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Mitt Romney ends recruiting efforts for an independent candidate By Eric Bradner and Jim Acosta, CNN Updated 3:01 PM ET, Wed May 18, 2016 Washington (CNN)Mitt Romney won't launch a third-party presidential campaign of his own and has stopped trying to recruit somebody else to do it. The 2012 Republican nominee had attempted to recruit a challenger to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But prospects like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said no, and Romney is now dropping his efforts, a source familiar with Romney's thinking told CNN. The news was first reported by Yahoo News.

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...

When Mitt Romney was Massachusetts governor, the state tried to pull the plug on an 11-year-old girl in a coma — only to see her recover. Now the case could become a campaign issue for the GOP presidential frontrunner. On the day Mitt Romney announced the support of social conservatives, the Republican blogosphere buzzed with reports about how a state agency under the former Massachusetts governor tried to pull the plug on a brain-damaged girl who ultimately came out of a coma. The report about Haleigh Poutre surfaced on The Shark Tank blog in a sign that conservatives — and...

Mitt Romney was firm and direct with the abortion rights advocates sitting in his office nine years ago, assuring the group that if elected Massachusetts governor, he would protect the state’s abortion laws. Then, as the meeting drew to a close, the businessman offered an intriguing suggestion — that he would rise to national prominence in the Republican Party as a victor in a liberal state and could use his influence to soften the GOP’s hard-line opposition to abortion. He would be a “good voice in the party” for their cause, and his moderation on the issue would be “widely...

BOSTON — On the Republican campaign trail, the health care debate has focused on the mandatory coverage that Mitt Romney signed into law as governor in 2006. But back in Massachusetts the conversation has moved on, and lawmakers are now confronting the problem that Mr. Romney left unaddressed: the state’s spiraling health care costs. After three years of study, the state’s legislative leaders appear close to producing bills that would make Massachusetts the first state — again — to radically revamp the way doctors, hospitals and other health providers are paid. Although important details remain to be negotiated, the legislative...

<p>Our purpose and goal on FR is to restore, defend, preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity!!</p> <p>The goal of the domestic enemy (the left), i.e., the statist liberals, Marxists and progressives is just the opposite.</p>

R.I. Gov. Lincoln Chafee says former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney is “a completely different person” as a presidential candidate than the man who was once a fellow member of the Republican Party’s moderate wing in the Northeast.“It’s the same thing I saw with John McCain, and I saw with George Pataki and with Rudy Giuliani,” Chafee told WPRI.com during an interview at his office Wednesday. Referencing a speech on foreign policy Romney gave last week at The Citadel, Chafee said: “The appeal you have to make to the Republican primary audience – that’s just alien to what’s in our best...

In the past few weeks we’ve seen the media scrambling to promote a cat fight between Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. As the UK’s Telegraph recently wrote: The first shots have been fired in what could become an ugly battle between Sarah Palin and her potential rival Michele Bachmann for the Republican presidential nomination. [...] A Republican consultant who declined to be named because he is aligned with a rival camp, said: “The claws are out. It’s the cat fight everyone has been waiting for – Queen Sarah being taken on by the Palin mini-me.” This is all obviously designed...

(Reuters) - Mitt Romney, the multi-millionaire former governor of Massachusetts, kicks off his second bid for the White House on Thursday as the front-runner of a wide-open Republican field. Romney will start his campaign in New Hampshire, the early-voting state where a win in the February primary election would boost his chance of taking the nomination and facing President Barack Obama in the November 2012 general election. Romney has a powerful fund-raising apparatus in place. He raised an astounding $10.25 million in an eight-hour phone-a-thon in Las Vegas last month. Contacts from Romney's days running the venture capital firm Bain...

Mitt Romney, the AP reports, has stepped down from the board of the Marriott hotel chain, another methodical step toward his 2012 run. His aides have told other Republicans that he expects to launch his campaign in April.

It’s a poll of adults, not even of registered voters, and the sample’s probably tilted a bit too far towards Democrats (42/33 if you include leaners), so scale the Republican numbers up by four or five points. An interesting trend for Romney: After seeing his favorables dip just before the midterms, he’s now back to where he was in July 2009. An early indicator that as the ObamaCare debate recedes, some conservatives are turning less chilly towards him?

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said over the weekend that he expects former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will run for president in 2012 and that he "would be my preference" for the GOP nomination. It's one of the first statements of 2012 support from a congressional Republican.

Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate. With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states. (snip) Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott put it plainly: “We did not nominate our...

WASHINGTON--Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney--eyeing a 2012 presidential race--headlines a lunch fund-raiser in Chicago today for GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk--and I'm told Romney is coming to talk about jobs and Kirk.

Laura Ingraham was on the Glenn Beck radio show in the last hour this morning...While talking about potential candidates for 2012, She was asked if Romney was a "progressive" she said NO he isn't one of them at all...I've heard that she loves Romney like a Ken doll and is a Romneybot, but this is amazing! She also said that she would take Newt as President in a heartbeat! What gives?

Mitt Romney's visit to New Hampshire triggers questions about his stance regarding the Federal Reserve. This is partial raw tape; more vid to follow.

In potentially the first inter-staff dust up of the 2012 presidential race, an aide of Sarah Palin is hitting back at Mitt Romney’s camp for saying the former Alaska governor is “not a serious human being.” Asked about the comments by POLITICO, a longtime Palin aide unloaded on Romney’s staff. “It shocks me that anyone would try to do that,” the aide said. “You’d think we’d all be working together toward a common goal – that being 2010 – and that should be the focus right now. Those who try to claim the mantle of Reagan would be good to...

It didn’t take long for Sarah Palin’s team to respond in kind to insults reported by Time’s Mark Halperin from an unnamed aide to Mitt Romney. After the anonymous adviser sniffed that Palin is “not a serious person,” an anonymous “longtime” adviser to Palin told Politico’s Andy Barr that Romney and his team seem a lot more interested in self-promotion for 2012 than in getting Republicans elected in 2010. Furthermore, the source said, Romney’s “finger in the wind” leadership seems to have led his own team out of control:

To understand why Democrats ever picked Mondale, you have to understand where the party — and where the country — was in 1982 and 1983, when the nation’s verdict on Reagan and his policies was far less positive. In those days, with unemployment surging over 10 percent and the president’s popularity slipping to sub-Carter levels, Democrats mistakenly assumed that the ‘80 election had been a mirage. The electorate, they figured, had acted in haste and was rapidly returning to its senses. The results of the 1982 midterms, when Republicans (who had begun the cycle with claims that they’d win...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The chairman of the Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele pledges big bucks to support Carly Fiorina's senate campaign against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. Steele was in San Francisco Thursday morning, talking about California politics and the money it will take to win in November. Show me the money, but of course he wouldn't -- to ABC7 anyway. The question is will he show Fiorina the money? The two are scheduled to sit down together on Friday. Steele told reporters financial help for GOP candidates is coming. "We're going to be in play here, big time...