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Republican Mitt Romney is faltering with white working-class voters crucial to his party's drive to capture the White House, even as he tries to fend off a rising GOP challenger, Rick Santorum, who wields strong blue-collar appeal. The wealthy former Bain Capital chief has led his rivals by comfortable margins among white college graduates, according to combined polls of voters in the first five states that held presidential nominating contests. But the exit and entry surveys showed only a modest Romney advantage among whites who lack college degrees, the yardstick analysts typically use to define the working class.

On Monday, the New Jersey Senate passed a same sex marriage bill by a 24 to 16 vote. Today Gov. Chris Christie said he would stand by his vow to veto the legislation. “Yesterday was a good bunch of theater, but that’s all it was,” Christie said at a press conference. “It was theater.”

"He could have stopped it, and should have stopped it," Huckabee said. CNSNews.com: Governor Romney should have stood up to the Court and said, "No"? Huckabee: He should've. (August 2008) Old news? Yes — and Mitt Romney hopes it will be ignored or forgotten. How does Romney manage to bury his past political sins? With a lot of help from his former critics — including Governor Huckabee — who seem to suffer from amnesia. But what of the media's duty to vet the candidates? Shouldn't every significant action in a candidate's record be under review? Why is the media —...

The Romney yesterday campaign denied knowing about a 2002 flier distributed by the Romney campaign during Gay Pride Week in Massachusetts while he was running for Governor. Fehrnstrom told the Huffington Post's Sam Stein, "I don't know where those pink flyers came from. I was the communications director on the 2002 campaign. I don't know who distributed them... I never saw them and I was the communications director." Fehrnstrom continued "I never saw them and I never approved them. I'm not quite sure where they came from." But a former Romney campaign volunteer who is now a fiscal policy scholar...

"The main reason the Republican establishment overwhelmingly favors Mitt Romney over Newt Gingrich is that Romney stands a better chance of beating Barack Obama," says Jonathan Chait at New York. So it's a problem for Romney that "as the campaign goes on, this seems to be growing less true." A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that negative views of Romney have "spiked" over the past two weeks, from a net +4 favorability rating (39 positive/34 negative) to a -18 rating (31 positive/49 negative) — very similar to Gingrich's -22 rating (29/51). The shift is most notabe among independents, who...

In a new biography, two...Boston Globe reporters write about...Mitt Romney... On their hunt for The Real Romney, Scott Helman and Michael Kranish traced Romney's life... SNIP He...became a leader in the Mormon lay clergy...and eventually became the leader of more than a dozen congregations in eastern Massachusetts. SNIP Peggie HayesHelman: "One of the things the Mormon church does not look kindly upon is single parenthood. There was a woman named Peggie Hayes who had known Romney when she was in his ward. She had come from a family which had had some struggles, had looked to Mormonism to anchor them....

"I am someone who believes in free enterprise, I think Adam Smith was right, and we're going to get hit hard by Barack Obama, but we're going to stuff it down his throat that it is capitalism and freedom that makes us strong." Mitt Romney said.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich criticized gay marriage during Saturday night's Republican debate in New Hampshire.The issue came up when a Yahoo! News reader asked, “Given that you oppose gay marriage, what do you want gay people to do who want to form loving, committed, long-term relationships? What is your solution?” Romney and Gingrich answered that while they support limited protections for gay and lesbian couples, both believe marriage should remain a heterosexual union.Gingrich offered a two-part answer, which included the suggestion that gay couples are merely friends and that the media was biased on the issue.“I think what...

Santorum says Romney nomination "will destroy this country"

CONCORD, N.H. — As Rick Santorum sprinted Thursday through New Hampshire, a state with fewer social conservatives than Iowa, his views on social issues like same-sex marriage were quickly challenged. A midday event in front of a gathering of college students here turned into a testy exchange in which Mr. Santorum compared allowing gay couples to marry to polygamy, apparently equating the two as equally undesirable. “If you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that O.K.?” he asked. The students booed Mr. Santorum during the 10-minute exchange and loudly booed when he left the room. The...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — If this is Mitt Romney’s idea of a victory rally, one shudders to think what would have happened if he had lost the Iowa caucuses. The day after his impossibly thin eight-vote victory, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination flew here for a town hall meeting at Manchester Central High School, where he was to bask in the endorsement of his 2008 arch rival, John McCain. But the senator grimaced when he was introduced, and as Romney delivered his own stump speech, an increasingly impatient McCain pulled up his sleeve and checked his watch. McCain gave...

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…

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,...

