Free Republic

Former Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney’s speech last week, trashing GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, did little to dissuade voters from supporting the New York real estate mogul. Thirty-one percent of Republican voters, after Romney called Trump “a phony,” said they are now more likely to cast a vote for Trump and 30 percent of the voters who supported Romney in 2012 said they are more likely to vote for Trump, according to a new Morning Consult poll released Tuesday. Roughly 20 percent of GOP voters said they’re less likely to support Trump. Forty-three percent of the voters said they didn’t...

In some of his harshest words yet, Newt Gingrich explained Friday why he didn't call rival Mitt Romney after the former Massachusetts pulled a decisive Florida primary victory earlier in the week. Pointing to Romney's post-South Carolina campaign strategy, which turned noticeably negative against the former House speaker, Gingrich said Romney didn't earn any kudos. "They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful."...

A combative Mitt Romney on Monday broadened his call for Newt Gingrich to release records from his work as a consultant, speculating that those documents and records from a House ethics investigation from his time as speaker could show “potentially wrongful activity of some kind.” “We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich,” Romney told reporters at a media availability here. “And so let’s see the records from the ethics investigation, let’s see what they show. Let’s see who his clients were at the time he was lobbying Republican congressmen for Medicare Part D.

What Gingrich's S.C. Romney-Stomping Means For FL's 'Battle Royale' Gingrich crushed once-mighty Mitt Romney in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary, in a victory that transformed Florida’s upcoming vote from a snoozer into a dogfight. “This sets the stage for a battle royale in the Sunshine State,” said Nelson Warfield, a political consultant for former Rick Perry’s recently ended campaign who’s also a member of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s inner political circle. “Newt Gingrich changed the narrative of this race,” Warfield said. “Before South Carolina, Romney was the slow, inevitable candidate. And Florida was going to be his coronation. Now Romney has...

'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...

(snip) So what does Romney say to these big money donors to make them fork over their cash and convince them he's going to be the one to face off against President Obama in the general election? (snip) But his pitch also veers away from what he says on the stump. When Romney gets into the room with potential donors trying to lure them to his campaign, he's consistently asked how he's going to win. According to several donors, Romney tells the crowd that his strategy will work: they will win New Hampshire and Nevada and are hoping to "get...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pulled in an eye-popping $10.3 million during a national fundraising effort Monday that he described as the kick-off to his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. The event was staged at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the site was no accident: Nevada is key to Romney's early primary state strategy. Nearly 800 participants dialed for dollars all day and hauled in nearly $4 million more than when his campaign staged a similar event four years earlier. Romney has been scarce on the campaign trail in recent months as he's focused heavily on...

As governor, Mitt Romney accomplished a feat that most Republicans would have thought impossible. With the single stroke of a pen he convinced the liberal population of Massachusetts that they, too, hate government-run health care. As a health care plan, Romneycare is an unmitigated fiasco. It has caused costs to skyrocket, insurance premiums to soar and nonprofit providers like Blue Cross to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. But as a political policy, Romneycare is nearly unparalleled in Republican history.

I personally believe and it has shown in polls, that Mitt Romney is a frontrunner in the GOP race, alongside Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. However, I do not think he could win the Nomination with either Palin or Huckabee running against him. I also don’t think he could beat Obama in 2012. Before all the Romney supports jump on me, I wanted to share with you all the flipping flopping Romney has done in the past 20 years. It’s very clear and I am about to present you with strong evidence, that Mitt Romney is a flop flopper. It...

It is tempting -- very, very tempting -- to write off Willard "Mitt" Romney as a serious contender for next year's Republican presidential nomination. And, in fact, several knowledgeable observers already have. Romney, in case you haven't heard, embraced a healthcare reform law in Massachusetts five years ago that ended up being the model for the national program that President Obama pushed through Congress without a single Republican vote last year. He's also dogged by the impression that he's an unusually spineless opportunist (the result of the extraordinary pains he took to win over socially liberal voters in Massachusetts before...

