Free Republic

As Mitt Romney puts the South Carolina primary in his rear-view mirror and hits the accelerator in a bid to win Florida, he may discover himself crashing headlong into the bitter legacy of Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor who defected from the GOP and was soundly defeated for the U.S. Senate by Marco Rubio. Romney’s “Charlie Crist” problem is this: Romney’s chief campaign strategist and several of his most senior campaign staff were Crist’s top political advisers — the same ones who crafted Crist’s moderate, ignore-the-tea-party strategy epitomized in Crist’s famous “hug” of President Barack Obama. That strategy led...

Mitt Romney has helped re-energise the Tea Party Just three days ago, many pundits were writing the obituary of the Tea Party. The unstoppable rise of Mitt Romney and the hopeless divisions within the conservative field seemed to suggest that the radical grassroots movement had passed away. The UK’s Guardian newspaper (a sort of Pravda for public sector workers) was gleeful. Ewen MacAskill wrote, “The noise and energy associated with the Tea Party since it exploded on to the US political scene three years has been stilled, overshadowed in recent months by the youthful enthusiasm of the Occupy Wall Street...

.... On Sunday, Romney tried to make a virtue of his shortcomings,... "I'm not someone who is angry at — and mad, but I am very upset about the direction this country is headed," the former Massachusetts governor said on "FoxNews Sunday," and he implicitly contrasted himself with an opponent who had a reputation as a Washington bomb-thrower. "No one says to me that I'm someone that flies off the handle, that I'm erratic or incapable of dealing with stressful situations. People see me as a guy who's calm under fire. I've been tested time and time again, had success,...

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Voters battled rainstorms and tornado warnings as they streamed to the polls here today, capping a tumultuous and at times politically dizzying week of events that, by tonight, could potentially reshape the Republican presidential nomination process once more. Extending a more aggressive phase of his campaign, Mitt Romney today renewed attacks on Newt Gingrich, calling on the former House speaker to release records related to his role consulting Freddie Mac, the quasi-public lending agency that many blame for accelerating the housing crisis. “I’d like to see what he actually told Freddie Mac,” Romney told reporters after visiting...

After weeks of stalling, Mitt Romney did an about-face on Tuesday and said he will release his tax returns in April and that they will show he pays close to 15 percent of his income in taxes. Romney, a multimillionaire, has been under pressure from his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and others to release the information. He'd previously said he wouldn't release it. He suggested Tuesday that he would make public only one year's worth of information, for 2011. Speaking to reporters after a campaign stop in South Carolina, Romney said most of his income comes from investments,...

(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) -- Amid continued pressure from his rivals to make public his tax returns, Mitt Romney said at a Republican presidential candidates debate Monday night that he will "probably" release that information in April. That timetable is in line with tradition of past nominees, who have released their information around tax day in early April. "I have nothing in them that suggests there is any problem," he said. "I'm happy to do so." Romney had said as recently as last Wednesday that he doesn't feel the need to do anything more than the law requires him to do,...

MYRTLE BEACH, SC - Texas Governor Rick Perry is demanding Mitt Romney release his tax records, warning there can't be any surprises should the GOP front-runner become the party's nominee. "Anita and I put out our taxes every year since back the 80s, and every candidate up there, they should put their taxes out, including Mitt," Perry insisted during a town hall meeting. "You know, November, or excuse me, September and October, is not the time for us to be finding out that whoops, there's something out there that is a problem. We need to know it now." Perry has...

I had the privilege to attend the meeting of evangelicals in Texas this weekend. Due to pressing matters before me Saturday I could not make the Saturday portion, but was there Friday hearing the advocacy for the candidates, the run down, etc. I did not vote. As with all meetings of Christian conservatives, we all pledge to have an off the record meeting and a handful of the sinners start leaking like sieves. It is aggravating and typically why I never say a word in these meetings. Since a few have decided to leak so many details from the meeting...

SUMTER, S.C. – Presidential candidates hear tales of woe all the time on the campaign trail. But rarely does one respond by pulling cash out of his back pocket to help a struggling voter pay her bills. Mitt Romney did just that here Saturday night, according to ABC News. When a 55-year-old woman, Ruth Williams, who said she lost her job last October, approached the Republican presidential front-runner on the rope line following a campaign rally in Sumter, he gave her what an aide later said was about $50 or $60. It did not appear that the exchange was caught...

