Free Republic

Scottsdale, Arizona (CNN) - Members of the Republican National Committee gathering in Arizona were invited to meet with Mitt Romney in private Friday and have their pictures taken with the presumptive GOP nominee, but there was a price of admission: loyalty. RNC members and state GOP chairmen were welcomed into the private reception only after signing a form pledging to support Romney as a delegate to the national convention in Tampa. – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker All 168 members of the committee have a vote at the convention as "superdelegates" – and one of Romney's supporters on the...

Mitt Romney, speaking at a private fundraising event on Sunday, offered the first details of deductions he would eliminate or limit in order to offset the income tax cut he has proposed for all taxpayers. Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said he would eliminate or limit for high-earners the mortgage interest deduction for second homes, and likely would do the same for the state income tax deduction and state property tax deduction. He also said he would look to the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for budget cuts. Mr. Romney discussed...

Former Governor Mitt Romney is already offering top donors access to a special “Presidential Inaugural retreat,” planned on the assumption that he will be elected president this November. The offer, in a fundraising email circulated by a top Georgia supporter to fellow Republicans and obtained by BuzzFeed, is one of several goodies offered to those who contribute more than $50,000 to the joint fundraising committee known as “Romney Victory,” a program whose outlines were first reported by POLITICO. Those donors will be named “Founding Members” of Romney Victory and invited to a California retreat with Romney and offered “yet to...

I have not been able to find the entire On The Record Bondi interview, either in video OR professional transcript, so I transcribed it myself. Hopefully the full segment video, with transcript, will become available, so any mistakes I may have made can be corrected. Below is the transcription of Greta's Pam Bondi interview, transcribed directly from the TV segment [the later rebroadcast]. (Note: In the rebroadcast, there was a second or two in which there was a loss of audio and a black screen; I have noted it in the transcript] Greta's 1-27-2012 interview On The Record with Pam...

The Romney campaign, renowned for its oppo-heavy strategy, didn’t even have an oppo book on Rick Santorum a few days before the Iowa caucuses, so surprised were they by his surge. Jon Huntsman nearly decided in November to leave the GOP and run as an independent. And before one of the debates, Rick Perry sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” in a restroom. These details are from Mike Allen and Evan Thomas’ new e-book, Inside the Circus, as are these additional factoids below. Mitt Romney raised millions in March by warning would-be donors a brokered convention could mean a...

Early frontrunner for the most preposterous political analogy of the year . . . On today's Morning Joe, Tina Brown said Rick Santorum was "like Judas Iscariot." And just what was Santorum's sin that merited comparing him to the man who betrayed Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver? That Santorum, 15 years after the fact, now regrets having supported Arlen Specter when his then-fellow Republican senator from Pennsylvania ran for president. View the video here.

 For Senator Jim DeMint, the prospect of Mitt Romney securing the GOP nomination sooner rather than later is a good thing.  In remarks made on Thursday that were reported by CNN, the reliably conservative South Carolinian and Tea Party favorite suggested that closing out the Republican presidential contest means "we [Republicans] can focus on the real problem which is Obama."At this point in the nominating fight, the delegate math is strongly working against Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.  It would take more than Hail Mary passes for either man to win the Republican nomination; it would take near miracles.After a...

This is what is being pushed today in conservative media. At first, I thought it was just me receiving emails urging me to begin rallying around Romney “for the good of the party” and “for the good of the country.” Apparently, I’m not alone, and apparently, Mark Levin is receiving such emails too. I thank those of you who sent me such emails, but I’ll give you my answer here, in the open: I have deleted your emails with extreme prejudice. (That means that I deleted them, then undeleted them, and deleted them AGAIN…just for fun.) I actually printed one...

VERNON HILLS, Ill. (AP) -- Mitt Romney's wife says now is the time for Republicans to unite behind one presidential nominee. Ann Romney stood at her husband's side Sunday night at a rally in suburban Chicago and offered the campaign's most aggressive plea yet for Republicans to end their extended nomination fight.

Mitt Romney, in an op-ed published in 2009 at USA Today, still viewable at mittromneycentral.com, pushed Obama to do nationally what he did in RomneyCare, in Massachusetts. His words: "There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it." emphasis ours: Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical...

