Free Republic

Money may not be buying Mitt Romney much Republican love, but it’s going a long way toward helping him buy the next best thing: endorsements in the GOP primaries. Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC and its affiliates states have lavished close to $1.3 million in campaign donations to federal, state and local GOP politicians, almost all since 2010. His recipients include officials in the major upcoming primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in three southern Super Tuesday states where he was trounced four years ago. In New Hampshire, a U.S. senator, a congressman, 10 state senators...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin challenged GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney to furnish his tax return and supporting documents that would prove he created the 100,000 jobs he claimed he did while CEO of Bain Capital. "Governor Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and people are wanting to know is there proof of that claim and was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens?" Palin told Fox News Sean Hannity. Palin said that transparency was needed as Romney would likely be targeted by Democrats on this issue if he were to become the Republican nominee....

Mitt Romney is a loser...an election loser. In his 1994 senatorial campaign, he lost by a huge margin (by more than 17 points) in a year when Republicans took over Congress. Despite everyone else’s success, Romney managed to lose. Of all his campaigns he has won only once when he won a single term as governor of Massachusetts, but he quickly tarnished that close victory. After becoming governor in 2002 with Kerry Healey as his running mate, Romney proceeded to mismanage his position so that his approval dropped rapidly into the 40's and then the 30's. He left that mess...

"...Mitt Romney says he saved Bain & Co. but he didn't tell you the day he took over he had his predecessor fire hundreds of employees or the way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million dollars. According to the Globe, Romney's company failed to repay at least $10 million dollars to a failed bank and the rest of us had to absorb the loss. Romney, he and others made $4 million dollars in this deal which cost ordinary people $10 million dollars. Mitt Romney - maybe he's just against government when it helps working...

In the Republican presidential candidate debates this weekend, Mitt Romney repeated his claim that he is an effective leader who created a "net net" of 100,000 jobs while he was working in the private sector. But three recent reports, by the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and by Fact Check.org, the nonprofit nonpartisan project run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania say that the Romney campaign has yet to offer convincing proof to back up the claim. ... It hardly seems plausible to suggest that he created the positions that make up the current...

Gordon Gekko Romney is being taken to task over his proclivities, and activities at Bain. To make it short, Romney engaged in what is commonly known as asset-stripping. My point in this thread isn't to delve into the minutiae of what asset-stripping entails, but rather to point out that Romney is attempting to pigeonhole Gingrich as being anti-free market capitalism through the use of a false choice: If Gingrich doesn't support what Romney did at Bain, then he is anti-free market capitalism. Romney's false choice... And all the while, Romney is trying to use a smokescreen to cover what he...

Romney: "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..."

Mitt Romney sought on Friday to dispel any notion he is undesirably close to Wall Street, but said his business experience prepares him better than his rivals to be president. "I'm independent of Wall Street," the former Massachusetts governor told Bloomberg Television's Peter Cook in an interview. "By the way, I haven't ever worked on Wall Street. They were service providers to the business I was in, I was not in a Wall Street firm, although I was in financial services broadly."

Romney has a record where he touted his belief system, policy proposals, etc, when running for U.S. Senator against Ted Kennedy. He has a record as governor. But Romney says ignore THOSE specifics - here is who I claim to be now, and what I claim to stand for. And he says now to take him at his word about who he is and what he stands for. But he is low on specifics, especially tonight, and throughout the debates, Romney has been heavy on platitudes and speaking moatly in generalities (I will restore America, America can be great again,...

Don't be conned into nominating Mitt Romney.

"I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..." [then a reporter takes Romney to task].

Several news reports have it that Romney did not win the Iowa Caucuses. Mr. True supposedly has a photo showing 2 votes for Romney, not 22, on a piece of paper. Barring any objective, verifiable proof that shows more than 12 votes mistakenly being credited to Santorum, Romney lost. On the flip side, if Romney did win, the Weekly Standard, in a news piece entitled "Answers from Iowa," says that Romney's 24.6% in the Iowa Caucuses was the worst ever (for either party) for a candidate winning the Iowa Caucuses. Romney spent millions in Iowa, had the worst percentage ever,...

If Republicans didn't like Mitt Romney's position on the so-called union-busting proposal in Ohio, all they had to do is wait one day before he changed it... ... ...

Though Romney is personally not working with any pro-Romney super PAC(s), can Romney at least tell them or ask them to cease any potential negative attack ads aimed at Gingrich or someone else? If he doesn't, is he still taking the high road? Secondly, how could pro-Romney forces ask pro-Obama forces to do the something if they won't? How can pro-Romney RINOS and CINOS berate Obama surrogates for saying something about Romney if pro-Romney surrogates do the same to GOP candidates?

Republican backers of Mitt Romney get a bit terse when you bring up Romneycare. My last discussion with a fellow Republican who backs Romney resulted in a shrill, “Asked and answered! Move on!” He didn’t want to continue the conversation. I guess we are supposed to move away from the topic because after all, the question of whether Mitt Romney stands behind Romneycare has been asked and answered, many times. We are supposed to believe that Mitt Romney was acting out of duty to the highest sense of morality for conservatism, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Or something like...

... Mitt Romney set a new all-time record for the lowest winning share of the vote (for either party) in the Iowa caucuses - 25 percent [24.6%] - one point lower than Bob Dole's 26 percent level of support in 1996. That's well below the 31 percent tally that every previous Republican winner except for Dole had achieved... Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich both matched or surpassed the 13 percent level of support that John McCain on his way to winning the Republican nomination received in Iowa... Lastly, Romney failed to equal the 25.2 percent share of the vote that...

Remember Gray Davis, the Democrat ex-governor of California who preceded Ahhhnold? Davis spent milllions of dollars on ads trying to get his poll numbers up, and it didn't work. His poll numbers wouldn't go above around 39% even after millions of dollars were spent. Not a percent increase even. Not one perecent... Enter Mitt Romney. In 2008, he pulled in 25.2% of the vote in the Iowa Caucus. Millions spent since then, and in the 2012 Iowa Caucus, according to Fox News, 99% reporting, he is at....wait for it... 25%. CNN has 100% reporting, and has Romney at 24.5%. So...

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…

It doesn't matter if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa caucuses tonight. He is about to experience a severe political hemorrhage over his refusal to disclose his tax returns...

Second part, final part. Some in the GOP and "conservative" talking heads need to do the same for both: chastise Obama for not wanting to run on his record and his gearing up to run a super negative campaign against the eventual GOP nominee and also chastise Romney for not happily running on his record, and sitting back and letting others do his attacking for him against fellow GOP candidates. Romney needs to run on his record, right? What is in Romney's record that he shouldn't be proud of?