Free Republic

As his formidable campaign marches inexorably toward the nomination, Mitt Romney should learn a vital lesson from the guy who beat him in his first race for public office: Sen. Ted Kennedy. In 1980, Teddy lost his own bid for the presidency because he couldn’t answer a simple question about why he wanted the job. Like Kennedy, Romney could undermine his confident drive to unseat a stumbling incumbent unless he prepares clear, concise, and forceful responses on what he means to do with the office he seeks. Near the end of the disastrous Jimmy Carter administration, most analysts expected an...

He’s too handsome, too rich, and too pompous to win the hearts of ordinary Americans.Republicans are doing something quite strange at the moment. They are in the process of choosing a candidate whom hardly any of them actually likes. Though Mitt Romney won the Florida primary handily yesterday, rumbles of dissatisfaction with him continue.* Romney isn’t so much winning the Republican nomination as having it default to him for lack of any compelling alternative. The case for voting for Romney goes as follows: Of the Republican presidential candidates, he is the only one with any real chance of defeating President...

COMMENTARY | During the Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday night, the subject of Newt Gingrich's moon colony idea came up. During the exchange, Mitt Romney especially revealed a smallness of vision and an ignorance of the issue. [snip]If Romney wants to know why Gingrich is so focused on the moon, he could go no further than to read Paul Spudis' The Case for Renewed Human Exploration of the Moon" in which the rationale for returning to the moon, not only for science, but also as a prelude to the exploration of the Solar System is examined. Spudis also...

(CNN) -- Less than 10 months from the general election, Barack Obama appears to be laying the groundwork for a reprise of Harry Truman's populist 1948 campaign. Running for a second term with a soft economy, the president's ready to tie the Republican nominee to what he characterizes as an extreme, do-nothing Congress serving the interests of the wealthy elite at the expense of the broad middle class. But if Obama is Truman, does that make GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney the next Tom Dewey? Maybe -- at least as far as public persona goes. There are several striking similarities between...

Panacea, Florida (CNN) -- While media outlets and Beltway pundits might use state polls to gauge the race in Florida between GOP presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, Ron Crum uses poles. Fishing poles. Crum, a Republican small business owner in this sleepy seaside town south of Tallahassee, calls Romney a multi-millionaire who expects to get breaks because he's rich -- be it a low tax rate or the GOP nomination. But former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Crum says, is a man who understands the plight of the working class and can articulate conservative principles effectively. Picking up...

Mitt Romney attacked his GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich over what has to date been one of Gingrich’s most effective debate methods — going after the moderators and the media for questions he deems inappropriate. “It’s very easy to talk down a moderator,” Romney said Wednesday on Fox News. “The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media.”

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney struck an especially low blow at Newt Gingrich in South Carolina Tuesday: He compared the former speaker to Al Gore. Speaking at a rally at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., the GOP front-runner derided Mr. Gingrich’s claim during a debate Monday night that he had a hand in the creation of millions of jobs during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Mr. Romney noted that Mr. Gingrich was only in his second term in the House when Mr. Reagan became president, and argued that the private sector, not government, is responsible for job creation.

Santorum says Romney nomination "will destroy this country"

'A house divided against itself cannot stand," is attributed mainly to Newt Gingrich's and Barack Obama's favorite Republican, Abraham Lincoln, but its appeal to unity has been around since the Gospel of Mark. As is its habit, the Republican Party is trying to affirm this eternal truth one more time. Much as it benefits the incumbent president, there is little point in not admitting the obvious: The Republican divider is the party's front-runner, Mitt Romney. This is the one clear message delivered the past half year by the patient people of Iowa. Once all the other top-tier Republican presidential candidates...

Some foreign policy experts who joined Mitt Romney's campaign have lobbying and business backgrounds that could shape the advice they give to the Republican presidential candidate. Their interests include lobbying against cuts in U.S. aid to Pakistan and ties to defense companies with government contracts for cybersecurity, Navy shipbuilding and ballistic missile interceptors — all issues that Romney has cited in recent ... Former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, named last week as a special adviser to Romney on foreign policy, lobbied this year for the Council on Pakistan Relations, a U.S.-based support group trying to stave off reduced economic aid...