Romney Would Veto Immigration "Dream" Act By Jane Sutton … LEMARS, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said on Saturday he would veto a proposal granting U.S. citizenship to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, a pledge that won hearty applause from Iowa conservatives he hopes to win over. A young woman asked Romney about the bipartisan proposal known as the Dream Act, during an appearance at a crowded restaurant in Le Mars, a conservative Republican stronghold in western Iowa. "The question is if I were elected and Congress were to pass the Dream...

US election 2012: Mitt Romney On Course For Historic Double Victory Mitt Romney could strike a decisive early blow in the contest to pick the Republican party’s presidential nominee by becoming the first candidate ever to win both the first two states to vote, opinion polls suggest. By Jon Swaine 01 Jan 2012 The former Massachusetts governor leads the party field both in Iowa, where tomorrow’s caucuses will give the candidates their first test, and in New Hampshire, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday. If successful, Mr Romney would become the first Republican challenger in the modern primary...

Dear Iowa Caucus participants, You have been told for the better part of year now who it is that you must choose. Beltway insiders have insisted upon thrusting establishment candidates upon you. Libertarian anarchists have swopped into your state shouting that you must support Ron Paul, while toking on the marijuana they soon believe President Paul will make legal. You've been openly mocked by Governor John Huntsman from Utah--who ironically seeks your support. Ann Coulter has defied every conservative principal she's ever espoused by trying to brainwash you into thinking that Mitt Romney is the best that you have to...

The Des Moines Register poll — the final one before the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday — has Mitt Romney and Ron Paul virtually tied in the lead going into the final 72 hours before voting. In the survey, Mr. Romney has 24 percent and Mr. Paul has 22 percent. The new poll, which was released online by the newspaper at 7 p.m. local time, shows the candidates closely bunched up behind the two leaders. Mr. Santorum has 15 percent in the poll while Mr. Gingrich gets 12 percent. Mr. Perry has 11 percent and Mrs. Bachmann gets 7 percent. The...

“Why Is No One Attacking Romney?” That’s the question I have been pounding all fall, particularly in the past 6 weeks. It’s also the question asked by Alex Roarty at National Journal:**snip** Think where Romney would be if he had been the recipient of the negative ads in Iowa on the scale directed at Newt:**snip** History tells us where we will be when there is a sustained anti-Romney negative ad campaign. It worked for Ted Kennedy (focusing on Bain) and John McCain (focusing on flip-flops and lack of core conviction). It also started to work over this summer and fall...

It is time for Republicans to get serious. After flirting with just about every candidate in a large presidential field, is is time to come home to the one candidate who has the demonstrated ability to run the largest organization in the United States, the Executive Branch of the federal government; who has never been touched by the slightest taint of scandal; whose success in the private sector makes him the outsider that Republicans say they are looking for; and who has by far the best chance of beating President Obama: Mitt Romney.{Snip}

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a conservative. At least, that is the point the former Massachusetts governor is trying to make with a new TV ad airing in Iowa. The new ad, titled “Conservative Agenda,” shows Romney speaking on the stump and meeting with voters, as he makes a series of commitments. “I am going to do something to government. I’m going to make it ‘Simpler, and Smaller, and Smarter,’” Romney says. “Getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states, and finally making government itself more efficient.” Romney pledges to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul and balance...

A few years after Mitt Romney graduated from Harvard Business School, he returned to share a simple, timeworn lesson in an unusual way. Invited to give a presentation on balancing work and family, he began by telling students that they were like multinational corporations, recalled Clayton M. Christensen, who organized the event. “You have the same question as General Electric,” said Mr. Romney, then a young father and a management consultant. “Your resources are your time and talent. How are you going to deploy them?” He drew a chart called a growth-share matrix with little circles to represent various pursuits:...

Can't post from Des Moines Register, but here is the link: http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/17/23902/

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A question about same-sex marriage from a Vietnam veteran led to a heated exchange with Mitt Romney on Monday morning as Mr. Romney was making the rounds at a restaurant here. After receiving the endorsement of Manchester’s mayor, Ted Gatsas, Mr. Romney greeted diners who were finishing up their breakfasts at Chez Vachon, and took a seat next to Bob Garon, 63, a veteran from Epsom, N.H. “I have a question for you,” said Mr. Garon, who was wearing a Vietnam veteran hat and a red flannel shirt with a pack of Basic cigarettes tucked into the...

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.