BARTLETT, N.H., March 5 (UPI) -- Republican Mitt Romney delivered a scathing assessment of U.S. President Obama Saturday night, calling him "unequal to the task of leading the free world." Speaking in the early presidential battleground state of New Hampshire, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is expected to make another run at the White House in 2012, said Obama has done a lousy job staying on top of Middle East and North Africa political unrest, CBS News reported.

The good news for Willard Mitt Romney is that his religion won’t knock him out of the Republican race for president next year. The bad news is, he’s got an even bigger problem now than the magic underwear jokes — Romneycare. “That’s the question he has to address,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) was saying Friday afternoon. “Not just in New Hampshire, but nationwide.” You know how big a headache this is when even Mitt’s highest-profile supporters are dodging brickbats over the chaos that is Massachusetts health care.

Sooner or later the bubble had to pop. Mitt Romney has had a pretty swell time of it in 2010. The former presidential contender has been ambidextrous in his political maneuvers, carefully challenging President Obama on key economic issues that play to his own strengths as a pragmatic technocrat. The success generated by his book No Apology earlier this year seemed to verify his place as the GOP’s resident wonk. The book even won praise from detractors as a thoughtful policy manifesto. As Republicans rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction towards taking back the House, Romney faithfully played the role...

<p>WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.</p>

The new survey of Massachusetts from Public Policy Polling (D) shows President Obama continuing to lead various possible Republican challengers in this deep-blue state -- including former Gov. Mitt Romney, who comes the closest to Obama but still trails by a significant margin. Obama leads Newt Gingrich by 57%-33%; Mike Huckabee by 57%-33%; and extends his lead to 61%-32% against Sarah Palin. Against Romney, who was governor of the state from 2003-2007 -- and did not seek re-election in 2006 in order to run for president in the 2008 cycle -- Obama leads by 52%-43%. Obama's approval rating in Massachusetts...

PROVO – Did unreported factors contribute to the demise of Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign? How did the news media cover the 1967-68 presidential campaign of his father, George Romney? Two research projects presented to an audience of more than 100 people at BYU's Mormon Media Studies Symposium recently compared the two Romneys' campaigns. BYU professors John Gee and Louis C. Midgley titled their paper, "Under the Media's Nose: Overlooked Factors Undermining the Presidential Campaign of Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s political operation raised $1.7 million from July through September, again pacing the field of prospective 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls. The former Massachusetts governor, who lost a bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and is widely believed to be preparing another run, has built a robust political operation including political action committees at the federal level and in five states with strategic significance in the pending battle for the Republican nomination: Iowa, New Hampshire, Alabama, South Carolina and Michigan.

George Martin has got to be still kicking himself today. Not because of his exceptional Bakersfield Business Conference: I am not aware of any event that compares to what George has been able to create. I am referring to him getting caught up in the moment and introducing Sarah Palin as "the next president of the United States." Come on! I always look forward to the Republican love fest that we call a business conference. It is the only time that I hear so much rational thought about how to clean up the mess in our state and federal governments....

Via GOP12, I’m surprised that this modest statement of painfully obvious fact is making waves today. Click the image below and skip ahead to 8:00 for the money part, although the whole thing’s worth watching. He starts with a cute bit about phoning the families of National Guardsmen to say hi, proceeds to talk about Campaign ’08, and then after the part about Obama praises Palin for her “energy and spunk and passion.” (“Code words,” says Ben Smith, trying to stir up trouble.) What makes this newsworthy, I guess, is that it’s a rare caution about hubris at a moment...

WASHINGTON -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the early frontrunner among potential Republican candidates for president in 2012, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. While former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin commands the national spotlight, turning out "tea party" activists and headlining rallies, for now it's Romney who claims the lead at 25 percent, months before an official field takes shape. Palin, GOP nominee John McCain's 2008 running mate, took second with 18 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tied for third place with 16 percent. Finishing out the pack were Minnesota Gov. Tim...