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A little nudge from Team Jeb to remind the new and improved Romney that this race will be new in lots of ways, many of which he won’t like. Interesting timing. David Kochel, a Republican strategist based in Iowa who worked on both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, is joining Jeb Bush’s political action committee as a senior strategist and is in line to serve as Mr. Bush’s national campaign manager… “I really believe Governor Bush is the right person for the right time,” he said. “He has a successful conservative record in Florida, and I’d put that record up...

How is it possible that a president can win re-election by a relatively comfortable margin while receiving fewer raw votes than his first election? Enter Mitt Romney. A simple data comparison is very telling. That comparison is the Romney raw vote vs. all votes for congressional Republicans in a given state. Crunching the numbers, Romney significantly underperformed the Republican congressional vote totals in multiple states. In North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- all presidential swing states -- Mitt Romney underperformed the total raw votes cast for all Republican congressional candidates by an average of 3 percent. That means that...

I can never tell if these cross-party endorsements are supposed to serve as an underhanded dig, designed to shy Republicans away from viable candidates, or if they've just become a form of trolling. This one, for example, is baffling, because Nancy Pelosi can only want Mitt Romney to run a third time in order to ensure a Hillary Clinton victory, but yet, she can't possibly be daft enough to think that Republicans would see her ringing endorsement of Mitt Romney - yes, Mitt Romney - as some sort of clue that he's the one Democrats most fear. Either way, it's...

The usually grim-faced media mogul practically swooned in his seat. Moments after Jeb Bush delivered what many in the audience described as an unremarkable talk at a conference in Washington, Rupert Murdoch turned to his seatmate, Valerie Jarrett, the White House adviser, to gush over its content and tone. Mr. Murdoch was pleased that Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had listed the economic benefits of overhauling the nation’s immigration system, confiding in Ms. Jarrett that Mr. Bush, a likely Republican presidential candidate, had said all the right things on the fraught issue, according to three people with firsthand...

prominent Republican delivered a direct request to Mitt Romney not long ago: He should make a third run for the presidency, not for vanity or redemption, but to answer a higher calling from his faith. Believing that Mr. Romney, a former Mormon pastor, would be most receptive on these grounds, the Republican made the case that Mr. Romney had a duty to serve, and said Mr. Romney seemed to take his appeal under consideration. Three years ago, Mr. Romney’s tortured approach to his religion — a strategy of awkward reluctance and studied avoidance that all but walled off a free-flowing...

Mitt Romney, you're an honorable and accomplished man. You would have been a good president and infinitely better than Obama as a steward of the economy and national security. But, Mitt, we need to talk. You don't get it. You don't really get the basic proposition that freedom works better than government by experts. Sure you believe the concept generally, but there are all those details and exceptions. You hired Jonathan Gruber to guide your health plan. You believe global schemes to reduce carbon will help the climate rather than enrich and empower global elites. You endorsed raising the minimum...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) In the fall of 2007, as Mike Huckabee was surging in the Iowa polls, Mitt Romney’s foundering presidential campaign dispatched a camera crew to Arkansas with the charge to produce one of the most brutal ads of the election cycle. The final product — a withering spot that tied Huckabee to a 2003 murder committed by a serial rapist who was paroled while he was governor of Arkansas — never saw the light of day. But the unaired ad, obtained this week by BuzzFeed News, highlights a potentially potent line of attack on Huckabee as he considers a 2016...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)With all due respect, the Republican Party could probably do with a lot less of what was heard at the Iowa Freedom Summit Saturday. On one hand, that might seem strange, considering that the Iowa Freedom Summit was all about getting America back to its "core principles of pro-growth economics, social conservatism, and a strong national defense," according to the event website. What could be more Republican than that? Combine that with the fact that a number of potential Republican presidential candidates appeared to see the event as the unofficial kickoff for the 2016 campaign, and it seemed a snapshot...

With Republicans in Congress split over the best approach to Obama's executive amnesty - and with many establishment Republicans splitting form grassroots Republicans on the issue of illegal immigration more generally - it's clear that immigration will be a hot-button primary issue in 2016. ... So where do the potential candidates stand? Here's a rundown: ...

