Free Republic

Are Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so different after all? Despite the media’s portrayal of Romney as a uniquely craven politician, the recent controversy over Obama’s views on gay marriage highlights the ways that both candidates—like nearly all politicians—have adjusted their positions over their careers for political reasons. [snip] Why have Obama and Romney’s “evolutions” been covered so differently? As Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek noted on Twitter, the difference between the candidates is far less clear than the media coverage would suggest. In both cases, electoral incentives are the primary factor shaping the positions that candidates publicly profess. When...

Mitt Romney, under fire from all sides on the strength of his political convictions, said Thursday he has been as consistent as a person can be during his political career. "I've been as consistent as human beings can be," the presidential candidate said in a meeting with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Seacoast Media Group. "I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every single time, and so there are some folks who, obviously, for various political and campaign purposes will try and find some change and try to draw great attention to something which looks...

Two new sets of Republicans are feeling deflated today -- the Chris Christie hopefuls and the Sarah Palin stalwarts. The Christie decision didn't surprise me, perhaps because I grew up in Jersey. In fact, Christie and I attended the same high school! Anyway, Jerseyans are many things (not all of them nice), but slick dissemblers we are not. When Christie said, repeatedly, and in ever more colorful terms, that he wasn't running, I believed him. And, while I understand the boomlet for him, I'm also a little relieved to see that he is indeed a truthful guy. Sarah Palin, by...

WASHINGTON - For much of the past year, Mitt Romney seemed to strenuously avoid looking as if he were too closely linked to the Tea Party. No longer. In an apparent strategic shift, Romney will be standing beneath a Tea Party Express banner in New Hampshire on Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon he will be at a Republican gathering in South Carolina hosted by Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican and Tea Party kingmaker. What changed?

Belmont, Mass. — Long before it came time to actually choose a career, Peter Flaherty knew he wanted do so something exciting. “In Massachusetts, you kind of grow up with two things in your blood: sports and politics,” said Flaherty, a Belmont resident and father of three. “When I realized I was not going to be a professional athlete, I realized politics was the adult equivalent of professional sports.” Flaherty has always found room for public service in his professional life, which has seen him prosecute homicides, produce big-budget children’s movies and serve as a senior advisor to then-Gov. Mitt...

Mitt Romney attacks Obama's leadership on Oil Spill Has it come to this again? The president is meeting with his oil spill experts, he crudely tells us, so that he knows "whose @ss to kick." We have become accustomed to his management style — target a scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the deepening and lengthening downturn,...

History turns in a moment: Harper’s Ferry, Trafalgar, Dien Bien Phu. The Democrats may have seen such a moment with Sen. Ben Nelson this week in Nebraska, so it might be worth marking that page. At year’s end it is worth looking forward to what is likely to rise ahead. These four will be key: Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and William Daley. Sarah Palin: She was seen from the very beginning as a rising star — a cultural awakener similar to Andrew Jackson — bringing a whole new cultural paradigm to the political process; a new heartland spirit...

Video at link.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A top adviser from John McCain's presidential campaign who has criticized Sarah Palin's odds as a presidential candidate in 2012 is standing by the decision to pick her as McCain's running mate in the 2008 election. Steve Schmidt, who was chief strategist for McCain's presidential race, said Palin helped McCain as a running mate in the 2008 race. Schmidt earlier this month said that Palin would be a catastrophe for the GOP if she's the party's presidential nominee in 2012.

“My husband and I met him and many others on a cruise sponsored by National Geographic and The Aspen Institute. He talked about supporting job growth in California, but of course I did not do a background check of his past over dinner. As these reports have surfaced, it’s clear that he holds views that I entirely reject; any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous.” --Meg Whitman

As he demonstrated in his 2008 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney is as variable as the New England weather. Still, Romney positively outdid himself last week. Speaking at a National Rifle Association forum, he blasted President Obama's healthcare plans - proposals that look a good deal like the Massachusetts coverage law Romney helped bring about. But it gets stranger still. "The best path to healthcare reform is to let the American people make their own decisions, not have those decisions forced on them by government," proclaimed the perpetual candidate. This even though Romney's most important contribution to the state's landmark law...

I spoke with former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney at his hotel room the morning of his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington. (He ended up winning the CPAC presidential straw poll.) Instead of the usual political horse race questions, I wanted to probe his views of our current economic environment and whether he thought Reagan-style free-market economics was dead. A couple of interesting notes: Romney sees the need for government money to help the banks, and he isn't a knee-jerk "suspend mark to market accounting" guy. But he also thinks the Obama administration doesn't quite...

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Back of the Book" tonight, let's bring in Governor Mitt Romney from San Diego, where he watched Obama's press conference. Did you learn anything? I'm asking this to everybody. Did you learn anything, Governor? MITT ROMNEY, FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR: Well, I learned that there's a very great rhetorical benefit in being able to set up straw men, like the one you just showed, and then knock them down. Dealing with the real problems associated with Barack Obama's stimulus plan was not something which he was prepared to do, and you know, you understand why he's...