Free Republic

He’s politically dumb and his campaign is run by amateurs. He doesn’t have a message and doesn’t know how to deliver a message. He’s a political letdown running on autopilot who needs to grab the controls. He’s a man whom only friends, relatives and fellow Mormons will ever love. And his name is Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President of the United States. These are stinging jabs. All were made in the past week and all share one surprising thing in common: they were delivered not from the Obama campaign’s Chicago attack machine, as you might expect, but in a...

Now that Mitt Romney has secured the GOP nomination, he is obviously free to be himself. His masquerade as a conservative is over as he has returned to many of the moderate to liberal stances he held as Governor of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. He has also returned to being the polite politician who treats his Democratic opponents with respect. Mitt Romney only gets nasty against other Republicans. In the GOP primary, the Governor eviscerated his opponents with high priced, non-stop, hard hitting attacks. He is not employing the same tactics in his general election showdown against President Obama,...

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...

PARK CITY, Utah — If the majority of donors who attend this weekend’s gathering of hundreds of high dollar fundraisers go back home as fired up as Rodger Young, the Romney campaign will be in quite strong a financial position and the investment in time and effort for the event will be paid back many times over. “I am going to bundle every penny I can bundle,” said Young, a donor at this weekend’s mixer for Romney donors, GOP stars, and Republican leaders. Until this weekend, Young was merely a donor not a bundler, but that has now changed. “I...

In 2007 – 2008, conservatives were apoplectic as they watched the mainstream media completely ignore Barack Obama's radical religion and pastor. They also ignored revelations that Rev. Jeremiah Wright posted the writings of a Hamas leader in his church's newsletter. If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee for president, the opposite will be true. That same mainstream media will do an about face when it comes to vetting Romney's religion...

Apparently, unlike most everything else, Mitt Romney has not flip-flopped on his position on jihad and Islam. Back in July 2009, I wrote in a post entitled, "Why Romney Won't be President" that Romney would not be president because he said something so fundamentally and unabashedly wrong about America's greatest mortal threat that he was unfit to be President: "Jihadism Is not part of Islam." Yes, he said that. That is frightening coming from a Presidential candidate. Instead of spending the ensuing years studying jihad, Romney appears hardwired for delusion in his latest remarks. The fact that Romney knows peaceful...

Brigham Youg University has the largest library of books on Muslims scholars. It has been in the forefront of taking old books and translating them into English and publishing them. The Morman are call themselves the Church of Christ and Latter Day Saints–believing that there are prophets after Jesus Christ. The Mormons are Unitarians and reject Trinity. The LDS position on Islam can be found in an August 2000 article by James Toronto, entitled “A Latter-day Saint Perspective on Muhammad,” from Ensign—the church’s flagship monthly magazine. In the clearest and most complete elucidation of its position on Muslims, Toronto, the...

As his formidable campaign marches inexorably toward the nomination, Mitt Romney should learn a vital lesson from the guy who beat him in his first race for public office: Sen. Ted Kennedy. In 1980, Teddy lost his own bid for the presidency because he couldn’t answer a simple question about why he wanted the job. Like Kennedy, Romney could undermine his confident drive to unseat a stumbling incumbent unless he prepares clear, concise, and forceful responses on what he means to do with the office he seeks. Near the end of the disastrous Jimmy Carter administration, most analysts expected an...

He’s too handsome, too rich, and too pompous to win the hearts of ordinary Americans.Republicans are doing something quite strange at the moment. They are in the process of choosing a candidate whom hardly any of them actually likes. Though Mitt Romney won the Florida primary handily yesterday, rumbles of dissatisfaction with him continue.* Romney isn’t so much winning the Republican nomination as having it default to him for lack of any compelling alternative. The case for voting for Romney goes as follows: Of the Republican presidential candidates, he is the only one with any real chance of defeating President...

Mitt Romney attacked his GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich over what has to date been one of Gingrich’s most effective debate methods — going after the moderators and the media for questions he deems inappropriate. “It’s very easy to talk down a moderator,” Romney said Wednesday on Fox News. “The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media.”

