Free Republic

The Democrats and the institutional left have a new political tool that allows them virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections. This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn’t seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist. Beyond winning elections, Catalist also allows the Democrats to turn the policy narrative upside down and suffer no political consequence for implementing radical policies which appeal to their base. The...

For a long time before I became a reporter, I never paid attention to bylines — the announcement of who wrote a given article. That all changed for me one day when I was sitting at Jimmy T’s Diner in Washington, D.C., reading a hate-filled “fashion” column that was nothing more than the projection of angry liberal political views. It was so awful that I wanted to know who wrote it. The author, Robin Givhan, of course went on to win a Pulitzer. I’m part of a profession that rewards liberal political views above most all else. Along similar...

One of Mitt Romney’s biggest Wall Street backers predicted Monday that the former presidential candidate would run again in 2016 under certain conditions. SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said the former Massachusetts governor would run in 2016 if GOP favorites such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush decline to run.

Suddenly NBC's "Meet The Press" matters again, and when new host Chuck Todd joined me on Friday's radio show (see transcript) two of many reasons why became obvious. First, Todd had booked James Baker (former secretary of state and treasury, White House chief-of-staff, and W's Florida strategist during 2000's epic recount) to talk about whether or not an international coalition could be assembled by President Obama to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Baker booking was shrewd, and more will be forthcoming. Also shrewd was Todd's analysis of the Romney 3.0 boomlet which had been the subject...

Dear Editor: Re “LETTER: Obama has ruined America,” Aug. 30, 2014, by James T. Varelas: The writer obviously has been drinking the Fox News and the Tea Party Kool-Aid. His statements are totally ridiculous and without any merit. All veterans do not share his comments, but he would like you to believe that somehow, coming from a vet, it makes this credible. The reason Obama was voted in a second time is the country wanted to move away from an executive office that believes shoot first and then aim. I shudder to think what shape the country would be in...

In early June 1964, a group of Republican governors sought to wrestle control of their party from Barry Goldwater, the Arizona conservative who was about to lead the GOP to one of the most crushing defeats in its history. The governors saw a disaster in the making, and sought a moderate candidate who could capture the imaginations of grassroots Republicans—but also beat President Lyndon Johnson in the general election. Led by Ohio’s James Rhodes—the Republican Governors Association was meeting in Cleveland, and Rhodes was a legendary vote counter—the group included Pennsylvania’s William Scranton and later New York’s Nelson Rockefeller. ...........................................................

My Hubby sent me this in email: Got an email from the Natl Repub Senate Comm. begging for money and supposedly authored by Mitch McWimpel In the fine print at the bottom it reads: This email was sent by: Romney for President Inc., 138 Conant St., 1st Floor, Beverly, MA 01915. So I decided to check it out. First I did a search on "Romney for President Inc., 138 Conant St., 1st Floor, Beverly, MA 01915." I found all sorts of strange things. This is on a lefty forum: Ted Cruz campaign@rickperry.org via smna.targetedvictory.com For Liberty,Ted CruzP.S. I'm proud to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Pat Buchanan predicted Mitt Romney will run for president on this weekend's broadcast of The McLaughlin Group. "There is no doubt Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are in the establishment category or bracket that are headed for the finals," Buchanan said. "I think Mitt would come out first but I really don't see Bush as really having the drive or inner drive. And I think, then you get Mitt Romney against someone like a Cruz, or someone like that, and I think that would be the finals. And I think that Mitt has got it in his heart...

The smart take on social media last night was that Romney’s new op-ed on national defense is a signal that he’s quietly thinking of running too. So maybe we’ll finally get that Mitt versus Jeb match-up that conservatives have been dreaming about lo these many years. In fact, I tend to think the only rational explanation for the Jeb buzz is that it’s some sort of sly “Romney 2016″ psy op. There’s just no way, no way, that the Republican Party’s going to take another bite at the Bush apple. The donor class may despise the base and would doubtless...

Honorable Mentions: Sheldon Adelson, Roger Ailes, Brent Bozell, Ben Carson, Tucker Carlson, Todd Cefaratti, Chris Chocola, Jim DeMint, Jonathan Garthwaite, Trey Gowdy, Greg Gutfeld, Darrell Issa, Bobby Jindal, Matt Kibbe, Charles Krauthammer, Mike Lee, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Michelle Malkin, Alex Marlow, Jenny Beth Martin, Bill O'Reilly, Tony Perkins, Judson Phillips, Reince Priebus, Glenn Reynolds, Marco Rubio ,Christopher Ruddy, Sal Russo, Antonin Scalia, Thomas Sowell, Dustin Stockton, Erik Telford, Joe Wierzbicki 25) Paul Ryan: The former VP candidate has been a difference-maker in the House, although not in a way a lot of conservatives have been pleased to see. Ryan was...

