Free Republic

It doesn’t matter if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa caucuses tonight or not. He is about to experience a severe political hemorrhage over his refusal to disclose his tax returns. Full disclosure: I am supporting President Obama for reelection because I agree almost entirely with his policies and I disagree with every Republican candidate on the fundamental issues I care about most. But I must say I have admired Mitt Romney for a long time — his business and political career, and especially, as a father. I met two of his sons on different occasions in the green room at...

DES MOINES, Iowa — Looking past Iowa, Mitt Romney defended his conservative credentials Tuesday as he anticipated escalated attacks in New Hampshire and beyond from his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. “Perhaps people forget that I ran for president four years ago, you may recall that along with Mike Huckabee I was the conservative alternative to John McCain,” Romney said on Fox News Channel. He was responding to rival Newt Gingrich, who had accused Romney of lying about his moderate record. Romney said Gingrich, who has fallen in polls in the face of negative attack ads by Romney’s allies,...

Since my New Year’s prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I’ve been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes. You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Republicans may be stupid but the GOP isn’t about to commit suicide. The other candidates are all weighed down by enough baggage to keep a 747 on the tarmac indefinitely. For his running mate, Romney will choose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Why do I say this? First,...

Mitt Romney Announces Virginia Leadership Team December 29, 2011 Location Boston, MA United States Mitt Romney today announced additional members of his Virginia leadership team. The additional members join Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, Delegate Chris Peace and Delegate Barbara Comstock as members of Mitt Romney’s leadership team. “Virginia is on the most business friendly states in America and these Virginia leaders understand we have to make jobs our number one domestic policy priority,” said Mitt Romney. “The Virginia Founding Fathers understood the principles of free enterprise, hard work, and innovation and I am pleased these Virginia leaders are standing with...

LATIMER, Iowa -- In an interview with RealClearPolitics on Thursday, Mitt Romney dismissed any possibility that Ron Paul might win the Republican nomination. "Ron Paul's not going to be our nominee," Romney said aboard his campaign bus, en route to a rally in Ames. Romney and Paul are currently tied in the latest RCP Iowa polling average. Romney’s comment came in response to a question about whether Paul’s foreign policy views might endanger the nation’s security if he were elected president.

Mitt Romney has now jumped to his biggest lead ever over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. It’s also the biggest lead a named Republican candidate has held over the incumbent in Rasmussen Reports surveying to date. The latest national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters favor the former Massachusetts governor, while 39% prefer the president. Ten percent (10%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) A week ago, Romney trailed Obama 44% to 41%. The week before that, he held a...

Google "Romney's Mormon problem" and you'll receive thousands of references to what the conventional wisdom says is the Republican presidential candidate's greatest liability among his party's largest voting bloc, religious conservatives. In the eyes of many Christians, Mitt Romney's Mormon faith is incompatible with Christian theology. Ironically, however, Romney can reassure skeptical Christian conservatives by stressing his Mormon values. That's because Mormonism is strongly associated with conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and marriage -- the very issues that are the greatest source of doubt about Romney among religious conservatives. As a member of the Church of Jesus...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican political figure and tea-party favorite Christine O’Donnell says she’s backing Mitt Romney’s presidential bid.</p> <p>O’Donnell cites executive experience as part of her reason for endorsing Romney. She announced her decision Tuesday night during an interview on Fox News Channel.</p>

Londonderry, New Hampshire (CNN) – Newt Gingrich responded to a call Monday by GOP rival Mitt Romney to return the money he received from mortgage giant Freddie Mac by issuing his own challenge. "If Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him," Gingrich told reporters after a town hall, referring to the company Romney ran. "And I'll bet you 10 dollars, not 10 thousand that he won't take the offer."

Mitt Romney appeared strangely agitated in his interview with Fox News host Bret Baier on Tuesday. Romney had won praise earlier in the campaign for his calmness. But the calmness has given way under campaign pressures to open irritation. He testily brushed off Baier's blameless questions as "unusual." Baier isn't exactly Martin Bashir, yet Romney felt the need to treat him like a particularly hostile questioner. Romney hasn't been this agitated since he grabbed at Rick Perry's shoulder. Behaving like a thin-skinned pol didn't lend any credence to Romney's claim during the interview that he is the refreshing outsider in...

