Free Republic

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has now secured at least 88 of the 155 delegates at stake in the Texas Primary, bringing his secured delegate total to 1174, 30 more than necessary to win the majority of the delegated needed for the GOP nomination. With 4% of Texas precincts now reporting, Romney has consistently maintained or increased a 60 point lead over his nearest competitor, Congressman Ron Paul. In the contested race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, David Dewhurst is holding a 48% to 31% lead over his nearest rival Ted Cruz in a nine person contest.

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...

Mitt Romney was not his first choice for president, but conservative political activist Scott Magill has come to accept that Romney is now his only choice. So Magill is looking for reasons to get jazzed about the candidate he once dismissed. His list so far: Romney is a Republican who would sign into law legislation passed by a GOP-led House. Romney has started to hit the right talking points. If elected, Romney would have to listen to the conservative base - or risk its wrath at reelection time. Also, and perhaps most important, Romney is not Barack Obama. The conservative...

Fox News & CNN are projecting Romney wins MD in their banners. Santorum wasn't on the DC ballot. Wisconsin polls close at 8pm CDT/9pm EDT.

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s camp is defending a controversial program he created that handed out free wheels to Massachusetts welfare recipients — including state-funded insurance and AAA memberships — even as the plan drew fire from conservatives the former Bay State governor is wooing. “Over 80 percent of participants have moved off of welfare,” said Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho.

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

Think Progress flags an amazing exchange on CNN, in which Eric Fehrnstrom, a top adviser to Mitt Romney, seems to confirm that the conservative positions Romney has been forced to take during the primary won’t be a big deal because he can simply erase them once he becomes the GOP nominee: HOST: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election? FEHRNSTROM: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like...

No link yet. I'm just seeing it on CNN. Reuters said Fox called it as well.

MARCH 16, 2012 Tampa Tempest Newt Gingrich Plots Convention Chaos. By Robert Costa As he waited for the returns on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich didn’t pay much attention to the soft flicker of Fox News. Instead, as he sat with his family and a few aides in a suite at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham, Ala., he was quietly glued to his BlackBerry, thumbing his way through e-mails. He was mostly cheerful, according to those in the room. He reminisced about campaigns past with his daughters. He reviewed his schedule; he bantered with his wife, Callista; he settled on a purple...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19 (see trends). Looking at Tuesday's upcoming primaries, the GOP race in Alabama is essentially a three-way tie, while Mitt Romney leads by eight in Mississippi. Nationally, Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 12 points. Regardless of who they want to win, 80% of Republican Primary Voters nationwide believe Romney will be the party's nominee. With the...

[Excerpts from the news video] ... Mitt Romney- "I'm a big believer in getting money where the money is, and the money is in Washington. ... I've learned from my Olympic experience, if you have people who really understand how Washington works and have personal associations there, you can get money to help build economic development opportunities. ... We actually received over 410 million dollars from the Federal Government for the Olympic games. That is a huge increase over anything that I have ever done before. We did that by going after every agency in government. ... I believe that...

DETROIT, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Mitt Romney was a double winner Tuesday, capturing the Michigan and Arizona Republican presidential primaries, results showed. The Detroit Free Press declared Romney the victor over his GOP rivals in Michigan. With about 74 percent of the precincts counted, Romney had 317,258 votes (41 percent) to Rick Santorum's 286,530 (37 percent), results posted by the Free Press showed. Ron Paul was third with 88,521 votes (12 percent) and Newt Gingrich followed with 50,726 votes (7 percent). Another 2 percent voted "uncommitted" and a handful of votes went to several other Republicans who are no longer...

No #s yet, just some tidbits: I'd expect Michigan results between 10 and 11 tonight, and Arizona results between midnight and 1 AM (all eastern) Early observations on today's polls: Michigan still pretty close, but Romney headed for a huge win in Arizona. It looks like Romney has banked about a 30 point lead among early voters in Arizona and they're more than half the electorate. From the findings I didn't expect file: Babeu still seen more favorably than not by Arizona Republicans. Santorum's favorability numbers not what they were a week ago- the shine is finally wearing off with...

For those out there loving the current Republican race but worrying that it has become somewhat orthodox in appearance and stable in candidates and support numbers, fear not: ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has the blind item for you. In the most mysterious and, for the GOP, worrisome dispatch on the Republican field in a while, Karl reports that a “prominent Republican senator” told him that the Party will not stand for a Mitt Romney loss in Michigan, and that he expects a result like that to lead the Senator to “publicly call for the party to find a new candidate,”...

“We have to look at the root cause of why the economy is struggling as much as it is,” Santorum said. “Government intervention. Government regulation. Government taxation. Government is crushing and destroying the American spirit and the American free enterprise system.” Santorum said that government spending was impinging on personal freedoms and ultimately chipping away at what made the country great. “When the government gets as big as it’s gotten and starts to take over more of your life, then you get smaller as the individual, you get weaker, you lose control over your lives. You lose the rights that...

KENTWOOD – Jerome Bush, an 81-year-old lifelong Republican, shook GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s hand Wednesday, recalling doing the same with his father, George Romney, during his campaign for governor more than 40 years ago. “I voted for his dad,” said Bush, the former supervisor of Fillmore Township in Allegan County. “Right now, I’m still undecided if I’m going to vote for him.” It illustrates the difficulty the former Massachusetts governor is facing on the 2012 campaign trail. Three polls released Wednesday show Rick Santorum ahead of Romney in the state where he was born and raised, a place once...

Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich. Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support. Santorum's winning an outright majority of the Tea Party vote with 53% to 22% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich. He comes close to one with Evangelicals as well at 48% to 20% for...

I came home and was totally bummed by the results so far. I looked for anything on FR to cheer me up. Finally I succumbed and went to the former-other favorite website Drudge and begrudgingly clicked on the 'Landslide' article - blah blah blah and there, at the very bottom - I found my glimmer of hope: In a positive sign for Gingrich, exit polls showed evangelical voters trending for the former House speaker. The exit polls showed Gingrich with 40 percent among that group, and Romney with 36 percent. But the margin was wider for Romney among seniors and...

Christie is leaving the door open. "If Gov. Romney comes to me and wants to have a talk about that, we'll have a full conversation about that and then Mary Pat and I will make that decision about what we want to do with our future," Christie said in a Fox News interview before Christmas. "But my view is, I think if you fast-forward the tape to a year from now, I think it's going to be President-elect Romney and some other VP-elect - and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey." Christie repeatedly has said he would not be...

(CNSNews.com) - Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania won a plurality of votes from the Tea Party supporters who attended Tuesday night's Iowa caucuses, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won a plurality of those who say they oppose the Tea Party, according to an entrance poll published by CNN. Sixty-four percent of caucus-goers described themselves as Tea Party supporters, 10 percent described themselves as opponents of the Tea Party, and 24 percent said they were neutral about the Tea Party. Among Tea Party supporters, Santorum won 29 percent and Romney and Rep. Ron Paul tied for second with 19...