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, is still deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to endure an investigation into whether his administration abused its power by intentionally creating traffic jams. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is struggling to convince conservatives that he is not a foreign policy isolationist while Islamic terrorists run rampant through Iraq and Syria and execute Americans journalists. A dozen or more prominent Republicans have been testing the national political waters for more than a year trying to decide whether to make a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination....

Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Unbelievably, the drumbeat has begun for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to run for president a third time. The man who lost twice for president is now being encouraged by many party leaders to give it another try. Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, recently told MSNBC, “I think he’s proven right on a lot of stuff. I happen to be in the camp that thinks he’s actually going to run, and I think he will be the next president of the United States.”...

Mitt Romney appeared on WNYM's "The Cats Round Table" with John Catsimatidis today and took on Barack Obama over domestic issues, including immigration. The President should have enforced our immigration laws from the very beginning. His announcement of a form of amnesty only encouraged people to continue to flood over the border. So the right answer, of course, is to secure our border and hopefully to put in a series of immigration policy reforms so that we can finally get our handle on this immigration mess. We can stop illegal immigration and also make the legal process more transparent and...

I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Hillary will be nominated, but Mitt Romney? Again?” The problem with all the other potential GOP presidential candidates is that either they are indicted (Perry), about to be indicted (Walker, Christie), the Tea Party hates them (Rubio, Paul), or they are just too crazy, even for the GOP (Cruz, Palin, Bachmann). Then there’s Bush III (Jeb). When you see him on TV, doesn’t he seem to be half-asleep? Even his own mother thought he wouldn’t be a good candidate. Paul Ryan? He just doesn’t LOOK “Presidential.” He looks like Hoody Doody, baby boomers’ favorite...

Democratic strategist James Carville believes two-time presidential candidate Mitt Romney will go for a third try in 2016, even though the 2012 GOP nominee has said he won’t seek the nation’s top office again. “He’s run for president twice. I once noted that running for president was like having sex: No one did it once and forgot about it,” Carville said Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” …

The last two Republican candidates for president have been among the weakest GOP candidates in 50 years. Barack Obama presented Mitt Romney with a gift in 2012: A struggling economy, sluggish growth, a paucity of jobs, and a health care law that was extremely unpopular. In what should have been a landslide rejection of Obama's policies, Romney flubbed it big time and allowed his opponent to define him - and Republicans - in the most unlfattering way imaginable. You would have hoped that Romney would have retired from the public arena and kept a low profile as other losers have...

No one wanted to be president less than Mitt Romney, his son said in an interview out Sunday that raises new questions about the candidacy of the losing Republican nominee. In an interview with the Boston Globe examining what went wrong with the Romney campaign, his eldest son Tagg explains that his father had been a reluctant candidate from the start.

In his Tuesday evening interview on the Hugh Hewitt show, Mitt Romney said it over and over again: "I will not run in 2016." Though a determined Hewitt kept finding different ways to ask the same question, in the end the 2012 candidate stood by his claim, saying, "I had the chance of running. I didn’t win. Someone else has a better chance than I do." After Hewitt's relentless questioning, Romney did offer the host his "one in a million" chance of running: if all the other candidates got together and said, "Hey, we’ve decided we can’t do it, you...

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has denied he’s not going to make a third bid for the White House but on Tuesday he left open a very small window. “I know you’re going to press, but you know, this is something we gave a lot of thought to when early on I decided we’re not going to be running this time,” Romney said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. “And again, we said look, I had the chance of running. I didn’t win. Someone else has a better chance than I do. And that’s what we believe, and that’s...

Mitt Romney on Thursday night said that Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) should make his own run for president in 2016. "He's very generous. But I had my turn. It's his turn now," Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, said about his former vice presidential running mate. Romney made the comments during a joint interview with Ryan on Fox News — their first since the failed campaign. The two later appeared at an event in Chicago, where Romney quizzed Ryan about his new book, "The Way Forward." During the interview, they were asked who would make a better president. "I'll give it...