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Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney thinks "Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud" and that he's "playing the American public for suckers," according to prepared remarks provided by Romney to CNN. According to the former Massachusetts governor, "the only serious policy proposals that deal with the broad range of national challenges we confront have come from Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich." Romney is expected to remark on some what-ifs about Trump becoming president. "His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor...

Businessman Donald Trump’s support among Republican voters has hit a new national high of 49 percent, according to a CNN/ORC poll. By contrast, the party's nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, didn’t reach 49 percent in a poll until mid-April of that year. As YouGov’s William Jordan noted, Romney’s highest polling number prior to that was 40 percent, which he achieved once in mid-January 2012 and once at the end of February. Support for Trump has been over 40 percent in the last four national polls, and flirted with the 40 percent mark in some polls in early December. Single polls...

Donald J. Trump ‎‎@realDonaldTrump I'm going to do what @MittRomney was totally unable to do- WIN! 11:44 AM - 25 Feb 2016 4,453 4,453 Retweets 11,489 11,489 likes

Donald Trump fired back at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for wondering Wednesday if a "bombshell" was sitting in his unreleased tax returns. Fresh off his victory in Nevada, Trump fired off a trio of tweets at Romney, calling him a "fool" and a "tough guy" for his attack, adding that he should have beaten President Obama as the Republican nominee in 2012. >>>Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpWhen Mitt Romney asked me for my endorsement last time around, he was so awkward and goofy that we all should have known he could not win!<<< >>>Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump "@Ward_II: Oh great...

Tripwire Alert – Understanding Why Mitt Romney is Making Ridiculous Claims About Donald Trump’s Taxes…. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is going “full Mississippi” with claims about Donald Trump’s taxes.  It doesn’t matter that there is no basis for the ridiculous assertions – the truth and/or facts are not what matters when you go “full Mississippi”…. it’s a strategy! The absolute worst thing Donald Trump could do is to respond to it.  Responding to the provocation is exactly what they want.  Dismiss it like you would swat an annoying gnat. Mitt Romney – “The reason that I think there’s a bombshell in there is because...

Donald Trump is leaving the door open to not releasing his tax returns, just hours after Mitt Romney warned Wednesday that the billionaire's tax documents could contain a "bombshell." The GOP front-runner said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that he will "make a determination over the next couple of months" as to whether he will release his tax returns... It was also an attack steeped in irony, since Romney was on the receiving end of similar claims by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, when Democrats eviscerated him over his fortune and business record during the 2012 campaign. Reid...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stated that Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Texas Senator Sen. Ted Cruz(R-TX), and Florida Senator Sen. Marco Rubio(R-FL) ought to release their taxes for “the last two years that have already been filed” and that there’s “good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes” on Wednesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel. Romney began by saying that both Trump and Democratic candidate Senator Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) were connecting with voters who were upset with the Washington, which hasn’t made progress. He added, “I think there’s...

2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday on Fox News there is good reason to believe there is a "bombshell" to be found in Donald Trump's back taxes. Asked by host Neil Cavuto why he hadn't officially backed a Republican for the 2016 nomination, Romney said he would like to see the back taxes from several of the candidates. Taxes were a sore spot for Romney in 2012, with then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) publicly accusing him of not even paying them. "This will give us a real sense of whether these people are on the up...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will endorse Sen. Marco Rubio, the Huffington Post reports. The details of the endorsement are being worked out. It's ironic since Romney, who was largely an absentee governor in the last nine months of his administration, is endorsing someone who didn't bother showing up for work in the Senate that much. "Romney spent the day in Utah on Saturday and could potentially be in position to bestow his blessing upon Rubio before Tuesday's Nevada Republican caucuses-a contest that Romney won easily in both 2008 and 2012." "Romney's backing will provide Rubio with the highest-profile endorsement...