There are enough potential candidates for president (on the GOP side at least) that you need an Excel spreadsheet just to keep them all straight. Instead of a complicated algorithm, I've boiled each candidate down to his/her most basic elements. At the end of the day, these are the things more likely to define a presidential wannabe. It's also important to distinguish between durable traits and those that are more ephemeral. For example, low name ID is something easily overcome. But, being on the "wrong side" of the base on key issues can be a campaign killer. This is by...

It is time for liberals to cheer Mitt Romney. Not because his possible entry into the 2016 Republican presidential contest could cause chaos for the GOP. But because Romney, apparently seeing the error of his "severely conservative" ways, has become a progressive crusader. Initial news reports noted that Romney was telling Republicans privately that should he mount a third presidential bid he would run to the right of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, an all-but-announced contender. Yet in public remarks, Romney has been sounding like a born-again lefty. At an investment management conference in Utah this week, Romney told the...

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney did not reach an agreement during a Salt Lake City lunch meeting on Thursday on how to reconcile their competing plans to run for the White House next year, advisers to both men indicated after the talk. “Governor Bush enjoyed visiting with Governor Romney today in Salt Lake,” Kristy Campbell, Mr. Bush’s spokeswoman, said, declining to elaborate. Republicans close to both Mr. Romney and Mr. Bush were notably tight-lipped about the long-planned meeting, which the two would-be candidates and their advisers were unhappy had been revealed publicly.

Mitt Romney: Climate Change Is Real, Human-Induced, And We Must Tackle It

One thing you can say about Sen. Rand Paul’s burgeoning presidential campaign – he’s not scaring anybody out of the race. The Republican National Committee reports that the 2016 primary field has mushroomed to about 25 legitimate contenders — the size of a major league baseball roster — and growing, which certainly could make for an interesting party debate where you quite literally won’t be able to tell the players without a scorecard. Despite the RNC’s claims of legitimacy there are a few apples in the barrel who have about as much chance of moving into the Oval Office two...

Just read that Romney and Jeb are meeting in Utah to discuss how best to ram one of them down our throats so their campaigns don't compete against one another. NO MORE BUSHES!! NO MORE ROMNEYS!!! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!

As he considers a third presidential campaign, Mitt Romney said Wednesday night that one of the country's biggest challenges is climate change and that global solutions are needed to combat it. "I'm one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that," he said. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee spoke to a sold-out crowd of about 3,000 at an investment management conference. It was his second public address since privately telling potential donors two weeks ago that he's considering seeking the presidency in 2016. Romney didn't address a possible campaign at the event, but...

… Using This One Weird Trick! It seems as if everybody’s down on the idea of Mitt Romney running for president again. Even establishment Republicans who aren’t part of the vast Bush claque seem to be hostile. President Obama’s aides mocked Romney’s interest in income inequality, per Politico: (SNIP) “It’s simply never going to be believable to go from car elevators, off-shore accounts and his famous 47 percent comment to the populist income equality warrior.”… (SNIP) After all, there’s one obvious, simple move Romney could make to turn the mockery around, jujutsu style, in a way that would give him...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.— A crowd of tea party activists huddled outside a closed conference door here on Sunday. Many hadn’t caught a glimpse of the man they were waiting for, but they knew he was in there. “Here he comes!” someone suddenly shouted, as Ted Cruz emerged. All day long, the Republican senator from Texas was mobbed by people who thanked him for taking on Washington, jostled for pictures and sought out hugs. Even after Cruz had departed the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention, his booth was consistently crowded. Ben Carson and Rick Santorum made their pitches and both...

Much of the 2016 political oxygen on the Republican side of the aisle has been sucked up by establishment-leaning figures so far -- Jeb Bush forming his exploratory committee, Mitt Romney heavily weighing launching version 3.0, Chris Christie making telltale moves, etc. On the more conservative end of the spectrum, we have Bobby Jindal almost assuredly running (do read his hard-hitting speech on radical Islamism delivered in London yesterday), Scott Walker staffing up and sounding like a presidential candidate, and Marco Rubio reportedly inching closer to taking the plunge. And then there's Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson,...

Hot Air readers won’t be surprised by the lack-of-dynamic dynamic from the first big names testing the GOP’s 2016 waters, of course, but supporters of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush might be — if they can be found. According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, approval ratings for both men dropped after making clear they plan to run for the party’s presidential nomination. And that retreat comes from within the big tent of the Republican Party: Just 27 percent of Americans now offer a positive rating for Romney, the Republican party’s nominee in 2012, compared to 40 percent who...