Free Republic

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads in some polls for the Republican presidential nomination, but he's also lost key backers - including some in Orange County, which was a base camp for his failed 2008 bid. ((snip)) "It was one of the most brain-dead campaigns I've seen," Schroeder said. "I was planning 15 months in advance, but their planning window for events was five days. That meant they didn't focus on California until five days before the primary." ((snip)) Additionally, Schroeder sees the health-care reform Romney championed in Massachusetts as a liability for someone challenging Barack Obama's similar reform on...

In a brief filed Monday in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Coakley says the fact that Romney and the Massachusetts Legislature imposed an individual mandate as part of their health care law suggests that Congress had a "rational basis" for imposing a similar mandate in its law. “Obamacare is bad law constitutionally, bad policy, and it is bad for America’s families,” Romney said.

At first sight it was no contest. On one channel Sarah Palin, the poster-girl of the American right, was wowing audiences with her first routine as a stand-up comedian. On a rival chat show Mitt Romney, the early frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2012, was delivering such dull fare that his host yawned. Writing a book and promoting it on late-night television have become an integral part of a presidential campaign launch. It certainly worked for Barack Obama. For Romney, the tactic seems to have backfired. He may be ahead of Palin in the opinion polls. But 5.8m people...

Republican consultant Charley Manning is replacing the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh on WRKO radio starting Monday. Jason Wolfe, program director for WRKO-AM (680), confirmed to the Herald that Manning will take over the station’s weekday noon to 3 p.m. slot. Manning, who has served as a campaign adviser to former Gov. Mitt Romney, emphasized that his new show, “The Charley Manning Show,” will be local. The GOP strategist said his show will “touch on all of the local issues that everybody is talking about, but with a special look at politics.” “I’m looking forward to really getting into politics, especially...

A new poll shows that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney now has a less than 50 percent favorability rating among Republican voters. Public Policy Polling has released its monthly 2012 survey, which finds that while 65 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 75 percent have a favorable opinion of former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, only 48 percent view Mitt Romney favorably. Romney's popularity has fallen 19 points in the poll since May. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling says the healthcare plan that Romney passed in Massachusetts when he was governor...