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GOP ESTABLISHMENT FORGETS POWER OF PARTY’S RIGHT The 2012 election has had a searing effect on the Republican Party. The 126-electoral-vote defeat of its nominee by an incumbent thought to be highly vulnerable may have altered the trajectory of the GOP even more than the similar, though narrower, defeat Democrats suffered in 2004. The question is: To what end? The 35-vote loss John Kerry suffered in 2004 left many Democrats, as James Taylor might say, “down and troubled,” and looking for the way forward (or back) to success. The party eventually decided to sprint farther leftward and reject triangulation, with...

A leading Republican presidential contender has warned against electing another Bush or Clinton to the White House, saying that installing an aristocratic “ruling class” in the United States could all but destroy the country. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and quick-witted populist Republican who has powerful appeal among religious conservative activists, suggested that those who “live within the enclaves of the educational and cultural establishment and elites” could not understand the lives of ordinary Americans. While not referring directly to his potential presidential election competitors, his words resonate because Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former Republican presidents, and...

As Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney battle behind the scenes for big money donors, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is working to portray himself as the presidential candidate of the conservative base. Speaking to tea partiers in South Carolina over the weekend, Cruz cautioned that Republicans will lose the White House in 2016 if the nominee is insufficiently conservative. “If we nominate a candidate in that mold, the same people who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home in 2016 and the Democrats will win again,” Cruz told the crowd. His comments come as the Texas senator —...

An MSNBC UP show panel on Saturday gleefully recounted Mitt Romney’s tentative moves toward a third White House run. “What is he thinking?” is one way to summarize the discussion. “He is delusional” is another. Not one panelist could imagine a scenario under which Romney could win, but each was highly entertained by the idea. Beware the Popcorn Syndrome. It seems to be spreading among left leaning social media and chattering classes. Right now it is centered on the 2012 Republican nominee and his refusal to go away, but is being expressed as well on a more endemic level. Pundits,...

Ted Cruz delivered on Sunday what looked like a dry run of his 2016 presidential stump speech to the South Carolina activists who will help decide that election. In his first visit to the state, which will host the third presidential primary in February 2016, since October, Cruz told the state’s Tea Party activists that nominating a moderate in 2016 would lead Republicans to lose just like they have when those moderates led the ticket in the past. “If we nominate another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney, all of...

Mitt Romney's election plan is a little bizarre; he plans to run as a Democrat. Well, not really. He will still have an "R" after his name. But read this report from the Washington Post about Romney's agenda and you'd be excused if you did a double take about just what party Mitt wants to win the nomination. Mitt Romney laid down a marker for a prospective presidential campaign in 2016, telling a Republican audience here Friday night that the party can win the White House with a conservative message that stresses security and safety for the American people, opportunity...

If you’re Hillary Clinton, you pinched yourself last week to awake from a strange and wondrous dream. Except it wasn’t a dream. Mitt Romney really has been calling up rich conservative donors to tell them he wants to run for president — again. If you’re Hillary Clinton, you broke into a wide grin that stayed on your face all day, because the news seemed too good to be true. Mitt Romney is seriously going to try one more time? Thank you, God, is what Hillary was thinking. Not because Mitt Romney is likely to become the Republican nominee in 2016,...

Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush have emerged to save the party from its immoderate urges.Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan was among the most gripping books published last year. Anybody old enough to remember Nixon’s weighty jowls sagging towards delayed resignation will savour Perlstein’s detailed analysis of Watergate and its aftermath. The book reminds us that – though positively merry in comparison to the UK and Ireland – the United States passed through seven layers of dementia during the 1970s. Patty Hearst was kidnapped. New York City went bust. Helicopters lifted the...

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist — and I certainly have nothing on Paul Craig Roberts whose most recent article, helpfully disseminated by the Ron Paul Institute, claims the Charlie Hebdo attacks to be a “false flag” operation — but I can’t help but wonder if the “mainstream media” is playing up the potential presidential candidacies of Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum simply to depress Republican voters. Or, going the full tin-foil-hat route, maybe these guys are themselves double agents, part of a MoveOn.org (does it still exist?) sleeper cell which was just activated (by...

Conservative leaders this week shrugged off the sudden moves by Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney toward 2016 presidential campaigns, saying the two establishment-friendly candidates are too far out of touch with grass-roots activists to win the Republican nomination. At the same time, potential candidates with close ties to the party’s conservative base have moved to speed up their own efforts in response. Senior advisers to several of the potential conservative candidates said Wednesday that GOP insurgents will have to do more in 2016 than they did in previous cycles to make a serious run for the Republican nomination. Building a...

RAND PAUL: If he runs to the right of Jeb Bush, he'll still be to the left of the rest of the party. So it may be a difficult spot to occupy. Look, I liked Governor Romney. I like him personally. I think he's a good person. I think he's a great businessman, but, you know, that's yesterday's news. He's tried twice.

“Recycled.” Not the “new blood” the GOP needs. A man who “had his shot.” A “terrible candidate.” A Republican backlash against Mitt Romney that had been simmering for days boiled over on Wednesday as conservatives across the GOP spectrum panned the prospect of another presidential bid by the former Massachusetts governor and two-time loser on the national stage.

Seven (7) of the former Republican presidential nominees most cringe-worthy moments: 1. ‘47 PERCENT’ Less than two months before the November 2012 election, Romney committed a gaffe that he even admitted “did real damage” to his campaign. The left-leaning magazine, Mother Jones released secretly-recorded videos of the candidate at a private fundraisers telling donors: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care,...

Not everyone thinks Jeb Bush is a strong presidential candidate, Republican donors say Mitt Romney is certain that ‘a Bush can’t beat a Clinton.’ When Jeb Bush jumped out early in announcing that he was putting together a presidential campaign, he was quickly anointed as the automatic front-runner. Donors were said to dash to their checkbooks to be the first to shower him with super PAC loot. Political operatives were polishing up their résumés in the hopes of being gifted with campaign jobs. The overstuffed GOP field was going to winnow in a hurry as would-be contenders decided the next...

If Mitt Romney is the answer, what is the question? We can think of a few worthy possibilities, though one that doesn’t come immediately to mind is who would be the best Republican presidential nominee in 2016.

The 2012 Republican nominee for president holds a leads a broad field of GOP potential contenders in the Townhall/Gravis poll conducted Jan. 5-7 among 404 registered Republican voters queried. Note: the polls were conducted using IVR technology and weighted by historical voting demographics. Former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney has never left the hearts and minds of Republican voters and he will hold the dominant position in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination until the other candidates spin up their own campaigns, said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, a Florida-based pollster and call center that executed...

SAN DIEGO — Mitt Romney's unexpected step into the 2016 presidential contest is drawing enthusiasm from the GOP's most passionate conservatives. But not because they want him to win. For the first time in recent memory, prominent conservatives see a Republican presidential field that could have as much competition among the party's establishment-minded prospects — like Romney — as its fiery conservatives....

The GOP field is in pygmy warlord phase—loud, fractured, and not terribly impressive. The most credible candidate is Jeb Bush, a far-sighted policy wonk whose greatest asset and liability is his last name. Powerhouse Chris Christie still has Bridgegate clouds hovering over his reputation. Rand Paul promises to bring the libertarian revolution to prime time and could inspire enthusiasm beyond the old base—but there’s still that wild gleam in the eye of the Kentucky ophthalmologist who would have his finger on the bomb. Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are the Jekyll and Hyde of Texas politics. Mike Huckabee and Rick...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took a swipe at Mitt Romney on Monday, saying that Republicans’ path to the presidency doesn’t cut through “the mushy middle.”

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