Free Republic

In advance of the fundraiser with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump on Tuesday, the candidate's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom tried to set the line on CNN a short time ago. "I can't speak for Donald Trump," Fehrnstrom said. "But I can tell you that Mitt Romney accepts that President Obama was born in the United States. He doesn't view the place of his birth as an issue in this campaign."

Not that there's anything wrong with that! Keynes' theories remain the essential guide to understanding recessions. The real news in Mitt Romney’s interview with Mark Halperin, as Charles Pierce points out, is that Romney openly repudiated the central argument his party has been making against President Obama for the last three years: that he spent too much money and therefore deepened the economic crisis. Indeed Romney himself had been making this very case as recently as a week ago (“he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much...

Yesterday it was reported by Guy Benson at Townhall.com that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, did something he was reluctant to do during his primary fight: He “repudiated” the efforts of a political action committee to attack one of his opponents. On his Thursday radio show, Levin suggested highlighting Rev. Wright was being “repudiated” because it would be interpreted as racist. “In the next six months, this campaign, or however long it goes — listen to me, but don’t listen to me,” Levin said. “Don’t bring up Rev. Wright, because the Obama campaign says if...

According to the Times, the Romney team has decided not to assail Obama's "likability," for fear personal attacks will backfire with independents. Message to the Republican establishment:  do not muzzle those of us who want to focus on Obama's troubling history with angry Marxists, black and white, including Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers.   This is not about race.  It is about knowing who Obama is, understanding what he has already done to our country, and what he is capable of doing.  The issue of Rev erend Wright is not peripheral, it is central.  It gets to the heart of the...

Mitt Romney’s campaign manager rejected efforts to use President Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in ads attacking the president, as reportedly planned by a “super PAC” working toward electing Mr. Romney in November. “Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” the campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, said in a statement on Thursday morning. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney,’ and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team...

Levin is livid over the fact that Romney repudiated anything to do with bringing up Rev. Wright in this campaign even though in the primaries he went full throttle against Newt Gingrich, even with false attack ads:

Mitt Romney says he rejects efforts to use President Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in ads attacking the president, insisting the campaign should remain focused on the economy. "I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described," Romney said in an interview with Townhall.com. "I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity—particularly for those in the middle class of America."

Some of Mitt Romney's best moments on the 2012 campaign trail have come during town hall meetings when the candidate, long criticized as too uptight on the stump, strays off script to take questions from voters. But the freewheeling nature of voter forums can have its drawbacks. Romney has faced hostile questions on everything from his wealth to his religion. And on Monday, he experienced another awkward moment, when a supporter stood and declared that President Barack Obama should be "tried for treason." The comment came during a town hall meeting in Cleveland. Taking the microphone, a woman told Romney...

Romney Backs Student Loan Proposal Obama Supports By KASIE HUNT ASTON, Pa. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday embraced a student loan proposal that President Barack Obama is selling on the campaign trail and refused to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio's conservative immigration plan aimed at helping young illegal immigrants. The two policy positions signaled an effort by Romney to move to the political center as he works to court critical general election swing voters — including young voters and Hispanic voters — after a brutal primary fight. "I think young voters in this country have to vote...

Half of all Americans now express unfavorable views of Mitt Romney, a new high for the GOP presidential hopeful in Washington Post-ABC News polling. The deteriorating public impressions of the former Massachusetts governor foreshadow a significant obstacle for him as he tries to shift the focus of his campaign toward a potential match-up against President Obama. Romney’s negative numbers have jumped around this election cycle, but the overall pattern is similar to his trajectory four years ago: As he became better known, his unfavorables shot up far more rapidly than his positive numbers. Negative impressions are up eight percentage points...

Left-wing pundits and politicos continue to insist that Mitt Romney has yet to express what he wants to accomplish as President. Somehow they seem to ignore his call for a 20% across the board tax cut, repeal of ObamaCare, and enactment of a comprehensive energy plan. Maybe they didn’t notice his plans to balance the budget and strengthen the military, and thus gain greater respect and trust around the world. But for some reason, President Obama hasn’t been pressed at all to state what he wants to accomplish if he were given four more years in the White House. Through...

Governor Romney’s campaign is catching some flak because a top aide implied that many of the candidate’s positions have been insincere and that Romney will erase those views (like an Etch-a-Sketch) and return to his statist roots as the general election begins. I’m surprised that anyone’s surprised. Hasn’t anybody been paying attention to his comments and track record on issues such as the value-added tax, healthcare, Social Security reform, budget savings, ethanol subsidies, Keynesian economics, and the minimum wage? In any event, people should be more agitated by his recent defense of the corrupt TARP bailouts. [...] This is going...

Why, if there is an election in November, it will come down to Romney and Obama. Just about any question a man, woman, or child could have, God has answered in His book, the Holy Bible. Just as He has answered the question "how did the world get here?" He has also told us why, if there is an election this coming November, it will be between a Muslim and a Mormon, Obama and Romney, Obama and Obama Lite. And the devil, taking Him(Jesus) up into an high mountain, shewed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a...

Barack Obama and the US has a lot of close and strong allies in the world. And all small countries punches above their weight according to the president. From the show Detektor, Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR. Host is Thomas Buch-Andersen.

In the run-up to the airing of the HBO movie “Game Change,” its detractors were told that the movie was fair and that the filmmakers tried to make it “as balanced as possible.” That it wasn’t just two hours of Sarah Palin-bashing. Now that the movie has aired, their defenses have been undermined by the truth. “Game Change” is everything that conservatives feared it would be. Starring Oscar nominee Julianne Moore in the lead role of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, “Game Change” is a strange adaptation of the nonfiction book written by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. The adaptation is...

MITT ROMNEY may be as close to a walking, talking dollar sign as presidential politics has ever witnessed. If money were made flesh, it would apparently have fair skin, flawless hair and an off-key tropism toward patriotic anthems. I say that only partly because of all of those awkward asides of his, the ones that keep reminding voters, who need no further reminding, that he’s loaded. And I’m not really focused on just how loaded he is. With a personal net worth in the vicinity of $225 million, Romney is no Warren Buffett, no Bill Gates. There have been more...

A former Los Angeles radio show host is claiming today that Democrat Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 with the secret assistance of the grand daddy of Republican bloggers: Matt Drudge. John Ziegler, a conservative activist who gained fame in Southern California for his talk shows on LA powerhouse station KFI-AM from 2004 to 2007, wrote in a column he had living proof that at critical points in the last election Drudge erased or blocked from his Drudge Report potent, negative news about Obama. But Ziegler's living proof is now dead: Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report employee, who...

Yesterday, Mitt Romney said he’s “not going to say outrageous things about the president.” Trouble with that statement is that “outrageous” is a pretty subjective adjective. Outrageous to whom? Apparently, Romney meant to say he’s not going to say anything about the president that would outrage the left — because he doesn’t seem to be afraid to say something about the president that would outrage the right. In fact, he did just that earlier today, when he essentially said the president shouldn’t be held responsible for the high price of gas. “I think people recognize that the president can’t precisely...

.....Everywhere Romney goes, he gets the strong support of the manipulators of the political apparatus--the elected politicians, the party committee officials, the staffers who hope their bosses will stay in office, the pollsters, the paid political consultants and Republican-leaning pundits who want to keep their sources. Like Obama, these Republican politicos look down on Santorum as the embarrassing, ne'er-do-well sibling who doesn't know when it's time to leave. They find his surge of support by the dumb party faithful as an annoyance. In the same way, the party operatives see Newt Gingrich, the one-time Speaker of the U.S. House of...

After winning in Arizona and Michigan, and then again in Washington, Romney has momentum going into Super Tuesday. Even Ohio now seems to be a toss up. If he starts to wrap this thing up then just what exactly are we supposed to do? I don't want to sit this out but I don't think I can vote for him. Is a third party vote worth it? It won't help get Obama out of office. I am starting to lose hope.