 30,015 votes to Santorum's 30,007 votes, or 24.6 percent to 24.5 percent. Paul finished with 21.4 percent.

Remember Gray Davis, the Democrat ex-governor of California who preceded Ahhhnold? Davis spent milllions of dollars on ads trying to get his poll numbers up, and it didn't work. His poll numbers wouldn't go above around 39% even after millions of dollars were spent. Not a percent increase even. Not one perecent... Enter Mitt Romney. In 2008, he pulled in 25.2% of the vote in the Iowa Caucus. Millions spent since then, and in the 2012 Iowa Caucus, according to Fox News, 99% reporting, he is at....wait for it... 25%. CNN has 100% reporting, and has Romney at 24.5%. So...

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…

It doesn't matter if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa caucuses tonight. He is about to experience a severe political hemorrhage over his refusal to disclose his tax returns...

Second part, final part. Some in the GOP and "conservative" talking heads need to do the same for both: chastise Obama for not wanting to run on his record and his gearing up to run a super negative campaign against the eventual GOP nominee and also chastise Romney for not happily running on his record, and sitting back and letting others do his attacking for him against fellow GOP candidates. Romney needs to run on his record, right? What is in Romney's record that he shouldn't be proud of?

Obama cannot run on his record (Obamacare, Frank-Dodd, Porkulus, the bailouts, Obamacare exemptions for some and and some states, but not others, green jobs, etc, ) and doesn't want to run on his record. He will smear the eventual GOP nominee, and run a negative campaign, and actually let superpacs do it for him. Same with Romney. He cannot run on his record as governor, his position on global warming, etc, and so, sit back, say nothing, and allow superpacss to run his GOP opponents (like Gingrich) into the ground through negative campaigning. I don't care for Newt "Scozzafava" Gingrich,...