Free Republic

Will Mitt Romney run again for president? The question seems absurd. Aside from a single commanding debate performance against President Barack Obama, he was not a very good candidate in 2012. After failing in his first attempt at gaining the Republican nomination four years earlier, Romney struggled across the finish line against weak, underfunded primary opponents whose best days were mostly behind them. He then promptly lost to Obama in November. In fact, Romney has only won one general election in twenty years of running for office. He will be fourteen years removed from that lone victory in November 2016....

At the start of the year, I told a friend to keep an eye on Mike Huckabee.  He just had the look of a man running for president.  After all, didn't Ronald Reagan write columns and do radio commentaries before running?Last month, I was very happy to hear that Mitt Romney was considering another run.  Frankly, I think that he is one of the most qualified people ever denied the presidency. Let me add another one - Governor Rick Perry of Texas.  We didn't see the real Perry in 2012 but we are seeing him now. Over the last few...

Business group has been major force in 2014 races.On the day after New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial elections last fall, Mitch McConnell showed up at a board meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with another race on his mind. He announced that the day’s most consequential contest had been neither Chris Christie’s victory nor Ken Cuccinelli’s defeat. Instead, the Senate minority leader explained, it had been a GOP primary in South Alabama. The Chamber had shelled out about $200,000 in the sleepy district on the Mississippi border to rescue a mainstream candidate who was struggling to fend off a...

The WMUR/Granite State Poll gives Christie a first-place 19 per cent showing among New Hampshire Republicans But when Romney is added to the mix, he draws 39-percent support and leaves everyone else in single digits Paul Ryan has the highest 'favorable' numbers of the field, at 55 per cent Christie's 46 per cent favorable number is soft since a separate 36 per cent say they don't like him When asked which potential White House hopeful they would never support, More Republicans name Christie than any other pol.Chris Christie narrowly leads the pack of potential Republican presidential candidates in a poll...

The GOP Presidential rumor mill is ripe with dreams of Mitt Romney running again in 2016. Romney has turned out to be right about a number of issues, particularly on foreign policy. He was also right in predicting Obamacare would be a disaster. In 2014, Romney looks like the wise sage who warned us about what a second Obama term would look like. He even has 45% of the country believing he would have done a better job as President than Obama. Of course, it’s wishful thinking to believe Romney would run in 2016 and win. While 45% think Romney...

Mitt Romney has said time and time again that he has no interest in running for president a third time. But, on Sunday morning, CBS' Bob Schieffer said not to write off the idea of a 2016 campaign by Romney so quickly. "I have a source that told me that if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again," Schieffer said.

MANCHESTER, NH – Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has endorsed pro-abortion Republican Scott Brown over his pro-life rival in the primary to see who becomes the GOP's candidate for U.S. senator from New Hampshire.

At least one House Republican thinks Mitt Romney will make another run for the White House in 2016 — and this time, he says the 2012 runner-up will emerge victorious. “I think he actually is gonna run for president. He probably doesn’t want me to say that,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Monday. Chaffetz also backed the former Massachusetts governor early in the GOP nomination process for 2012. “A hundred times he says he’s not, but Mitt Romney has always accomplished what he’s set out to do. I think he’s proven right on...

A coalition of religious activists in Finland using MassResistance materials has blocked a “gay marriage” move in the Finnish Parliament, overcoming a well-funded and well-organized push by the homosexual lobby. On June 25 the Finnish Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee voted 10-6 to reject the "gay marriage" bill. The vote followed lobbying by coalition members and the distribution of MassResistance materials to all members of Parliament. In addition, the MassResistance video “What 'gay marriage' did to Massachusetts” was broadcast on national TV in May. This represents a serious setback for efforts to bring “gay marriage” to Finland any time soon. The...

A new conventional wisdom is forming which says Democrat's gaffes don't matter because they aren't connected to (bad) Republican policies. There's a grain of truth to this argument and yet it misses the big picture. Hillary's policy positions won't be able to save her from her own serious flaws as a candidate. Progressive writer Brian Beutler explained why Romney's gaffe's mattered (and Hillary's didn't) this way: "Romney's weaknesses ran much deeper than tone-deaf asides about close friendships with NASCAR team owners, or a car elevator. His unfamiliarity with material deprivation was badly compounded by his devotion to an agenda (and...