<p>SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — As other Republican candidates have stumbled their way toward the presidential primaries, Mitt Romney has put together what would seem to be all the elements of a winning campaign: an effective staff, a robust treasury and smooth, knowledgeable performances both in debates and on the trail.</p>

Newt Gingrich did not walk on stage at Tuesday's Republican presidential debate planning to make a bold new statement on immigration. In debate prep, the former House speaker spent a lot of time with national security advisers discussing the issue of religious freedom abroad -- a topic he has tried to showcase recently -- but didn't discuss immigration at all. Besides, when Gingrich made his now-controversial remarks -- that he would permit some long-time illegal immigrants to stay in the United States permanently -- he wasn't saying anything he hadn't said earlier in the campaign. It's just that back then...

The least impressive thing about last night’s sterling Republican foreign-policy debate from venerable Constitution Hall in Washington DC was the overproduced opening, as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer introduced the candidates as if they were contestants on a quiz show instead of auditioning for the White House. Mercifully, that was the extent of the frivolousness that’s marred too many of the earlier debates. Once past that, we got an articulate, informed and serious group of candidates responding to sober, intelligent questions — most of which were posed from the audience by associates of two conservative think tanks, Heritage Foundation and the American...

"In short, the electoral experience of the last 50 years does nothing to undermine the common-sense notion that most political battles are won by seizing and holding the ideological center. In the last two presidential elections, more than 44% of voters described themselves as "moderate," and no conservative candidate could possibly prevail without coming close to winning half of them (as George W. Bush did in his re-election). The notion that ideologically pure conservative candidates can win by disregarding centrists and magically producing previously undiscovered legions of true-believer voters remains a fantasy. It is not a strategy. At the moment,...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received a coveted endorsement Sunday from New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Ayotte announced her support for Romney at a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire. Ayotte believes Romney is the GOP’s best chance to defeat President Barack Obama. “I have been impressed by the amount of time Mitt Romney has spent in New Hampshire, holding open town hall meetings, answering the tough questions and listening to voters,” Ayotte said in a Romney campaign press release. Ayotte’s popularity in New Hampshire should help Romney, who skipped a conservative Christian forum in Iowa Sunday where several of...

The GOP establishment elite lining up behind Mitt Romney are either tone deaf or brain dead. They've totally misread the mood of the American people. We the people are fed up with smooth-talking, two-faced, flip-flopping, business as usual big government political whoring and are not going to take it anymore!! McCain suspended his campaign in 2008 to rush back to Washington to save the world from the great economic collapse that would usher in the Great Depression II. Instead, he delivered America to the Marxist B. Hussein Obama who's ushering in the wholesale wanton destruction of America as a free...

Warren Buffett is on CNBC this morning... First, he sees all the Republicans going further and further to the right to out-Republican each other during the primary. It's natural, he says, though he's not sure it's good for the Republic. ...If he had to support a Republican, it would be, not surprisingly, Mitt Romney. Given that Buffett is a pro-business, mainstream Democrat this obviously makes sense. He doesn't mind his past as a PE cost-cutter, though he's not crazy about Bain Capital's history of drawing cash out of companies they stuff up with debt.

Free Republic founder Jim Robinson has a message for supporters of Mitt Romney: go away. In an email to POLITICO this afternoon, Robinson admitted that the site routinely blocks Romney supporters from posting -- and offered no apologies for the practice: Free Republic is a pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-small government, pro-constitution, pro-liberty site. Governor Romney is none of the above. His record is that of an abortionist, gay rights pushing, gun grabbing, global warming advocating, big government, mandate loving, constitution trampling, flip-flopping liberal progressive with no core values. That and the fact that he is the chief architect and advocate...

(Newser) – Mitt Romney's views on global warming are back in the news. This week, he reaffirmed his skepticism about humans contributing to climate change. CBS News detects a "rightward shift" as the campaign goes on, and both Democrats and Rick Perry agree, notes CNN. Judge for yourself, as Politico rounds up some of his statements on the subject: * Thursday: "My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us." * August:...