Free Republic

Kevin Madden, a Republican communications expert with long ties to Mitt Romney, will become a more frequent and visible spokesman for the presidential campaign, a source close to the decision said on Friday. The increased responsibilities for Mr. Madden came in the wake of criticism from nervous Republicans about Mr. Romney’s campaign team. The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that the campaign “looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

It's becoming clear that Romney has decided to focus on the economy at the expense of everything else, even issues that could play to his political benefit. He's avoided criticizing the administration's handling of the botched Fast and Furious operation, even as it threatens to become a serious vulnerability for the president. He's been silent in responding to Obama's immigration executive order, not wanting to offend receptive Hispanics or appear like a flip-flopper. He appears more likely to tap a safe, bland running mate like Ohio Sen. Rob Portman or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty who won't do him any...

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign on Monday rejected a Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, repudiating a contention made in last week’s Supreme Court decision that the law’s requirement that individuals carry medical coverage amounts to a tax. The Romney team’s refusal to invoke the word “tax” with regard to the individual mandate puts the candidate at odds with others in his party at a moment when Republicans are attempting to capi­tal­ize on the Supreme Court’s decision, which deemed President Obama’s health-care law constitutional. Some Republican-led states are trying to thwart the legislation’s effort to cover the poor. In an...

Prominent Dems including White House chief of staff Jack Lew and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly argued in recent days that the fee for not buying insurance under the health care law is in fact a penalty and not a tax. They got support from an unexpected quarter on Monday: the Romney campaign. Mitt Romney's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown that he agrees - the fee is a penalty and not a tax, as the Supreme Court ruled last week. "The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court," Fehrnstrom said. "He...

President Obama is leading Mitt Romney thanks to a bump from last Thursday's high court healthcare ruling, according to a survey released Saturday from conservative polling outlet Rasmussen. Rasmussen's latest daily presidential tracking poll finds Obama with 46 percent support from likely voters to Romney's 44.

Conservatives around the country may be regretting Chief Justice John Roberts’ appointment to the Supreme Court after Thursday’s ruling upholding [Alleged] President Barack Obama’s health care law, but Mitt Romney‘s campaign website still holds him up as the paradigm of a Supreme Court justice. “As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts...

Today is the day. SCOTUSblog live at 8:45 AM.

Remember when Romney turned away Stimulus funds because they were wasteful and infringed on the Tenth Amendment? Remember when Romney led the fight against Obamacare with his bold op-eds, inviting scorn and being called a liar for daring to mention the unavoidable rationing of services ("Death Panels") ? Remember when Romney led the GOP to an astonishing victory in the 2010 mid-terms? Remember when Romney inspired thousands across the nation to sleep outside book stores in hopes of meeting him? Remember when Romney Flew to Arizona to stand by the embattled Governor Brewer as she was targeted by the Administration...

An article by Michael O'Brien on MSNBC's First Read this morning quotes an "informal" advisor to Mitt Romney's campaign as saying that the presidential candidate is not likely to choose a woman as his running mate because Sarah Palin "poisoned the well" for women, with the possible exception of New Hampshire freshman Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

Why is Barack Obama’s road to re-election so steep and uncertain at this stage? There are five important reasons. 1. An indefensible record. Every election which features an incumbent is, at least in good measure, a referendum on the record of the incumbent. The problem facing Obama is that he can’t offer a convincing case that his policies have succeeded. Recall that at the outset of his presidency, Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer, “I will be held accountable. I’ve got four years… If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” Yet...

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has now secured at least 88 of the 155 delegates at stake in the Texas Primary, bringing his secured delegate total to 1174, 30 more than necessary to win the majority of the delegated needed for the GOP nomination. With 4% of Texas precincts now reporting, Romney has consistently maintained or increased a 60 point lead over his nearest competitor, Congressman Ron Paul. In the contested race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, David Dewhurst is holding a 48% to 31% lead over his nearest rival Ted Cruz in a nine person contest.

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...

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...

Trent Lott famously said "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." - and I know what I think. I want to know what you think. Has she(Coulter) surrendered to the progressives within the republican establishment?

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...

. . . . . 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...

No link yet. I'm just seeing it on CNN. Reuters said Fox called it as well.

In state after state, evangelicals have sent Mitt Romney a clear message: We’re just not that into you. Some evangelicals do pull the lever for Romney. But consistently there is a wide gap between Romney’s support among evangelicals and his support among other groups. On average, there is a 19-point difference between Romney’s support among non-evangelicals and his support among evangelicals in Republican primaries, according to ABC News’s survey of primary states with exit- or entrance-polling data available. That’s a sizeable gap — and one that has complicated Romney’s path to the nomination. Evangelical leaders are dismissive of the notion...