Newt Gingrich today laid into Romney today for his record at Bain Capital, suggesting Romney got rich off others’ misery and alluding to Romney’s ill-thought-out $10,000 bet from Saturday’s debate. “I would just say if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he has earned from bankrupting and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to then listen to him, and I bet you $10 -- not $10,000 -- that he wouldn’t take the offer,” Gingrich said. The remarks came in response to Romney’s criticism of the money Gingrich earned working...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/09/mitt-romney-islam-is-not-an-inherently-violent-faith/?s=al&promo_code=DB12-1

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says the Muslims he knows are "peace-loving and America-loving individuals." At a campaign event in Cedar Rapids Friday, the subject of how to handle the threat posed by radical Islam was raised. As reported in the Des Moines Register, Romney reminded the gathering he had grown up in the Detroit area which has a large Muslim community.

Early and volatile, the Republican Presidential nomination race—at least for now—appears to be settling into a contest between consistent front runner Mitt Romney, and the latest surging, “non-Romney alternative”, former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Unfortunately the CNN/Heritage Foundation/American Enterprise televised debate of last week did not highlight the yawning gap between these front running contenders’ views on the existential threat doctrine of our Islamic enemies: jihad and its motivational, sacralized religio-political “law”, Sharia. During an interview with US News reporter Dan Gligoff published June 3, 2009, Mitt Romney offered the following bizarre observation about the living Islamic institution of jihad,...

For Mitt Romney this is like the good old days at Bain Capital, except this time his takeover involves not another company but the Republican Party. In fact, Romney is seeking a hostile takeover of the conservative movement, methodically moving to take over Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and finally Newt Gingrich. Conservatives might remember what Romney did after he took over companies. You did not want to be a worker in a firm Romney took over. He liked layoffs. I now expect Romney to move fast to the right for a few weeks while...

No one touched Romney. He was unflappable and knowledgeable. He again showed the right political instinct to want to address the struggles of the middle class, although his tax plan doesn’t do it. His China-bashing will probably play well in the Midwest, although it’s foolhardy on the merits. He consistently got applause. I remember one of the early debates when Romney was flying above the other candidates and Pawlenty–I think–attacked him and he declined to reply, saying “that’s fine.” He said the same thing tonight when Santorum went after him. After all the churning in the race, Romney is in...

There are two, primary things that have fueled Mitt Romney's campaign -- his image as an economic guru and the idea that he's the most electable of the Republican nominees. But there are joint arguments that call the latter into question. First, there's the theoretical argument -- made today by Red State's Erick Erickson in a blistering, bruising post -- which claims that Romney is a certain loser against Barack Obama. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack...

Rove is very much in a “do I have to do everything myself” mode these days, which is why he’s also running the GOP’s congressional campaign as an independently funded venture. Here he is practically acting as a Romney surrogate on Fox and attacking Herman Cain, because actual Romney surrogates seem unable to.

It might have been Mitt Romney’s most revealing moment in all the Republican debates. Badgered by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was continually interrupting him, Romney appealed to CNN moderator Anderson Cooper to reassert the rules of the debate: “Anderson?” That one-word plaint could stand for all of Romney’s straight-arrowness. It is a virtue and a curse. “Scandal” and “Romney” are two words you expect never to have to see in a sentence together. He’s every bit as upstanding as you would expect from a former Mormon bishop, a father of five and grandfather of 16. Romney is a familiar...

Rick Perry wants Mitt Romney to cough up his form 1040s (that’s the US individual tax return document). The Romney camp demurred, saying they would consider doing so next year. (Remarkably, Romney has NEVER released, even during his governorship of Massachusetts.) Why won’t Romney do it? Speculation, from liberal group ThinkProgress and others, is that Romney pays a way lower tax rate than many Americans because of his extensive financial investments, from which income is typically taxed below that of regular income. One left-leaning analyst speculates Romney paid an effective tax rate as low as 14 percent on his $6.6...