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A thousand injuries I suffered Fortunato. But when he turned to insult, I vowed revenge." Those are the opening words to Edgar Allen Poe's short story – “The Cask of Amontillado” – ... For a case of real-life of revenge in real-life American history, think of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Burr and Hamilton held a duel that led to the death of Hamilton, (who) had said something to someone about Burr being "despicable." Newt Gingrich has a deep and abiding case against Mitt Romney. Romney has spent millions with the single purpose of destroying Gingrich as a candidate. Oh,...

John Hinderaker encapsulates an assumption which has started to take hold among many of Mitt Romney’s backers: that the fault for what appears to be an increasingly likely 2012 election loss lies with conservatives for making this a real primary. Speaking of the see-saw of not-Romney candidates, he writes: The same pattern has been repeated more than once during the current, discouraging presidential nominating process. If the GOP loses this year’s presidential contest, the party will have no one to blame but its own activists. I'm hearing this meme repeated by many increasingly dejected Romney supporters around Washington, D.C. See,...

Back in the thick of the 2008 Republican presidential race, I asked a captain of American finance what he had made of Mitt Romney when they were young colleagues at Bain & Company. “Mitt was a nice guy, a smart businessman, and an excellent team player,” he ­responded without missing a beat. Then came the CEO’s one footnote, delivered with bemusement, not pique: “Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we’d always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us had any idea who this guy was.” Here we are in...

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Karl Rove threw cold water on the murmurings by unnamed “top Republicans” that a new candidate could emerge should Romney lose Michigan. Host Chris Wallace outlined a scenario in which a new candidate could still get on the ballots of California, New Jersy, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, and possibly Texas, and win enough delegates to contest the convention. But Rove was skeptical, to say the least. “This proves mental illness is transmittable by contact, personal contact. You’ve been talking to all these people and — look, let’s go. . . . Let’s take...

We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th. In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention. So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to...

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union today, Rick Santorum told host Candy Crawley that his loss yesterday to Mitt Romney in CPAC's annual straw poll was because he didn't pay for votes. From Politico: "Well, you know, those straw polls at CPAC... for years Ron Paul has won those because he trucks in a lot of people, pays for their tickets, and they come in and vote and they leave. We didn't do that, we don't do that. i don't try to rig straw polls." Pressed further on whether or not he felt Romney had rigged the poll, Santorum...

Mitt Romney, in pledging to turn around the Olympics in 2002, had promised to restore the honor and integrity of the scandal-clouded Salt Lake City. The Games captured the world’s attention and became all the more urgent after terrorists attacked us on 9-11. But while Romney invoked the wellspring of American patriotism after the attacks, he neglected their heroes, the fallen firefighters of that early September morning. Romney’s executive assistant, Donna Tillery, twice denied requests to provide free or discounted tickets to widows and orphans of the felled firefighters but gave them for free to Utah legislators just six weeks...

While Mitt Romney may have taken a step closer to the nomination Tuesday in Florida, the scorched earth he leaves behind tells me he took a few steps further away from the White House -- and what's more, he knows it.

Mitt Romney's plastic and philosophically vapid campaign secured an easy victory in Florida on Tuesday night. Sunshine state GOP voters swallowed his "electability" argument whole, according to the exit polls. It appears that country club Republicans have succeeded again in duping the GOP electorate into crowning a "centrist" Republican. Never mind that "centrist" Republicans rarely win the center. They usually lose the center while sapping the spirit of the party's conservative base. Out of Bob Dole's and John McCain's tattered Big Tent steps another "reformed" RINO, Mitt Romney, who will receive, should he win the nomination, a similar thumping from...

Instead of appealing to voters to vote for him based upon x,y and z, he panders for votes by trying to increase his opponents negatives (as in FL) above his own by massively outspending them on negative ads. This approach has led to his negatives skyrocketing and his positives declining among independents and moderates. Fivethirtyeight and others have been monitoring this, and it isn't pretty. With each battle won (temporarily in Iowa and now Florida), he is headed to surpassing Obama's negatives or having lower positives (some show he already has) and he will ultimately lose against Obama if he...

