Free Republic

Mitt Romney’s campaign manager rejected efforts to use President Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in ads attacking the president, as reportedly planned by a “super PAC” working toward electing Mr. Romney in November. “Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” the campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, said in a statement on Thursday morning. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney,’ and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team...

Levin is livid over the fact that Romney repudiated anything to do with bringing up Rev. Wright in this campaign even though in the primaries he went full throttle against Newt Gingrich, even with false attack ads:

In their never-ending crusade to destroy traditional conservatives, we expect the corrupt media to lie. It's what they do and what they've done for decades. What we don’t expect, though, is to have our presumptive nominee fuel those lies and allow those lies to affect his crucially important vice presidential pick. This is why this morning's report in the left-wing Politico is so troubling: [emphasis added] Mitt Romney and his top aides are building a strategy, partly by design and partly because of circumstance, around what they consider John McCain’s disastrously run campaign in 2008. The strategy: whatever McCain did,...

Bully story a black eye for Mitt Romney "Straight-laced and squeaky clean Mitt Romney must show he’s not the teen bully critics now say he was, if he hopes to limit the damage from a published report on his prep school days that paints him as a cruel and possibly homophobic prankster who once pinned a vulnerable schoolmate down and cut his bleached-blond locks .... Republican consultant John Feehery called the Washington Post report “troubling” for Romney’s presidential bid.... “For independents, it’s a troubling story. ... They don’t like bullies, and anti-bullying has become a issue on the national stage,”...

There may be a good reason voters can’t get a good bead on Mitt Romney. And it may be because the real Romney has a troubled, sadistic history. High School classmates of Romney recall an incident that’s disturbing to its core. Romney, then a popular senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan, disapproved of classmate John Lauber’s long, blond locks, which Romney allegedly took as a clue that Lauber was a homosexual. So Romney assembled a posse of bullies and held the boy down and brutally chopped off his hair. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look...

The GOP attacks on Palin.   After the Inauguration of Obama, the first time that the manhood of the GOP was called into question was the Stimulus package.  Rick Santelli was so upset with it that he issued his now famous diatribe calling for something like a national tea party.  A long simmering emotion within conservative ranks now had a name. Meanwhile, back in Alaska, Sarah Palin's return to work involved dealing with these stimulus package issues, and she did what she felt that she must.  She took those which were appropriate, but turned away those that weren't.  This was...

On Tuesday night, as he celebrates expected victories in Pennsylvania, New York, and other states, Mitt Romney plans to accept the title of presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Certainly the overwhelming majority of party insiders, along with the rest of the political world, already views Romney as the GOP choice; Tuesday will be just more confirmation. So given those circumstances, why are some prominent Republicans in Delaware, which also votes Tuesday, throwing their support, at this late date, to Newt Gingrich? In recent days Gingrich has announced the endorsements of Terry Spence, a former Speaker of the Delaware House; Jerry...

Mitt Romney was not his first choice for president, but conservative political activist Scott Magill has come to accept that Romney is now his only choice. So Magill is looking for reasons to get jazzed about the candidate he once dismissed. His list so far: Romney is a Republican who would sign into law legislation passed by a GOP-led House. Romney has started to hit the right talking points. If elected, Romney would have to listen to the conservative base - or risk its wrath at reelection time. Also, and perhaps most important, Romney is not Barack Obama. The conservative...

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Saturday that his cash-strapped campaign machine will march forward into North Carolina next week -- despite reports that stops in that state and elsewhere had been placed on indefinite hold, according to a report by Fox News. Filed federal reports indicated that the Gingrich campaign had $4.3 million in debt and has $1.22 million cash on hand. The campaign raised $1.6 million in March but spent $2.01 million, Fox News reported. Other public records revealed that Gingrich started the month of March with $1.55 million in debt and only $1.54 million in cash reserves....

For those of you who did not get or see the memo from Vince Haley, Mitt still has some major problems. Here is the Haley Memo, in relevant part: [H]ere is the crucial news about why --- with 17 states to go -- the Romney forces are worried, worried that the frontrunner's weakness is surfacing again in the Republican primaries. Here are two crucial news items causing Romneyites to worry. -- Despite much pressure from Romney forces, Colorado Republicans last weekend at their Denver convention surprised political observers by electing - and by a large margin -- more uncommitted than...