Early and volatile, the Republican Presidential nomination race—at least for now—appears to be settling into a contest between consistent front runner Mitt Romney, and the latest surging, “non-Romney alternative”, former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Unfortunately the CNN/Heritage Foundation/American Enterprise televised debate of last week did not highlight the yawning gap between these front running contenders’ views on the existential threat doctrine of our Islamic enemies: jihad and its motivational, sacralized religio-political “law”, Sharia. During an interview with US News reporter Dan Gligoff published June 3, 2009, Mitt Romney offered the following bizarre observation about the living Islamic institution of jihad,...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leads the GOP field in Iowa according to a new poll, holding a double digit lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. In a new Rasmussen Reports poll, Gingrich holds 32 percent among likely caucus goers. Mitt Romney comes in with 19 percent and businessman Herman Cain holds 13 percent. Ron Paul received 10 percent support but no other candidate broke double digits. The poll also found that although 77 percent of respondents said they would vote for any GOP candidate who received the nomination, 32 percent said that they would consider a third-party candidate...

For Mitt Romney this is like the good old days at Bain Capital, except this time his takeover involves not another company but the Republican Party. In fact, Romney is seeking a hostile takeover of the conservative movement, methodically moving to take over Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and finally Newt Gingrich. Conservatives might remember what Romney did after he took over companies. You did not want to be a worker in a firm Romney took over. He liked layoffs. I now expect Romney to move fast to the right for a few weeks while...

Back On Top: Mitt Surges Ahead In New Poll As Half Of GOP Think He Will Be The Nominee By DAILY MAIL REPORTER 13th November 2011 Mitt Romney has a growing lead in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination with almost half of the party's voters expect him to be the nominee. Twenty-eight per cent of Republicans backed the former Massachusetts governor, giving him a lead of eight percentage points over his nearest challenger Herman Cain in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken November 10-11. Romney was five percentage points ahead in a survey November 7-8. 'Most presidential': Almost half...

No one touched Romney. He was unflappable and knowledgeable. He again showed the right political instinct to want to address the struggles of the middle class, although his tax plan doesn’t do it. His China-bashing will probably play well in the Midwest, although it’s foolhardy on the merits. He consistently got applause. I remember one of the early debates when Romney was flying above the other candidates and Pawlenty–I think–attacked him and he declined to reply, saying “that’s fine.” He said the same thing tonight when Santorum went after him. After all the churning in the race, Romney is in...

There are two, primary things that have fueled Mitt Romney's campaign -- his image as an economic guru and the idea that he's the most electable of the Republican nominees. But there are joint arguments that call the latter into question. First, there's the theoretical argument -- made today by Red State's Erick Erickson in a blistering, bruising post -- which claims that Romney is a certain loser against Barack Obama. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack...

Mitt’s GOP Plank – Talking Points Mitt Romney opposed the two most successful conservative policy efforts of the last 30 years… the Reagan policies of the 1980`s and the Contract With America of the 1990`s. I have always been impressed with any so-called ‘self-proclaimed conservative’ or ‘Republican’ who parrots discredited Keynesian economic thinking, believes in man-made climate change and embraces government ‘mandates’ and social engineering. There is nothing in Mitt Romney’s record that indicates that he is anything other than a liberal progressive Republican ‘masquerading’ as a palatable conservative. Mitt Romney represents everything that is wrong with the Republican Party...

Romney is No Conservative “We don’t intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all.” “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers. Don’t give up your ideals, don’t compromise, don’t turn to expediency —...

Mitt Romney, under fire from all sides on the strength of his political convictions, said Thursday he has been as consistent as a person can be during his political career. "I've been as consistent as human beings can be," the presidential candidate said in a meeting with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Seacoast Media Group. "I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every single time, and so there are some folks who, obviously, for various political and campaign purposes will try and find some change and try to draw great attention to something which looks...

DAYTONA BEACH -- At the Florida Tea Party Convention Saturday, you could find buttons calling for Marco Rubio to be on the presidential ticket, t-shirts declaring that Barack Obama has made communism cool again, and freeze-dried foods to last up to 25 years in case society collapses. Scarce among the hundreds of conservative activists gathered in Daytona Beach? Any enthusiasm for Mitt Romney, the man widely expected to win the Republican presidential nomination. “The party establishment has wanted Romney all along, and they’ve been pushing him on us,” lamented James Koll of Fort Dodge, Iowa, who said he would support...