Free Republic

Say what you will about Donny Deutsch, but the man-about-Manhattan and the Hamptons moves in the Trump social circle and is well-connected there. So attention must be paid to Deutsch’s declaration on today’s With All Due Respect. Asked by Mark Halperin whether the talk about Romney being considered for Secretary of State is “real, whether Romney might end up with the job,” Deutsch responded: “somebody very, very, very high up in the inner [Trump] circle yesterday told me it was very, very real,” and that this person was “very excited about it.” View the video here.

Romneycare in Mass was the model for Obamacare This weekend there are rumors that Hillary Kristol has recruited Romney to run as a Third Party spoiler, perhaps ubsuring a Clinton victory in Nov If that happens, Romney-Obamacre doesn't get repealed; its killer premiums will be with us forever.

Mitt Romney’s advisers begged him not to go to war with...Trump. After he decided to go ahead, Mr. Trump dismissed him as “lightweight” and “failed candidate.” This week, Newt Gingrich called him “pathetic.” Mr. Romney, sticking to his guns, has become a rare figure in American history—a former presidential nominee openly defying the man succeeding him as his party’s standard-bearer. Sitting at his home on the Pacific Ocean last week, Mr. Romney reflected on the waves he created by attacking Mr. Trump, how his family helped persuade him it was the right thing to do, and how he increasingly finds...

Many people who went without health insurance last year are now seeing fines more than double under President Barack Obama’s health care law, tax preparation company H&R Block said Tuesday. Among its customers who owe a penalty for the 2015 tax year, the average fine is $383, compared with $172 for 2014, the company said.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will endorse Sen. Marco Rubio, the Huffington Post reports. The details of the endorsement are being worked out. It's ironic since Romney, who was largely an absentee governor in the last nine months of his administration, is endorsing someone who didn't bother showing up for work in the Senate that much. "Romney spent the day in Utah on Saturday and could potentially be in position to bestow his blessing upon Rubio before Tuesday's Nevada Republican caucuses-a contest that Romney won easily in both 2008 and 2012." "Romney's backing will provide Rubio with the highest-profile endorsement...

Mitt Romney has bluntly criticized the Republican Party for not supporting a raise in the nations' minimum wage. The former governor of Massachusetts, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, told the Washington Post his party is missing the boat in opposing a wage boost touted heavily by President Barack Obama. "As a party we speak a lot about deregulation and tax policy, and you know what? People have been hearing that for 25 years, and they're getting tired of that message," Romney said in a recent interview with the newspaper. "I think we're nuts not to raise the...

"Mitt wants to run. He never stopped wanting to run," an anonymous senior adviser of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign recently told New York magazine. Other members of Romneyworld have denied the former governor is interested in another campaign. But at this stage in the 2016 race, Mitt Romney should start preparing to get back in the arena.Romney should be ready to enter the field to save his party from an awful reckoning between its leadership and its base, a reckoning that has been brought on by Donald Trump's campaign. Trump has proven that the "strongest GOP primary field in...

As Jeb Bush struggles to carry the establishment mantle, some wonder whether the time is right for Mitt There is on the edge of the spectrum a thought awakening that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who ran for President in 2008 and 2012, might get back in the race. It comes naturally to think so. Before the race got seriously underway Mr. Romney met with Jeb Bush to consider their fates. Mr. Romney’s wife Ann went so far back then as to suggest on Cavuto that If Jeb ran, Mitt would stay out, as they both represented a similar center...

At least six Republican candidates for the presidency are headed to Utah for a summit hosted by Mitt Romney that begins on Thursday. If the old saying that you learn more in defeat than in victory is true, Romney has plenty to teach. “I think there’s a lot you can learn from talking with a candidate who has run and won, but there’s also a lot you can learn from a candidate who has run and lost,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “There were clearly problems with the Romney campaign but if...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky judge has finalized the adoption of a 28-year-old man by a woman who was legally married to his mother in Massachusetts, the first step-parent adoption by a member of a same-sex couple in Fayette County and possibly the state following a federal court ruling.

Ten months after Mitt Romney shuffled off the national stage in defeat — consigned, many predicted, to a fate of instant irrelevance and permanent obscurity — Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet. From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate’s canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication — and remorse — to Romney’s friends, supporters, and former advisers. “I think about the campaign every single day, and what a shame it is who we have in the White House,”...

Prominent Dems including White House chief of staff Jack Lew and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly argued in recent days that the fee for not buying insurance under the health care law is in fact a penalty and not a tax. They got support from an unexpected quarter on Monday: the Romney campaign. Mitt Romney's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown that he agrees - the fee is a penalty and not a tax, as the Supreme Court ruled last week. "The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court," Fehrnstrom said. "He...

Last August, I wrote the following about Mitt Romney’s odds of winning the Republican nomination: In a sense, the stronger President Obama looks next year, the better Romney’s chances of being nominated. He needs the prospect of an uphill general-election battle to keep his potential rivals for establishment support safely on the sidelines. And then he needs that same establishment to rally around him once the primary voting starts — not out of love or admiration, but out of fear of the populist alternative. Six months later, this is almost exactly how things are playing out. In many ways, Romney...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said Sunday he thinks Mitt Romney is the party's leading potential presidential candidate for 2012. "He's got his problems, but so does everybody else," Mr. Graham said on NBC's "Meet the Press."