LANCASTER, Pa. - Two of the Republican candidates for president are in Pennsylvania a week ahead of the state's primary election. Mitt Romney, the GOP's all-but-certain presidential nominee, and Newt Gingrich, are scheduled to speak at the Republican Committee of Lancaster County’s spring event in Lancaster on Tuesday evening. Rick Santorum, who suspended his campaign last week, has canceled his appearance. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania U.S. senator, hasn't hinted whether he'll eventually endorse Romney, but said he'll say soon how he'll continue to press for conservatism in politics.

Mitt Romney caught in a Bill Clinton truth-telling moment. More proof of the constant lying of Mitt Romney

. . . . . What sort of justice to the Supreme Court will Mitt Romney nominate - a Souter or a Thomas? A Miers or an Alito? A Kennedy or a Scalia? His record as governor of Massachusetts gives no cause for optimism. Mr. Romney nominated 36 judges while governor, just nine of whom were Republicans. What he says of this record today is that the Massachusetts Governor's Council had to confirm the nominees, and the members of the council were all Democrats. So his answer was to nominate persons palatable to Democrats. But this all-Democratic Governor's Council is...

SILVER SPRING, Md. — Five different political contests are being conducted right now. Only two are evident to the naked eye. The first of the visible contests pits Mitt Romney against Rick Santorum for the Republican presidential nomination. The results here in Maryland and in Wisconsin this week tell us who has a commanding lead there. The second visible contest pits Romney against President Barack Obama. That one began this month with their twin addresses to the convention of editors in Washington. Obama has a 4-point lead, according to a Gallup poll conducted last week for USA Today. Now to...

Coming off of his primary wins in liberal Maryland and DC and a relentlessly negative campaign in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s campaign has signaled to the other candidates for the Republican nomination for President that there will be no let-up in the negative tenor of his campaign going into Pennsylvania and the other spring primaries. Mitt Romney As Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla noted, the “defining feature of the 2012 Republican presidential primary race” has been Romney’s relentlessly negative campaign. According to Przybyla’s research, “Since the contests began, Restore Our Future has spent $35 million on commercials attacking Santorum and Newt Gingrich” and...

Fox News & CNN are projecting Romney wins MD in their banners. Santorum wasn't on the DC ballot. Wisconsin polls close at 8pm CDT/9pm EDT.

The Romney campaign, renowned for its oppo-heavy strategy, didn’t even have an oppo book on Rick Santorum a few days before the Iowa caucuses, so surprised were they by his surge. Jon Huntsman nearly decided in November to leave the GOP and run as an independent. And before one of the debates, Rick Perry sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” in a restroom. These details are from Mike Allen and Evan Thomas’ new e-book, Inside the Circus, as are these additional factoids below. Mitt Romney raised millions in March by warning would-be donors a brokered convention could mean a...

APPLETON, Wis. — Mitt Romney’s advisers and top supporters have begun informally discussing potential vice presidential candidates and although they are careful to note that the campaign is far from putting together a short list, key supporters and strategists said Friday that they are beginning to see the outlines of the kind of person Romney will choose — and the kind he will avoid. The conventional thinking has been that after a long and divisive primary campaign, the challenge of uniting the GOP would force Romney to pick a running mate with strong appeal to tea party activists and evangelicals....

The Washington Times is usually pretty good, but they really blew this one. They claim that Romney is now getting Tea Party support. The writer for the Times either didn’t know better or engaged in some creative writing. Among other things, he claims that Freedomworks has dropped its opposition to Romney, something that Freedomworks denies. The Times in its blatant desire to see Romney as the nominee claims that Freedomworks launched the Tea Party movement. Ignoring the fact that is not true, I don’t think even Freedomworks makes that claim. They did help organize a big DC rally in 2009,...

Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama holds a double-digit lead over GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in hypothetical general election matchups, according to a new poll. And a CNN/ORC International survey released Wednesday also indicates that the president's approval rating has inched over the 50% mark in CNN surveys for the first time since last May, when the polls were still registering the after effects of the death of Osama bin Laden. The number of Americans who say the economy's in good shape has jumped 13 points since January, though the survey shows a majority still think...