ROSE: I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is. BROKAW: No, I don't either. ROSE: I don't know how he really sees where China is. BROKAW: We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy. ROSE: I don't really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him? BROKAW: You know that's an interesting question. ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches, two of them. BROKAW: I don't know what books he's read. ROSE: What do we know about the heroes...

he endorsement from Bush, who despite prodding from members of his famous family and prominent Republicans decided to sit out the 2012 contest, is the latest sign that the Republican establishment is coalescing around Romney after months publicly griping about finding another candidate. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/jeb_bush_to_endorse_romney_before_florida_primary.html#ixzz1jLlczld4

The on-again, off-again battle over how to tax the compensation of private equity managers may be on again, thanks to the confluence of two seemingly unrelated events. The first is the controversy over the role of Bain Capital, the investment partnership whose founders included Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. The second is the disclosure by another firm, The Carlyle Group, of how its top executives are compensated. Both have heightened the focus on what these outfits do and how they are taxed. Bain and Romney, of course, have come under withering criticism from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, who allege...

Put the worst possible construction on Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist and it still looks much better than Barack Obama's. Pecking at the entrails of a limping economy, Obama is the vulture socialist. A president who promised to bankrupt the coal industry is in no position to gainsay Romney's record of job creation at Bain Capital. Romney created at least 100,000 jobs in private life; Obama created none. Then Obama entered office and racked up a record of job destruction that would give even the most reckless corporate raiders pause. The vulture socialists feed off an economy that...

Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has called for Gov. Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, as well as the data that could substantiate his claim of having created 100,000 jobs as CEO of Bain Capital. Romney has resisted releasing his tax returns, and his campaign has thus far refused to provide the hard proof to back up his claims about Bain. “Governor Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, and people are wanting to know: is there proof?” Palin told Sean Hannity on Fox News. Rick Tyler, former Gingrich aide and head of Newt Gingrich’s...

It is commonly argued that Mitt Romney has benefited from a weak Republican field, which is true. And that the attacks of his opponents have been late and diffuse. True, and true. But the political accomplishment of Willard Mitt Romney should not be underestimated. The moderate, technocratic former governor of a liberal state is poised to secure the nomination of the most monolithically conservative Republican Party of modern history. Some of this improbable achievement can be attributed to Romney's skills as a candidate. In 14 debates, he delivered one gaffe (the $10,000 bet) and once lost his temper (with Rick...

(CNN) – John Bolton, the former U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, is set to endorse presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a source close to Romney’s presidential campaign said Wednesday. Bolton served in the administrations of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before former President George W. Bush appointed him the U.N. role.

<p>Perplexing but true: Mitt Romney is on the glide path to the most easily secured nomination a Republican presidential candidate has ever had — while being one of the weakest major candidates either party has ever seen.</p> <p>Paul will certainly stay in it with Romney all the way. Somebody has to. And that is not good news for the Republican Party, which will have to reckon with possibly ill-behaved Paul delegates at the convention in Tampa in August — delegates who might heckle Romney from the floor and otherwise disrupt his coronation.</p>

Mitt Romney rolled to an easy victory Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary, taking a broad stride toward capturing the GOP presidential nomination as the contest heads south for a pair of potentially make-or-break contests.

No one has any idea how common this attitude toward Mormons is on the right or how it will play out in the primary process and, if it works out that way, the general election. It will be partly offset by the enthusiasm of Mormons who make up a sizable voting bloc in some western states. But it will hurt Romney's chances in several southern primary states and could affect a close general election contest. Most mainstream protestant religions recognize the LDS as a Christian sect. That doesn't seem to matter to Keller who is wont to see Satan in...

Mitt Romney is the only 2012 candidate whom a majority of Republicans — including conservatives — consider an “acceptable” GOP nominee for president, according to a Gallup Poll Tuesday. In the new survey, 59 percent of all Republicans said Romney would be an acceptable presidential nominee for the Republican Party. Just 46 percent said the same for Newt Gingrich and 45 percent for Rick Santorum, who were trailed by Rick Perry at 37 percent, Ron Paul at 29 percent and Jon Huntsman at 21 percent. Romney is also the only candidate whom the majority of both conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans...