Free Republic

Mitt Romney can still draw a crowd. Some top supporters and donors from the former Massachusetts governor's two presidential campaigns are gathering starting Thursday for Romney's retreat in Park City, Utah. They'll be joined by a bunch of political leaders who may hope to follow in Romney's footsteps by winning the Republican presidential nomination. This is the third year in a row that Romney has hosted the event, which is being held at the upscale Stein Ericksen Lodge at the Deer Valley Resort. The first came came during the 2012 presidential campaign as the then-GOP nominee was facing off against...

On Friday, failed 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said it wasn't healthy that Congress has not passed amnesty legislation that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers. "I do believe it's important for us, before the presidential contest in 2016, to finally have immigration reform in place," Romney said, according to The Des Moines Register's Jennifer Jacobs. "I just don't think it's healthy for the country to continue to have this issue open and unresolved, particularly with so many families that are waiting for the answers." Romney said he was not for a "special"...

Romney rips N.H. official’s ‘vile epithet’ (Calls on town officer to quit) [Mitt Defends Obama] May 17, 2014 - "Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has called on a New Hampshire town official to resign for calling President Obama a racial epithet. The Wolfeboro, N.H., police commissioner who has stood by his comment calling President Obama a racial slur is facing a growing cascade of calls to step down, including from the tiny lakeside town’s most famous summer resident — one-time Obama opponent Mitt Romney. “The vile epithet used and confirmed by the commissioner has no place in our community ,”...

Can we really call it “news” if it’s something that everyone already knows? Imagine if all the tea-party energy of the past five years ends up in another Bush coronation in 2016. I don’t know if the party would fracture. But it should. In private conversations that are now seeping into public view, some of them are signaling to Mr. Christie’s camp that, should Mr. Bush enter the race, their first loyalty would be to him, not to Mr. Christie, according to interviews with more than two dozen of them… The family name, [Barry Wynn] said, remains a powerful draw....

Rand Paul will do his best to charm a group Mitt Romney’s top donors next week at an event facilitated by Romney finance director Spencer Zwick. The Friday luncheon will take place in Boston at the offices of Zwick’s private-equity firm, Solamere Capital, according to a source familiar with the event. Romney’s eldest son Tagg is also a managing partner at the firm, and Romney is the executive chairman. The event is yet another signal that Paul is preparing a for a serious presidential bid in 2016. Two years before the GOP primary, Paul is attempting to branch out beyond...

Romney 2012 campaign manager Matt Rhoades keeps such a low profile that he once nearly made his career disappear. -snip- Rhoades is the organizing force behind Romney’s safe and smooth campaign. An expert at manipulating the news cycle with a coveted connection to the elusive media power broker Matt Drudge, Rhoades is particularly well suited to run a campaign that Romney himself characterized this weekend as employing a “confidentiality of strategy.” -snip- He then joined the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign as research director and ran its bruising rapid-response operation with communications director Steve Schmidt, -snip- Griffin, who was leaving the RNC,...

SALT LAKE CITY — Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said before giving a speech at the University of Utah Wednesday that shutting down the government is the wrong way to oppose the nation's new health care law. Romney repeated his concerns about the strategy against the Affordable Care Act employed by some Republicans in Congress, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee, that led to the shutdown of the federal government on Tuesday. "My view is that Republicans, elected Republicans, almost universally agree that Obamacare is problematic for the economy and for the American family," he said in response to a...

Earlier today, the United States Senate voted to fund Obamacare. There were 25 Republicans who betrayed their principles and voted for cloture, giving Democrats the power to implement this terrible law. This is a disappointing loss, but the bill now goes back to the House where Republicans must hold their ground and refuse to fund Obamacare. Here are the 25 Senate Republicans who voted to allow Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats to fund Obamacare today: Alexander, Lamar (R-TN) Ayotte, Kelly (R-NH) Barrasso, John (R-WY) Blunt, Roy (R-MO) Boozman, John (R-AR) Burr, Richard (R-NC) Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) Chiesa, Jeff (R-NJ)...

So beware Christians: the Grand Old establishment has long since used you as a political tool, but now sees you as so gullible, pliable, and dumb that it can openly join forces with the left when it so desires and move you right along as well.

Mitt Romney on Tuesday warned congressional Republicans against shutting down the government in an attempt to defund ObamaCare. “I badly want ObamaCare to go away, and stripping it of funds has appeal,” Romney said at a fundraiser in New Hampshire for the state’s Republican Party, according to prepared remarks. “But we need to exercise great care about any talk of shutting down government. What would come next when soldiers aren't paid, when seniors fear for their Medicare and Social Security, and when the FBI is off duty?” Speaking at the event in Wolfeboro, just miles from his summer vacation home,...

Former Governor Sarah Palin in an exclusive interview that will air tonight on Greta Van Susteren state she was forbidden to bring up anything negative about Barack Obama on the campaign trail back in 2008. She states that the GOP elite interfered with the McCain camp and prevented them, especially her to not talk about Jeremia Wright, Bill Ayers and most likely Obama's eligibility problem and shady past. Sarah Palin has had the reputation of being a viscous campaigner who went for the jugular when attacking her political opponent. She went up against two well seasoned professional politicians by the...

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate. -snip- The Conservative Victory Project, which is backed by Karl Rove and his allies who built American Crossroads into the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle, will start by intensely vetting prospective contenders for Congressional races to try to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections.

The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has begun. On one side is the Tea Party. On the other side stands Karl Rove and his establishment team, posing as tacticians while quietly undermining conservatism. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the “biggest donors in the Republican Party” have joined forces with Karl Rove and Steven J. Law, president of American Crossroads, to create the Conservative Victory Project. The Times reports that this new group will dedicate itself to “recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who...

Just before the Christmas break the Boston Globe published a lengthy postmortem on Mitt Romney’s massive failure as a presidential candidate. Between this, and the constant hand-wringing by Geniuses of the GOP™, I think we have beaten this dead horse to a pulp, but there was one thing that came out of this article that has me as angry as I have ever been over a politician. Before we get to that, let’s step back in time to 2008. Like 2012, the Republican Party didn’t exactly put forth an all-star field of candidates for voters to choose from. In the...

Political reporters on Twitter are saying they are standing by for a Romney media availability on the video released today by Mother Jones of Romney at a May fundraiser speaking frankly of his thoughts on Obama's base voters and their entitlement mentality, aka the 47% who pay no federal income taxes.The media and GOP-E have jumped ugly on Romney tonight.Steve Holland, Reuters: Romney at press avail to respond to video says his comments weren't "elegantly stated," and "could have said it in a more effective way."

Sounds like fun already ... the Tampa Bay Times released the names of some of the speakers slated for the RNC convention in Tampa later this month, and it looks to be a promising lineup. The Times reported that, as of now, it's unclear where these speakers are slotted, and the rest of the lineup--including the keynote speaker--remains unknown. Names so far include conservative powerhouses New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Rick Scott is also speaking. Here's a portion of the Times report: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. John McCain and former Secretary...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Mitt Romney says President Barack Obama's decision to meet with the families of victims of the Colorado shooting was "the right thing." The Republican presidential candidate spoke to donors in San Francisco Sunday night at roughly the same time Obama consoled grieving families in Aurora, Colo.

(BOWLING GREEN, Ohio) -- Back in May, Mitt Romney was criticized for not immediately rebuking a woman at a town hall who said President Obama “should be tried for treason” with democrats saying he stood “silently” during attacks on the president. But Wednesday, during a town hall in the battleground state of Ohio, Romney didn’t miss a beat when one woman referred to Obama as a job-killing “monster.” The woman, who did not identify herself to the crowd more than saying she is an “angry mom,” was telling Romney about her son’s struggling business and said, “He’s had to lay...

Romney’s Palin Problem: Where’s Her Convention Invite? Jul 16, 2012 1:00 AM EDT Mitt still hasn’t invited Sarah to the GOP’s nomination assembly in Tampa, and the Tea Party is livid. Peter J. Boyer on how the snub could sabotage Romney’s tenuous ties to the grassroots—and why Palin is keeping the week open, just in case.

One of the few Republicans in the country who's been tirelessly pushing for the implementation of Obamacare at the state level has been tapped to head Mitt Romney's transition team, should he become president. Former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, and his consulting group Leavitt Partners, are the primary advocates within Republican circles for implementation of Obamacare's exchanges. It just so happens that his consultancy is one of the major beneficiaries of the taxpayer funded gold mine of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange implementation grants. But that's a coincidence, of course.