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Facing the unthinkable here just seven days ago — a second loss in a row to Newt Gingrich — Mitt Romney’s campaign team hatched a two-part plan to win in Florida: make Newt mad and Mitt meaner. -snip- A team of some of the most fearsome researchers in the business, led by Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, spent days dispensing negative information about Mr. Gingrich, much of it finding its way to the influential Drudge Report, which often serves as a guide for conservative talk radio and television assignment editors and to which Mr. Rhoades has close ties. The...

Not too many months ago, likely voters trusted Republicans over Democrats on all ten top issues. It was probably too much to expect those heady days to continue, and I suspect that the GOP presidential primary season has damaged the party’s standing. That is unfortunate: if the Republican candidates had devoted their energies to non-stop attacks on President Obama, the result would have been positive. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and the bashing of fellow Republicans that we have seen over the last couple of months has no doubt damaged the party’s brand.

MIAMI — Facing the unthinkable here just seven days ago — a second loss in a row to Newt Gingrich — Mitt Romney’s campaign team hatched a two-part plan to win in Florida: make Newt mad and Mitt meaner. [snip] If Mr. Romney does win here on Tuesday, it will have been through a blistering and unrelenting series of attacks. His campaign has pressed everything at its disposal into service to eviscerate Mr. Gingrich, painting him as an erratic, unreliable Washington insider in mailings and television advertisements, at two critical debates here (where his team made sure Mr. Romney had...

The Romney campaign sends along a statement by Bob Dole pasted below. Relations between Dole — an establishment figure in the party — and Gingrich were well known to be tense during the 1990s. Here it is: I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a...

Jon Huntsman has halted his campaign for president, leaving Romney the only serious choice on foreign policy.

Trolling a bit admittedly, but it appears that even if Romney secures the nomination, he is destined to lose due to good, old-fashioned religious bigotry.

There's been a fair amount of chatter/concern that the importance of Florida's Republican primary could be dramatically diluted if the RNC further penalizes the state for its early primary by allocating its delegates proportionally, rather than winner-take-all. After all, divvying up 50 delegates four or five ways would make the state a lot smaller prize for the winner. On a conference call with reporters today, however, RNC officials all but dismissed the prospects for Florida losing its winner-take-all status. As it is the state's number of delegates will be slashed from 99 to 50, and there is no mechanism to...

US election 2012: Mitt Romney On Course For Historic Double Victory Mitt Romney could strike a decisive early blow in the contest to pick the Republican party’s presidential nominee by becoming the first candidate ever to win both the first two states to vote, opinion polls suggest. By Jon Swaine 01 Jan 2012 The former Massachusetts governor leads the party field both in Iowa, where tomorrow’s caucuses will give the candidates their first test, and in New Hampshire, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday. If successful, Mr Romney would become the first Republican challenger in the modern primary...

My choice for President is Mitt Romney. I just shuddered at that statement. But there it is. There is the reality that 13 debates, months of bickering and intrigue, and countless discussions with conservative brethren have brought me. It is kind of a sad reality. Is this the best conservatives could do? So here has been my calculation for who I would support, from the beginning. First, the candidate must be electable and able to defeat Barack Obama, both electorally and intellectually. Second, they must broaden the base of the Republican Party, both on the conservative and moderate sides. Third,...

Time to close ranks behind Romney. He will beat Obama.

Unto the manor born, as they say: Romney’s speech was billed by his advisers as his closing argument before the GOP nomination fight kicks off in earnest with the Iowa caucuses on January 3. But you would be forgiven for thinking it sounded more like the opening salvo in a general election. Romney drew no explicit or, really, implicit contrasts with any of his Republican rivals, training his fire exclusively on the Democrat in the Oval Office. His focus reflected a strategy from which his campaign has rarely deviated all year long. But it was also born of a confidence...

LANCASTER, N.H. – Mitt Romney today said that the $40 many Americans would lose if the payroll tax holiday isn’t extended would make a “very substantial difference” to those who would be without it. “It’ll be the difference between having a meal that includes meat or just Hamburger Helper,” said Romney in an interview with ABC News’ John Berman aboard his new campaign bus in northern New Hampshire. “It could be the difference between being able to take your family to McDonald’s at the end of the week. It means the difference between being able to go to a movie...

NEWT HELPED FORMULATE CHRISTMAS December 21, 2011Every few years, heinous Democratic policies -- abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, Hillarycare, Obamacare, to name a few -- compel previously uninvolved Americans to leap into politics. This is great, except for two things: (1) We have to get heinous Democratic policies first; and (2) newcomers have short memories, sometimes no memories at all. The second point is the only possible explanation for why some conservatives seem to view Newt Gingrich as the anti-Establishment outsider who will shake up Washington. Newly active right-wingers would do well to spend a little more time quietly...

Coulter just finished a segment with Hannity's fill in host. She is convinced Newt, "with two affairs", is unelectable and "shouldn't be elected." Is Newt unelectable?

<p>Did Palin just call Newt and Mitt RINOs? It sure sounds like it.</p>

Conservative pundits turn down Newt By: Alexander Burns December 9, 2011 10:42 AM EST The conservative opinion elite has reached a consensus on Newt Gingrich: He’s not the one they’ve been waiting for. In the days since Gingrich leaped to the forefront of the Republican presidential race, the nation’s most prominent right-leaning commentators — many of whom have spent the last year pining for alternatives to Mitt Romney — have rendered a swift and caustic judgment on their party’s latest out-of-right-field challenger. In columns dripping with disdain, they’ve argued that Gingrich isn’t just undesirable as an opponent for Romney —...

RINO. Three words: liberal progressive RINO. Add a fourth, fifth, sixth, etc: unprincipled, untrustworthy, flip-flopper, aisle-crossing, fraud, liar, political whore. And a few more: abortionist, gay rights panderer, gun-grabber, global warming advocate, big government mandate lover, socialist healthcare pusher, constitution trampling, liberal judge appointing, TARP loving, bailout loving, stimulus pushing Keynesian statist. That my friends, is no definition of conservative or of conservatism. Not even close. In fact it's the exact opposite. Free Republic is and will remain an exclusive pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-constitution, pro-small government, pro-capitalism, pro-defense, pro-borders, grassroots patriotic conservative site, regardless of party politics. I support...

Mitt Romney refused to criticize his Massachusetts health-care program tonight, saying he would prefer to lose the primary rather than renounce it. “I’m standing by what I did in Massachusetts,” Romney said on Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier. “I’m not trying to dust it aside. I’m absolutely firm that it was the right thing for our state. I’ll defend that and I understand it has political implications. And if it keeps me from winning a primary, so be it. But that happens to be the truth.” “It’s by far, the biggest challenge I have in the primary...

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney met with former President George H.W. Bush Thursday, but Romney aides say no endorsement is coming. The former Massachusetts governor ventured onto the turf of a rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to meet with Bush and his wife, Barbara, in the living room of their Houston home. Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said Romney and the nation's 41st president are friends, but added that the visit doesn't mean Bush will endorse Romney. Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said the meeting was a courtesy visit, noting that Bush has met with other GOP presidential hopefuls, including Jon Huntsman.

A new poll shows that if Republicans want to nominate the candidate most likely to beat President Obama in 2012, they should pick Mitt Romney—at least if the election were held tomorrow.