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NASHUA, NH -- Newt Gingrich plans to open up what could be a bitter new front in his fight with Mitt Romney with an ad accusing Romney of allowing taxpayer dollars to fund abortion in Massachusetts. The new ad will run in South Carolina "soon," according the Gingrich campaign. The topic of abortion has emerged as a particularly contentious issue between the Gingrich and Romney campaigns. Gingrich's accusation is that Romney's universal health care plan in Massachusetts explicitly provides for taxpayer funding of abortions. Romney responds by arguing that a longstanding Massachusetts supreme court decision, which as governor he had...

Santorum says Romney nomination "will destroy this country"

Talk with Tea Party leaders here in South Carolina and you quickly realize that the toughest job in the Mitt Romney campaign would be the assignment of doing outreach to these activists. Maybe not a mission impossible, but close. They really want no part of Romney. And there appears to be little he could say or do between now and Jan. 21, the date of the South Carolina primary, to change that. The Massachusetts health law Romney enacted as governor with its individual mandate called Romneycare by critics is just one of several reasons they give for their animus. There...

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is backing off a push to change his state's election rules before the March 6 presidential primary, after only two Republican candidates qualified for the ballot. The attorney general on Saturday had said he wanted to overhaul the process before the primary, calling the state's system "deficient." Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were locked out of the Virginia ballot after failing to meet the state's signature requirement, while three other candidates did not even try to meet the requirement. But by late Sunday, Cuccinelli had abandoned plans to file emergency legislation to address the matter,...

Confident Romney Draws Contrast With Surging Santorum Garrett Haake - With only days to go until the GOP primary contest finally begins in earnest, a new set of polling has brought forth a new anti-Romney candidate in the race, and today for the first time, Mitt Romney was asked by reporters to draw contrast between himself, and the surging former Sen. Rick Santorum. Keeping with his tradition of rarely attacking his Republican rivals directly, Romney reminded the press that Santorum endorsed him in 2008, and that the former Pennsylvania congressman and senator spent the majority of his career in Washington....

There are quite a few problems with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's December 28 coverage ("New fee coming for medical effectiveness research") concerning a new fee (i.e., tax) which will imposed on health insurance companies for each person they cover starting tomorrow. Several times (twice in the body and once as seen above in the headline), the story refers to the assessment as a "medical effectiveness research" fee (without quotes). Just once, in the eleventh paragraph, does Alonso-Zaldivar call it by its far more widely-known name (written as indicated): "comparative effectiveness" research. But the item which stuck out like a sore thumb with...

Mitt Romney once again pitches himself as the presidential candidate best poised to effectively reform government, in a new ad set to run in Iowa. The 30-second spot, which features footage from a speech by the former Massachusetts governor, will run in the Hawkeye State ahead of the first-in-the-nation Jan. 3 caucuses. "I'm going to do something to government. I'm going to make it simpler and smaller and smarter, getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states, and finally making government itself more efficient," Romney says in the commercial, titled "Conservative Agenda."

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, ACA, or "Obamacare"), signed into law March 2011, in the near term creates more than 100 new health care bureaucracies, a large increase in taxes, and new government expenses of $500 billion. Most importantly, however, it will create an incentive and penalty regime for health care institutions and professionals that will compromise traditional professional medical ethics. Embedded in PPACA is a system of mandates and incentives derivative of guidelines for efficient patient care that means some rationing. An example most often raising objections in the public discussion of PPACA is the Patient...

Requiring people to have health insurance is "conservative," GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it. The argument aims to improve Romney's appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. The Massachusetts law contains an individual mandate similar to the one in President Obama's healthcare law, which conservatives despise. "Personal responsibility," Romney said, "is more conservative in my view than something being given out for free by government."

President Obama says his health care "reform" will be good for business. Business has learned the truth. Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding. Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company's health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, "the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, 'We've gone to seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can't tell you.' I think that just kind of...

The “unlike some people” is merely implied, but this one’s so heavy-handed that he might as well have tacked on a few shots of Newt with his ex-wives framed by a torn “heart” graphic. I’m tempted to say this will do Romney as much harm as good simply because it stinks of desperation driven by Gingrich’s surge, but in truth it probably will help him a bit. For every Iowa political junkie who long ago priced Newt’s personal issues into his stock, there are probably two or three socially conservative caucusgoers who haven’t paid much attention yet and are just...

Mitt Romney refused to criticize his Massachusetts health-care program tonight, saying he would prefer to lose the primary rather than renounce it. “I’m standing by what I did in Massachusetts,” Romney said on Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier. “I’m not trying to dust it aside. I’m absolutely firm that it was the right thing for our state. I’ll defend that and I understand it has political implications. And if it keeps me from winning a primary, so be it. But that happens to be the truth.” “It’s by far, the biggest challenge I have in the primary...

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. But for months, the threshold of support for the former Massachusetts governor hasn't inched above a quarter of Republican voters in national polls. For many GOP voters in early primary states, hesitation about Romney comes back to one thing: their perception that he has routinely molded his views to suit the...

Remember when they laughed off, ridiculed and otherwise denied Sarah Palin’s assertion that Obamacare would usher in death panels? Listen to this neurosurgeon, fresh from a seminar in Washington DC, tell about what it is that the HHS has in store for seniors: (AUDIO AT LINK) The Anchoress calls it what it is. Evil: So if you are a 70 year-old Nancy Pelosi, or Paul Krugman — with a potent private health insurance plan such as the one enjoyed by Members of Congress and other bureaucrats — you will get every appropriate surgery and treatment applicable. But if you are...

After months of uncertainty, Mitt Romney has decided to roll the dice and go for a win in the Iowa caucus. But the former governor is betting that he can triumph in the state without any significant support from social conservatives — normally a vital voting bloc — and is making no real effort to win them over.

Former Romney adviser accuses him of `lying’ about Romneycare By Greg Sargent Jonathan Gruber, the M.I.T. professor whose ideas were central to Mitt Romney’s health reform law as governor of Massachusetts, has pilloried Romney in the past for seeming to distance himself from his signature accomplishment. But I’m not sure he’s ever gone quite as far as he did in this interview with Capital New York, in which he said Romney is flat out “lying” when he tries to make a distinction between Romneycare and Obamacare:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) indicated on Tuesday that he has come around to Mitt Romney on the issue of healthcare. “Romney’s been very clear that he’s against ObamaCare and he’s going to repeal it. So I for a second don’t worry about whether he’s going to shy away from repealing the president’s health care law,” Ryan said in an interview with The Weekly Standard. (snip) Ryan went on to compliment Romney on a variety of issues. He described Romney as proving himself “pretty capable and strong and resilient” when it comes to the slew of GOP debates over the past...

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico has a new article up that addresses one of the biggest liabilities of Mitt Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts: the fact that health-insurance premiums in Massachusetts have skyrocketed since the law was put into place. Even though Romney promised at the time that the law would reduce the cost of health insurance (sound familiar?), today, as Haberkorn reports, Romneycare’s defenders claim that the law was never meant to reduce health costs. Indeed, Timothy Murphy, Secretary of Health and Human Services under Romney, told her that reducing costs was not “the proper role of government.” Huh?...

A dogged freshman lawmaker who refused to budge from the House chambers earlier this month until the Patrick administration came clean on how much taxpayers coughed up last year for free health care to illegal aliens finally got his answer yesterday: a whopping $93 million.

On the Republican campaign trail, he derides any such public aid. But the healthcare law he signed as Massachusetts governor allows it. Reporting from Washington— The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance. Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.