A Stern Warning to the “Conservative Elites” about Mitt RomneyThrough their silence, the elites are assisting a political cancer that has profound consequences for our children and grandchildrenWe write the following because we must oppose the deception of the American people by powerful and influential conservatives. Many in the conservative grassroots no longer trust the “conservative” media, lawyers and leaders, whom they see as serving the GOP establishment regardless of the will of the conservative base, regardless of the truth. Most of us are not allied with any presidential candidate. But we are troubled by the unethical and Orwellian cover-up...

Campaigning in Michigan on Thursday night, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney reached out to Tea Party voters — a segment of the party that he has had a hard time winning over in previous states this primary season.Michigan votes Tuesday, and polls show the race between Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum to be very tight. Santorum is counting on the Tea Party to see him as the true conservative option in the race, but Romney is challenging that claim.Milford, Mich., is a rural community about a 45-minute drive northwest of Detroit. Romney appeared at a local banquet hall...

The purpose of MitigateRomney.com is to serve notice to the GOP establishment and the moderate media that we are resolutely rejecting their manipulative tactics. They have worked vigorously to discourage supporters of conservative candidates and make the so-called “inevitability” of Mitt Romney into a self-fulfilling prophesy. For –at least- the past two election cycles they have pushed their left leaning candidates right into the GOP nomination by carefully massaging polling questions to fit the mantra they want unsuspecting viewers to adopt about their preferred candidate and even what spurious notions they chose to propagate about the candidates they ttansparently oppose....

Very, very good e-mail lists — and an internal debate over whether to use them. “I'm getting really tired of the ads for Romney campaign trips coming from this list serve,” writes one young Mormon. LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- At Mitt Romney’s first rally here earlier this week, there were plenty of hints that the enthusiastic crowd of 1,000 was stacked with Mormons. Kids walked around in BYU sweatshirts, moms chatted about LDS youth groups, and at least one supporter was overheard talking about making phone calls for the candidate as part of "family home evening" -- a weekly family...

Even if Mitt Romney wins in Florida on Tuesday, he still may lose the presidency come November. The old adage of “divide and conquer” may work well in war, but in politics it’s not always a smart strategy, especially in Republican primaries. Ronald Reagan’s name has been evoked quite often in this race. The Gipper must be turning over in his grave that Mitt Romney has so badly violated his 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Reagan’s law not only sounds great, it’s smart politics. Reagan understood that the very same Republicans a candidate attacks...

All the crying going on from Camp Mittens denying that Romney set out to screw Congressman Allen West out of his seat in Palm Beach County is just the usual exaggerated outrage that we should be accustomed to from Mitt and Company when they’ve been caught in the act. Remember these are the same guys who are saying that Mitt’s the most electable candidate, but if we question Mitt’s electability we’ll only have ourselves to blame if Mitt doesn’t get elected. Or something like that. It’s hard to keep up with the rhetoric when a campaign has one set of...

Debating in Tampa, Florida in late-January, while falsely characterizing Newt Gingrich’s income from his government consulting work, Mitt Romney denied that Bain did “any work with the government like Medicaid and Medicare”. Now we learn that Bain, under Romney’s “supervision”, purchased and ran the Damon Corporation, who pled guilty to Federal conspiracy charges as a result of tens of millions of dollars in systemic Medicare fraud committed under Romney’s and Bain’s control. Damon was fined over $119-million which was, at the time, the largest criminal healthcare fine in Massachusetts history and Mr. Romney’s participation was characterized in 1996 by Corporate...

Debating in Tampa, Florida in late-January, while falsely characterizing Newt Gingrich’s income from his government consulting work, Mitt Romney denied that Bain did “any work with the government like Medicaid and Medicare”. Now we learn that Bain, under Romney’s “supervision”, purchased and ran the Damon Corporation, who pled guilty to Federal conspiracy charges as a result of tens of millions of dollars in systemic Medicare fraud committed under Romney’s and Bain’s control. Damon was fined over $119-million which was, at the time, the largest criminal healthcare fine in Massachusetts history and Mr. Romney’s participation was characterized in 1996 by Corporate...

"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...

Mitt Romney’s campaign unleashed a multi-pronged attack against Newt Gingrich Wednesday — a sign the GOP front-runner could be worried about a surge from the ex-Speaker prior to South Carolina’s primary on Saturday. Romney rolled out a pair of new attack ads and dispatched two of his top surrogates to blast Gingrich’s erratic temperament just days before the make-or-break southern contest. “He’s not reliable,” former Missouri Senator Jim Talent slammed on a media conference call. “Yes, he can say exciting things — he also says things that undermine the conservative movement.” That theme was reminiscent of the line of attack...