Could Mitt Romney and John McCain turn out to be the hidden arrows in Marco Rubio's political quiver in New Hampshire?[continued]

With Donald Trump’s ruinous domination of the Republican primary polls showing no signs of abating, top leaders in the GOP are reportedly now preparing for the possibility of a contentious brokered convention next year in Cleveland. If that happens, a small group of wealthy donors and die-hard loyalists close to Mitt Romney will be ready with a strategy to win him the nomination from the convention floor.

EXCERPT Anyway, Charlie Rose with Mark Halperin last night. Charlie Rose said, "Are you saying, Mark, that if the Republican Party unites against Donald Trump, that they can't stop him?" HALPERIN: The establishment now will not accept Trump as the nominee. They will fight him to the end, including at the convention if they need to and I think they'll run someone else if he does become the nominee. ROSE: Meaning somebody's in the field -- HALPERIN: No! Someone like Mitt Romney or Mitch Daniels, someone else to step forward to say, "We've got a safe place to vote because...

Link only http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mitt-romney-could-stop-donald-trump-seriously_56689e49e4b080eddf56dc2d

For Republicans fearful of Donald Trump becoming their party’s presidential nominee, a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters offers a three-word solution: Willard Mitt Romney. If the former Massachusetts governor were added to the mix of the 14 other Republican candidates running in the Feb. 9 first-in-the-nation presidential primary, New Hampshire voters would, if the election were held now, give him a 2-to-1 win over Trump, the leader of the field. Romney, who said as recently as last week that he is not interested in running, did not file for the New Hampshire primary...

It's hard to keep up with the twists and turns in this presidential race. Hillary Clinton under fire on Benghazi! Ben Carson has a theory about the pyramids! Bernie Sanders wrote about rape fantasies! Donald Trump . . . well, Donald Trump! Figuring out which headline will have the biggest impact on the general election is a bit of a parlor game. But what if they have no impact at all? After the 2012 election, political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck wrote a book called"The Gamble"that looked at the cause of President Obama's victory over Mitt Romney. They sifted...

Rumors are starting to fly that Republican elites are considering adding Mitt Romney to the Republican primary in a last-minute attempt to destabilize the popularity of non-traditional candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, The Washington Post reported. But this seems to be mostly rumor and speculation from his friends, since Romney himself has said he won’t run again and no one has gone on record yet with specific plans to draft him. What’s really going on? Here’s what you need to know....

Donald Trump will lose his zest for campaigning as it gets harder and drop out before Iowa, and Republicans eventually will nominate a presidential candidate who has previously held elective office, a senior strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign said Monday. Speaking at the Clinton School of Public Service, Stuart Stevens said that running for president is “the least enjoyable experience that adults voluntarily enter into.” In August, he wrote in The Daily Beast that Trump wouldn’t even run in order to avoid being tagged a loser, and he still believes that will happen once running for president stops...

Why isn’t Mitt Romney president? Because he thinks like this. Over at Breitbart was this headline: MITT ROMNEY: DEMISE OF LEGACY MEDIA EMPOWERING CONSERVATIVE ‘INSURGENTS,’ PREVENTING MORE ‘COLLABORATIVE ACTION’ The story reads, in part, like this: Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats. As the Republican establishment is trying convince Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to run for House Speaker, Romney told David Axelrod on a recent “The Axe Files” podcast that the “extremes within our respective parties are having a louder...

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, sounded off on the possibility of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Romney’s 2012 running mate, as the next Speaker of the House. Romney told show host Jake Tapper Ryan as Speaker of the House would lessen the possibility he could make a future run for president. “We need Paul in two spots at once,” Romney said. “You know, there haven’t been a lot of people that have gone on from speaker to the White House, so I’d hate to lose him as a potential...

Under mounting pressure, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan emerged as the reluctant would-be savior of the fractious Republican House caucus yesterday, even being urged by 2012 GOP ticket-mate Mitt Romney to run for speaker. “I wouldn’t presume to tell Paul what to do, but I do know that he is a man of ideas who is driven to see them applied for the public good,” Romney said in a statement yesterday. “Every politician tries to convince people that they are that kind of leader; almost none are — Paul is.” Romney’s glowing endorsement of his former running mate came after the...