Republicans might not particularly like Mitt Romney, but they may have to learn to live with him if they want to take the White House next year. So suggests a poll released today by Purple Strategies, which surveys voters in 12 swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. President Obama's approval rating in the swing states is in peril -- just 41% overall and 37% among independents -- but his saving grace seems to be that voters there are even more sour on the Republican candidates. This critical block...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Monday defended his administration’s efforts to cover its electronic tracks with the purchase of hard drives from state computers, saying he had no intention of providing ''opposition research teams'' with electronic communications from his term as governor. Meeting with the editorial board of the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, Mr. Romney was questioned about a Boston Globe story (snip) Last week, Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades accused Mr. Patrick of running a ''dirty tricks''shop for the president’s benefit and requested documents on any contact his administration has had with top Obama White House or campaign operatives.

While Newt Gingrich has come out on top (24%) in a new CNN Poll released late Monday afternoon, Herman Cain has begun to show signs of a comeback after allegations of improper behavior set back his campaign earlier in the month. Mr. Cain has gained 3 points since a November 11-13 CNN poll and now stands at 17%. Mitt Romney, who has not been facing any accusations of scandal or major gaffes, has accelerated his fall in the polls from 26% in late October, to 24% in the November 11-13 poll, to 20% in the current CNN poll. This puts...

Gingrich's support on the rise this month by Jeffrey M. Jones PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are most likely to name Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as their first choice for their party's 2012 presidential nomination, with Herman Cain close behind. Among all Republicans nationwide, Romney is the choice of 20% and Gingrich 19%. Among Republican registered voters, Gingrich is at 22% and Romney at 21%. Mid-November 2011 results: Next, I'm going to read a list of people who are running for the 2012 Republican nomination for president. After I read the names, please tell me which candidate you are most...

From the W moment he launched his presidential campaign on a windy New Hampshire morning in June, Willard Mitt Romney has been the acknowledged front-runner in the Republican race. He has raised more money, earned more support from his party's establishment, hired more paid staff and secured more endorsements than any of the seven other "major" GOP candidates. There is but one nagging thing keeping Romney from being dubbed the "inevitable" GOP nominee in 2012 - a solid 75 per cent of the voters in his party simply cannot stand the guy. "He is cold gravy," said Stephen Schneck, a...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are most likely to name Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as their first choice for their party's 2012 presidential nomination, with Herman Cain close behind. Among all Republicans nationwide, Romney is the choice of 20% and Gingrich 19%. Among Republican registered voters, Gingrich is at 22% and Romney at 21%. [snip] ....Implications With the first official nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, now just six weeks away, there is no clear national front-runner for the Republican nomination....

With all the chaos surrounding the Republican nomination race, one thing is very clear: somewhere along the way, Mitt Romney made a Damn Yankees-like pact with Satan to score this group of individuals to run against. It is certain that a vast majority of Republican primary voters do not like Mitt Romney. In fact, we can go further – they can’t stand him. That’s why he’s never broken 30 percent in any national poll of Republican primary voters. That’s why Tea Party support has shuffled from Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain. Sadly, though, none of those candidates...

For those who believe the current commentariat consensus that Mitt Romney should be coronated as the inevitable Republican nominee, consider the excellent story by Alicia Cohn in The Hill about conservatives uniting to defeat Romney, and remember the GOP primaries in 1976 when Ronald Reagan was almost nominated after a late surge. Cohn's included one bit of news that has not been adequately covered by most media, the creation of a group of conservatives to be found at the notmittromney.com, and one subject that has also not been adequately covered: the importance of the Florida primary in late January and...

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...

Minnesotans are deeply divided over whether the state Constitution should be amended to define marriage as only the union of a man and woman, according to a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. A year before they face the issue on the ballot, 48 percent of Minnesotans favor such an amendment while 43 percent oppose it. That falls within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. The poll of 807 adults statewide, conducted Nov. 2-3, shows that battle lines will be drawn on clear partisan, generational, educational and geographic fractures. Significant majorities of older voters, Republicans, voters...

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...

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 —...

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...

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...

Could this be a watershed week in the Republican presidential primary? Joe Scarborough seems to think so. On today's Morning Joe, he said something remarkable: that in the last week, stalwart conservatives and "Republican leaders" have told him that they would rather lose" than elect Mitt Romney. View the video here.

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, better known as James Taranto’s punching bag at Opinion Journal, has a new blog at nytimes.com, “The Loyal Opposition.” On Tuesday Rosenthal posted the provocatively titled “Herman Cain and the ‘Liberal Media,’” where he broadcasts his alarm at how “quickly the right wing jumps on an issue almost in unison,” blames Republicans for injecting racial fears into modern-day politics with Willie Horton, and even claiming the phrase "community organizer" is racist when applied to Obama.

