Free Republic

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy, raised $7 million in January, topping off its deep reservoir of funds and allowing the group to flood media markets from Sioux City to Sarasota with some $14 million in advertising. Its FEC disclosure on Monday revealed that its extensive effort to elevate Romney and bury the competition relied on a set of donors that runs the gamut from famous heirs and CEOs to the most opaque and controversial kind of corporate interests. Unlike its competitors, Restore Our Future doesn’t have a lone high-profile benefactor, like Newt Gingrich has...

What’s the prescription for a famously brilliant venture capitalist who has trouble connecting with blue-collar voters in his native state? How about bringing in a far more controversial venture capitalist who’s claim to recent fame is in firing people on national television? What could go wrong?With just over a week to go before Michigan voters head to the polls, Mitt Romney is enlisting the help of one of his highest-wattage surrogates: Donald Trump. The real estate mogul is preparing to spread his pro-Romney, anti-Rick Santorum message in a series of radio interviews this week on local stations from Traverse City...

John Hinderaker encapsulates an assumption which has started to take hold among many of Mitt Romney’s backers: that the fault for what appears to be an increasingly likely 2012 election loss lies with conservatives for making this a real primary. Speaking of the see-saw of not-Romney candidates, he writes: The same pattern has been repeated more than once during the current, discouraging presidential nominating process. If the GOP loses this year’s presidential contest, the party will have no one to blame but its own activists. I'm hearing this meme repeated by many increasingly dejected Romney supporters around Washington, D.C. See,...

Back in the thick of the 2008 Republican presidential race, I asked a captain of American finance what he had made of Mitt Romney when they were young colleagues at Bain & Company. “Mitt was a nice guy, a smart businessman, and an excellent team player,” he ­responded without missing a beat. Then came the CEO’s one footnote, delivered with bemusement, not pique: “Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we’d always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us had any idea who this guy was.” Here we are in...

Via BuzzFeed. As expected, they’re going hard after his fiscal heresies. I’m giving you Santorum’s new ad here too, which is noteworthy first because he touts his tea-party cred (ironic) and second because he’s now making electability a core component of his pitch. No other Not Romney has been in that position before — but the numbers do back him up, for now: One thing that has remained constant in the ever changing GOP Presidential race is that Mitt Romney is the strongest candidate against Barack Obama…at least until now. PPP’s newest national poll finds Romney trailing Obama by 7...

Mitt Romney's overall favorable ratings have dropped, while Rick Santorum's standing has jumped among Republicans, according to a new national survey. A CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday indicates Romney's popularity has especially taken a tumble among Republicans, with a 13-point decline in positive reviews from his own party.

We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th. In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention. So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to...

Recently, "Republican" presidential wanna-be Mitt Romney had this to say to the Communist News Network's Soledad O'Brien: ************************************ "And, by the way, I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor; we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mitt-romney-to-soledad-obrien-im-not-concerned-about-the-very-poor/ *********************************** Now, of course, the arrogant and lazy media focused on the " I’m not concerned about the very...

Mitt Romney, in pledging to turn around the Olympics in 2002, had promised to restore the honor and integrity of the scandal-clouded Salt Lake City. The Games captured the world’s attention and became all the more urgent after terrorists attacked us on 9-11. But while Romney invoked the wellspring of American patriotism after the attacks, he neglected their heroes, the fallen firefighters of that early September morning. Romney’s executive assistant, Donna Tillery, twice denied requests to provide free or discounted tickets to widows and orphans of the felled firefighters but gave them for free to Utah legislators just six weeks...

While Mitt Romney may have taken a step closer to the nomination Tuesday in Florida, the scorched earth he leaves behind tells me he took a few steps further away from the White House -- and what's more, he knows it.

