Free Republic

Mitt Romney’s twin wins over the weekend in the Maine caucuses and the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll leave the GOP presidential-nomination race right where it’s been all along — in trouble and waiting for a Prince Charming. In Maine, Romney won with 39.2 percent of the vote, less than four points ahead of Ron Paul. The principal “not-Romneys” — Paul and Rick Santorum — took 53 percent of the roughly 5,600 nonbinding votes cast, about 2 percent of the state’s Republican electorate. Romney’s numbers were similar in the CPAC poll, in which he grabbed 38 percent of...

“I think I line up pretty well with the Tea Party,” he said in response to a question from The Daily Caller after touring the Derry Feed and Supply store. “They want to see smaller government. So do I.”

"The bottom line is Sarah Palin is not going to run for president," says a Republican adviser close to front-runner Mitt Romney. "She's making money, she's moved on, she's kind of an entertainer rather than a politician. She still has some sway with the grass roots, but she is not going to run." "I don't think she's going to run," says a Republican close to Tim Pawlenty. "She has faded a lot in the last few months. I look at what she's doing now and say that she's found a way to get back in the story." Maybe these representatives...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continues to be seen as the favorite for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination according to a special National Journal Political Insiders Poll released on Tuesday. The second favorite for the GOP nod is former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 and was once viewed as a potential party standard bearer, was ranked ninth by the GOP Insiders—tied with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Gov. Rick Perry—when they were asked who was most likely going to be their 2012 presidential nominee....

As we all know, Mitt Romney's biggest problem in the 2012 Republican primaries is that conservatives don't trust him, given that he used to be a pro-choice moderate who got health coverage for Massachusetts' uninsured. His answer to this problem has been to run frantically to the right, staking out the most extreme position he can on any issue that comes up (his latest is an attack on lazy unemployed people). But the truth is this strategy is going to fail. What Mitt needs to understand is that voters don't make judgments based on checklists. If a true-blue conservative wants...