Can a conservative case be made for Mitt Romney? Michael Gerson tried mightily at the Washington Post yesterday, leaning heavily on Romney’s business experience and cultural background to argue that Romney’s current positions are probably more natural to him than those he adopted for more than a decade as a Massachusetts politician. Unfortunately for Gerson, he has to come up with some way to explain why Romney wouldn’t slide back to his earlier positions once he faced some political headwinds on the national stage, and this is the best Gerson can do: Romney’s main political vulnerability is a serious one....

Efforts to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act are in full swing, as a major lawsuit advances, another lawsuit is filed, and a Senate panel meets soon to consider legislation to overturn the law. “We are working hard to strike the blow that will end DOMA,” said Mary Bonuato, civil rights project director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and lead attorney in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management. Gill is one of several lawsuits filed by gay spouses who say their lives have been injured by DOMA, which defines marriage, for federal purposes, as the union...

Republican candidates for president have been busy for weeks now, laboring strenuously to give the 2012 nomination to Mitt Romney. And he keeps trying to give it back. The former Massachusetts governor could walk to next year's GOP convention without touching the ground, treading exclusively on the bodies of rivals who have fallen on their faces. He's the equivalent of the Alabama Crimson Tide, playing a schedule heavy on Southeastern Louisiana and Middle Tennessee State. He should be running up the score every week. Instead, he keeps finding ways to keep his opponents in the game. Look at the opposition....

The answers are “yes,” quite a bit of “probably not” and a little bit of “maybe so.” George Will’s blistering column about Mitt Romney’s candidacy can be split into two parts. The first part explores a few of Romney’s mryiad flip-flops, straddles and waffles on various issues. Is Will right about Romney being the “pretzel candidate”? Yes. Indeed, on this point, Will did not even scratch the salt off the pretzel. However, it’s the second, shorter conclusion of Will’s column that is getting the buzz in political circles: Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser...

Sometimes it seems as if the GOP Establishment is sleepwalking off a cliff. In 1996, having scored the stunning victories of the off-year congressional elections, the GOP suits dutifully lined up behind the impossible Bob Dole. From the moment Americans realized their choices would be Clinton or Dole, "Bubba" was never behind one day in the polls. It's looking like déjà Dole all over again. Mitt Romney is the proverbial GOP next-in-liner. After the Tea Party helped Republicans score major victories in '10, the GOP Establishment is hunting desperately for a way to lose the very next election. Mitt Romney...

Winning in politics isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. But how important a factor electability should be in a voter’s calculation remains very much in the eye of the beholder, leading to an active debate within the parties about who has the best chance to win next November — and how much it should matter. That fight is played out every four years as the two parties pick their presidential nominees. The party establishment — and many members of the media — tend to focus heavily on electability while the party’s activist base prizes ideological alignment. “Electability usually doesn’t matter...

The New Hampshire Primary is a must win for hometown Mitt Romney, but the sudden surge of Herman Cain has now put a threat to Romney’s huge lead in New Hampshire. In a recent Insider Advantage poll Herman Cain rose to 24% while Romney has fallen to 39%. Romney has been as high as 45% in previous polls. Romney has been slipping in recent New Hampshire polls, some believe due to his pressure to move the Nevada Caucus ahead of the New Hampshire Primary. mitt-romney-town-hall-new-hampshire A win for Herman Cain in Iowa could give him the momentum to make the...

A block thrown through a home window. Cars vandalized. Hate-filled anonymous phone calls at home and work. Swastikas scrawled on houses of worship. Physical assaults. Dismissal from employment because of political views. Are these examples of retaliation against civil-rights activists in the South in 1954? Attempts by an authoritarian government to quash dissent? No, this is the sort of intimidation that Americans who support marriage as the union of a man and woman can face today. Persecution of opponents is becoming a tool of the trade for some gay-marriage activists, who -- ironically -- seem to view themselves as beacons...

Rick Santorum has a new target in Iowa - Herman Cain. Santorum, who is trying to appeal to social conservative voters in the Iowa caucuses, seized on the new frontrunner's comment on "Meet the Press" that he wouldn't push for a federal amendment banning same-sex marriage during a Radio Iowa interview: “The idea that this is issue should be left to the states is the position Barack Obama takes and it’s not the right position...There needs to be a uniform definition of marriage in this country.” Continue Reading (snip) “Leaders should be out there advocating for what is in the...