A look at the frontrunners currently making waves.Mitt Romney hasn’t disappeared from the political scene the way many people thought he would after coming up on the losing end in the 2012 presidential race. But that doesn’t mean he’s running for president — or even thinking about running for president — in 2016. Talk of a possible third presidential bid for Romney has surfaced of late, with poll numbers showing that he is well regarded by Republican voters and a growing sense within the GOP smart set that no candidate has really emerged from the pack as yet. Romney has,...

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney insists he is not running for president for a third time, but a commentary in Politico Magazine argues he would have a reasonably good chance of pulling off the nomination for 2016. The article was written by Emil Henry, former assistant treasury secretary under President George W. Bush. He campaigned for Romney in 2012. Even though electoral history would suggest Romney's chances are slim, he has the advantage of being the de facto leader of the Republican Party, while no other candidate stands out in the crowded field of possible contenders, Henry wrote.

1) In 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced Iraq "self-reliant and democratic," and "a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called Iraq "one of the great achievements of this administration." Obama ignored pleas by top generals who advised against pulling out without leaving a residual force. 2) Nearly everybody assumed Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of the newspaper editorials that opposed the war, not one challenged the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD. President George W. Bush...

The IRS will pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 to settle a lawsuit over claims the agency improperly disclosed confidential tax information, according to a consent judgment released this week. The lawsuit stemmed from information an IRS worker sent to an individual who identified himself as a member of the media who requested it in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, which he then sent to the pro-gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. The Huffington Post then ran a story noting a political action committee linked to Mitt Romney had been a donor to NOM. John Eastman, NOM’s...

The conservative group National Organization of Marriage accused the IRS of leaking documents to the Obama Campaign in 2012. A top Obama campaign official Joe Solomese used the information to attack Mitt Romney during the 2012 election. The Huffington Post used the leaked documents in a story questioning former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s support for traditional marriage. The document showed Romney donated $10,000 to NOM. The IRS agreed this week to pay only $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage after leaking confidential information to a leading gay marriage group. The Daily Signal reported, via Free Republic: Two...

Tom Tancredo, the firebrand former congressman, Harley-Davidson biker and perennial headache for Colorado’s Republican leaders, was taking fire from all sides last week in the final days of his primary campaign for governor. His rivals were slamming him on the airwaves. Moderate Republicans were warning that Mr. Tancredo’s name on the ballot could doom their chances in crucial races across this swing state. (SNIP) Last week, a radio commercial from a Massachusetts-based group attacked Mr. Tancredo as a “big-spending Republican in Washington” who frequently switched positions. The group, Colorado Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, has ties to a consulting firm...

He's said over and over that he won't run for the White House a third time, but a new poll indicates that if Mitt Romney changed his mind and made another bid for president, he'd be the frontrunner among Republicans in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire. According to the Suffolk University/Boston Herald survey, which was released Thursday, 24% of Granite State Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say that Romney would be their first choice for their party's presidential nomination. Among the potential 2016 GOP contenders, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a distant second, at...

The surprise early frontrunner in New Hampshire’s next GOP presidential primary is the loser of the last White House race – former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who wipes the 2016 field by a more than 2-1 margin, a new Suffolk University-Boston Herald poll reveals. The poll of 800 likely Granite State voters has less encouraging news for another ex-Massachusetts politician, former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. He trails incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen by 10 points and is now viewed unfavorably by 46 percent of New Hampshire voters.

Far from being excommunicated by Republicans after his loss to President Obama, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is enjoying a brand resurgence of late, drawing several potential 2016 candidates to his "ideas summit" this weekend in Utah and even earning some 2016 speculation himself.Meanwhile, some other potential candidates are in Iowa for the state Republican Party's convention there Saturday. And not to be left out, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., was in California Friday to raise money for the Republican gubernatorial candidate there and participate in a Facebook chat.It all adds up to a busy weekend for the early 2016...