Free Republic

Why the lack of pounding home this message at Liberty U? If he could take the time to say that marriage is "the relationship between one man and one woman" he could have used this occasion to pound the message home that he will push for a constitutional amendment that says that marriage shall be between one man and one woman. Some might say that there was no need to since Romney is not going to focus on social issues like this, as this would be a distraction and all. But that argument doesn't hold water, because if he could...

Mitt Romney stated today that he wanted marriage defined on the federal level as being between a man and woman only, but also noted that he backs gay adoption. “Let me make it very clear, which is that my preference would be to have a national standard that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. Referring to domestic partnership benefits, Romney added, “That would then allow states to determine what rights would be provided for people of the same gender that wanted to have a relationship.” “I believe that...

Trent Lott famously said "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." - and I know what I think. I want to know what you think. Has she(Coulter) surrendered to the progressives within the republican establishment?

Mitt Romney is on the hunt for a vice presidential candidate, and if his years running Bain Capital are any indication, he might be looking for a version of himself. In his roughly 25 years at Bain, Romney tended to hire mini-Mitts — smart, ambitious, clean-cut and a little awkward, according to those who dealt closely with the men. Romney built the private equity firm, a spinoff of the consulting firm Bain & Co., from the ground up in the mid-1980s, bringing on several people who would help him turn it into an investment giant. “First-rate brain power, first-rate analytical...

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Saturday that his cash-strapped campaign machine will march forward into North Carolina next week -- despite reports that stops in that state and elsewhere had been placed on indefinite hold, according to a report by Fox News. Filed federal reports indicated that the Gingrich campaign had $4.3 million in debt and has $1.22 million cash on hand. The campaign raised $1.6 million in March but spent $2.01 million, Fox News reported. Other public records revealed that Gingrich started the month of March with $1.55 million in debt and only $1.54 million in cash reserves....

As I mentioned yesterday, back in 2009 Mitt Romney took to the pages of USA Today to tell President Obama that as he came up with a healthcare plan he should consider using “tax penalties” as Massachusetts did or “tax credits, as others have proposed” to help cover the costs of health care. The “tax penalties” is Mitt Romney’s individual mandate, a key portion the Obama Administration has credited all along as having been embraced in Obamacare. Since pointing out yesterday that, in his own words, Mitt Romney supported a national individual mandate, his supporters have gone totally insane on...

LANCASTER, Pa. - Two of the Republican candidates for president are in Pennsylvania a week ahead of the state's primary election. Mitt Romney, the GOP's all-but-certain presidential nominee, and Newt Gingrich, are scheduled to speak at the Republican Committee of Lancaster County’s spring event in Lancaster on Tuesday evening. Rick Santorum, who suspended his campaign last week, has canceled his appearance. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania U.S. senator, hasn't hinted whether he'll eventually endorse Romney, but said he'll say soon how he'll continue to press for conservatism in politics.

In 2008, Barack Obama utilized demographic shifts, his campaign's unprecedented financial resources, and his unique political profile to expand dramatically the electoral map for a Democratic presidential nominee, carrying formerly deep-red states like North Carolina, Indiana and Virginia. Four years later, Mitt Romney may have reason to believe that he can make competitive a state or two thought to be safely in the Democratic column. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ While Romney strategists declined to comment on their electoral tactics, advisers close to the campaign are privately skeptical that they can afford to mount anything more than a token effort in the Northeast --...

----- Paul Singer, Dan Loeb and Cliff Asness — three hedge fund managers and major players in donor circles — each cut six-figure checks toward the landmark effort to legalize gay marriage in New York. Singer, the intensely-private head of Elliott Associates, has been especially active in donating to groups aimed at legalizing gay marriage in different states over the last five years, concurrent with his rise as one of the Republican party’s mot prominent bundlers and donors to party committees. According to a recent New York Times story, Singer has donated $8 million to pro-gay marriage efforts since 2007.He’s...

PHILADELPHIA -- Mitt Romney's aides soft-pedaled his latest tax pronouncements on Monday, insisting he wasn't tipping his hand when he told donors privately that he might seek to end the tax break for mortgages on second homes and curb other deductions for the wealthy as part of tax reform. "He was just discussing ideas that came up on the campaign trail," said former Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri, a frequent campaign surrogate. The remarks, made at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida and overheard by reporters, did not mark any "change in policy," Talent said on a conference call with reporters....

Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno (R) is a sleeper pick for the No. 2 spot on the 2012 presidential ticket, according to GOP strategists. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has kept his cards close to his chest on vice presidential prospects, saying that it would be “presumptuous” to think about it before winning the nomination. But in a recent interview with Newsmax, he described Fortuno as “a solid conservative and a firm leader.” He also dubbed Fortuno “one of the great leaders of our party.” Republican strategists say that whomever Romney picks, the selection has to resonate with Hispanic voters. Sen....

The Washington Times is usually pretty good, but they really blew this one. They claim that Romney is now getting Tea Party support. The writer for the Times either didn’t know better or engaged in some creative writing. Among other things, he claims that Freedomworks has dropped its opposition to Romney, something that Freedomworks denies. The Times in its blatant desire to see Romney as the nominee claims that Freedomworks launched the Tea Party movement. Ignoring the fact that is not true, I don’t think even Freedomworks makes that claim. They did help organize a big DC rally in 2009,...

Youtube video where Romney explains his and the Mormon Church's views on abortion.

. . . . . What sort of justice to the Supreme Court will Mitt Romney nominate - a Souter or a Thomas? A Miers or an Alito? A Kennedy or a Scalia? His record as governor of Massachusetts gives no cause for optimism. Mr. Romney nominated 36 judges while governor, just nine of whom were Republicans. What he says of this record today is that the Massachusetts Governor's Council had to confirm the nominees, and the members of the council were all Democrats. So his answer was to nominate persons palatable to Democrats. But this all-Democratic Governor's Council is...

"Whoa Nellie! Where did THIS come from? The Fox News network, with its deep bench of producers, associate producers and “investigative journalists” didn’t have access to these video clips? Of course they did. The truth is that this is about as scandalous as the Machiavellianism their sister company Sky News engaged in their phone tapping/hacking scandal that caused Rupert Murdoch’s son James to resign in humiliation. Fox news apparently sat on these clips as though they didn’t exist – just as they CONCEALED the fact they damned well knew – that Mitt Romney repeatedly lied to us and his challengers...

Conservatives shouldn’t fret about the politics of their nearly-presumptive nominee. Mitt Romney will most certainly govern as one of them. He’s guaranteed to — for the exact reason they think he won’t. If Romney really is the political animal his detractors on the right suspect him to be, he’ll shape his presidency with a single goal: Winning a second term. To do that, he will need to make sure there is no running room on his right for someone to launch a primary challenge.

Now we will put to the test what was always an odd claim, namely that Mitt Romney is well positioned and well equipped to defeat Barack Obama this fall. This is a man who lost by 17 points to an incredibly weakened Ted Kennedy (people forget how vulnerable Kennedy was that year) in one of the most pro-Republican years in history, 1994 (the same year in which Rick Santorum won yet another upset victory); a man who would have been handily defeated if he had run for re-election as governor of Massachusetts in 2006; and a man who could barely...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign Monday began morphing into less of a pursuit of the presidency and more into an effort to shape the Republican platform and to influence the discussion in the fall elections. Campaigning in Raleigh, Gingrich said he planned to battle front-runner Mitt Romney in North Carolina’s May 8 primary and all the way to the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., but conceded the prospects of overtaking the former Massachusetts governor were not bright. But he said Republicans still face serious choices at the convention and into the fall — whether the GOP...

2012 should prove to be an ideological election about the economy. Not all campaigns are so clear cut. Sometimes moderate Republicans raise taxes (like George H.W. Bush did); at other times, pragmatic Democrats cut spending (like Bill Clinton did). But this year, Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, will run an ideological campaign calling for smaller government and fewer taxes against an equally ideological President Obama, who wants more government and higher taxes. In this divided red state/blue state era, the supporters of each candidate demand no less and will have a clear choice. This year's campaign sloganeering will remind...

Yesterday, Sarah Palin emphasized in her interview with Matt Lauer that whoever becomes the GOP nominee should not play it safe in his selection of a vice presidential running mate. She declined to answer outright whether she thinks this year’s VP nominee should have more experience on the national stage than she did in 2008, but she did say she thinks the presidential nominee should “go rogue” with his pick. Former GOP presidential nominee John McCain backed up those statements today with this: On CBS’s This Morning, McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, was asked whether he agreed with his former...