Mitt Romney's plastic and philosophically vapid campaign secured an easy victory in Florida on Tuesday night. Sunshine state GOP voters swallowed his "electability" argument whole, according to the exit polls. It appears that country club Republicans have succeeded again in duping the GOP electorate into crowning a "centrist" Republican. Never mind that "centrist" Republicans rarely win the center. They usually lose the center while sapping the spirit of the party's conservative base. Out of Bob Dole's and John McCain's tattered Big Tent steps another "reformed" RINO, Mitt Romney, who will receive, should he win the nomination, a similar thumping from...

Newt Gingrich has a new unofficial campaign surrogate and her name is Sarah Palin. As the 2008 veep nominee sees it, Gingrich is getting a raw deal from the national media and conservative elite, the very same forces who conspired against her when she was on the national ticket. Palin hasn’t endorsed Gingrich — and has no official role in his campaign — but she is repeatedly surfacing at just the right times on the national airwaves to vociferously defend him. In her latest appearance, Palin stated: “Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks,”...

When Mitt Romney faced questions on the campaign trail four years ago about investments in firms engaged in embryonic stem cell research, the presidential candidate had a ready explanation -- he was unaware because his vast financial portfolio was under the control of an independent trustee. Last week, Romney's campaign pulled out the same explanation when ABC News sought details about the candidate's holdings in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore tax haven. "We remind you that Gov. Romney does not choose anything; these are BLIND TRUSTS," a campaign official wrote in an email. But government ethics experts and election...

The New York Times reports today — based on unclear sourcing — that Mitt Romney has endorsed a strategy of raising doubts about Newt Gingrich’s “emotional stability.” Well, if that’s the case, here’s Exhibit A. A Florida source passes along a mailer that the Romney campaign — not the pro-Romney Super PAC; his campaign — just dropped in the state, and it comes as close as possible to making that case, hitting Gingrich as “erratic” and “reckless.” The mailer also prominently features a quote from my colleague Jennifer Rubin, describing Gingrich’s “well of sleaze.” Here’s page one: (GRAPHIC AT LINK)...

Dear Mitt: In this year's contest for the Republican nomination, you have demonstrated your ruthlessness. Your attacks on fellow Republicans have show that you are willing to be as brutal, vile, and remorseless as is necessary to defeat your opponent. Presumably, this is how you made $200 million in about 12 years at Bain. In 2008 and now in 2012 you have left a field of wounded warriors in your wake: Huckabee, Giulianni and now Newt. We can see you are willing to be as dirty and nasty as you need to be to win. But the question remains, will...

(CNN) - Mitt Romney's campaign released a blistering new Florida television ad against Newt Gingrich on Monday, eight days before the Sunshine State's presidential primary. "If Newt wins, this guy would be very happy," the ad's narrator says, as a photo of a smiling President Barack Obama appears on screen. The 30-second commercial, "Florida Families," is set to air statewide in Florida. In a part of the country that saw large amounts of home foreclosures, the ad particularly strikes Gingrich over his time as a consultant at mortgage giant Freddie Mac. "While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis,...

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.

One of the things fellow Republicans and political observers have never liked about Mitt Romney is the wholesome piety he exhibits on the stump, while his hacks and PACs engage in some of the ugliest politics around. He can flash that plastic smile and pretend all he wants, but people know the cold fish doesn't shy away from the politics of personal destruction. If anything, his campaigns embrace it more than most, while feigning ignorance and pretending otherwise himself.This is why so many people in the GOP have come to dislike Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney backer and New Jersey Gov....

Is the date Jan. 21 about to be a lot brighter for Newt Gingrich? As South Carolina votes Saturday, Mitt Romney’s campaign sent a press release wishing Gingrich a “happy anniversary” for the House decision to reprimand him, which happened on Jan. 21, 1997. Headlined “Happy 15th Anniversary, Mr. Speaker,” the release said, “Fifteen years ago today, Newt Gingrich became the first House speaker in American history to be reprimanded by his colleagues.” Gingrich was investigated for tax irregularities and for campaign finance disclosure violations in the late 1990s. The matter, conducted when Republicans controlled the House, was settled when...

After ignoring former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for three weeks, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is renewing its assault on Newt Gingrich days before ...