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney rolled to victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday evening, according to early returns and exit polls, dispatching an insurgent threat from Newt Gingrich and reclaiming his dominant position in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Newt Gingrich has a new unofficial campaign surrogate and her name is Sarah Palin. As the 2008 veep nominee sees it, Gingrich is getting a raw deal from the national media and conservative elite, the very same forces who conspired against her when she was on the national ticket. Palin hasn’t endorsed Gingrich — and has no official role in his campaign — but she is repeatedly surfacing at just the right times on the national airwaves to vociferously defend him. In her latest appearance, Palin stated: “Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks,”...

Holy cow. Powerful start to Rush's show today. - Disclaimer: this information is provided as an imprecise, recollection second-hand of statements on Rush Limbaugh's broadcast this morning. No claim of accuracy is made, do your own due diligence please. - Yesterday, one of the most damning statements (as far as Newt's perspective would be) Rush made, as he was attempting on-air to make sense of the blizzard of Newt-hate yesterday from Drudge et al, was his thoughts about a rather nasty article by Elliot Abrams. The article claimed Newt Gingrich opposed Reagan's foreign policy toward the evil empire. Rush clearly...

I have been pounding the keyboard all week about the lies and distortions of the Romney campaign and supporters about Newt’s record of support for Ronald Reagan. These allegations were played out by the Romney campaign and on Drudge, and did serious damage to Newt, both substantively and by forcing Newt to get off message. I was highly suspicious of several accounts, including that by Elliot Abrams, regarding a speech by Newt in 1986. That article in National Review gave rise to this notorious Drudge headline:

As Ronald Reagan used to say: Well. Yesterday we took note of former Reagan State Department official Elliott Abrams' piece over at NRO that went after Newt Gingrich on his relationship with Reagan. While voting regularly with Reagan as a young congressman from Georgia, Gingrich, claimed Abrams, "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." Abrams then goes on to cite " a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986." Or sort of cites it.  In fact, I'm sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I mentioned his name yesterday -- Jeffrey Lord was in the political office of the White House during the first term of Reagan, maybe both terms. Jeffrey Lord now writes at the American Spectator. Jeffrey Lord, like me, didn't understand all this stuff at Newt yesterday. AP has a story referring to me now as "conservative radio titan." And they describe me as trying to defend Newt on this yesterday, and in the process, nevertheless, recounting all of the things that Newt had said. I wasn't trying to defend Newt, as AP said. All I was saying...

When Mitt Romney faced questions on the campaign trail four years ago about investments in firms engaged in embryonic stem cell research, the presidential candidate had a ready explanation -- he was unaware because his vast financial portfolio was under the control of an independent trustee. Last week, Romney's campaign pulled out the same explanation when ABC News sought details about the candidate's holdings in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore tax haven. "We remind you that Gov. Romney does not choose anything; these are BLIND TRUSTS," a campaign official wrote in an email. But government ethics experts and election...

The New York Times reports today — based on unclear sourcing — that Mitt Romney has endorsed a strategy of raising doubts about Newt Gingrich’s “emotional stability.” Well, if that’s the case, here’s Exhibit A. A Florida source passes along a mailer that the Romney campaign — not the pro-Romney Super PAC; his campaign — just dropped in the state, and it comes as close as possible to making that case, hitting Gingrich as “erratic” and “reckless.” The mailer also prominently features a quote from my colleague Jennifer Rubin, describing Gingrich’s “well of sleaze.” Here’s page one: (GRAPHIC AT LINK)...

Dear Mitt: In this year's contest for the Republican nomination, you have demonstrated your ruthlessness. Your attacks on fellow Republicans have show that you are willing to be as brutal, vile, and remorseless as is necessary to defeat your opponent. Presumably, this is how you made $200 million in about 12 years at Bain. In 2008 and now in 2012 you have left a field of wounded warriors in your wake: Huckabee, Giulianni and now Newt. We can see you are willing to be as dirty and nasty as you need to be to win. But the question remains, will...

As Ben Domenech notes in his Transom, Mitt Romney’s advisors have now advised him to support “a $2 gas tax, a VAT, and open Taliban talks.” Add to that list not repealing Obamacare. Norm Coleman, an advisor to Romney, went on record saying