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Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) said on Sunday that Republicans should not doubt the conservative credentials of possible GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Romney argued that Bush, Florida’s former governor, would proudly represent conservative values should he seek the White House in 2016. “Governor Bush is a man of integrity,” Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He has very strong record,” he said. “He doesn’t have to speak his way into conservatism, he’s lived conservatism.” Romney’s praise comes as Bush weighs an Oval Office bid next election cycle. He is expected to...

Don’t dump on my dream, okay? I took enough abuse last night for being man enough to admit that a pizza with pigs in a blanket in place of the crust sounds kind of good, come to think of it. You know what else sounds good? A battle-royal primary where Marco Rubio is throwing chairs at Rand Paul and Scott Walker is smashing Ted Cruz’s head into the turnbuckle and suddenly, “Hey wait, that’s Mitt Romney’s music.” I’m tired of being punished for my bravery in uttering difficult truths. Robert Costa ✔ ‎@costareports Mitt donor whisperer Spencer Zwick meets the...

At least six Republican candidates for the presidency are headed to Utah for a summit hosted by Mitt Romney that begins on Thursday. If the old saying that you learn more in defeat than in victory is true, Romney has plenty to teach. “I think there’s a lot you can learn from talking with a candidate who has run and won, but there’s also a lot you can learn from a candidate who has run and lost,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “There were clearly problems with the Romney campaign but if...

Saying it's "obvious," best-selling author and national talk show host Hugh Hewitt is urging all of the nearly two dozen potential Republican presidential candidates to pick 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney as their vice presidential choice. In his upcoming book The Queen, directed at Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hewitt said that Romney has the influence and status of former Vice President Dick Cheney, making him a formidable campaigner and White House partner. That, he added in the book provided to Secrets, will force Clinton to make an equally top-notch pick, not somebody like Joe Biden, the "lovable dolt" chosen by Barack...

If you live in a state like South Dakota, you’ve become used to “Republicans” selling out the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American people on ObamaCare. We’ve seen our former governor and newly minted U.S. Senator RINO Mike Rounds, our current governor RINO Dennis Daugaard, and a host of other “Republican” leaders in state government sell us out on ObamaCare. And we’ve seen “Republicans” in Washington D.C. sell us out on ObamaCare, with one of the biggest surrenders a couple of years ago when they had a chance to defund this unconstitutional monstrosity before it ever got...

Republicans have a plan if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare this summer by stripping the government of the ability to provide to the states that declined to set up insurance exchanges with federal subsidiesÂ… and it looks quite a bit like Obamacare. If the Court does interpret the Affordable Care Act literally, then it will compel the federal government to withdraw subsidies from millions of Obamacare beneficiaries. That will make the health coverage those individuals obtained through the ACA in recent years prohibitively expensive, and many will find themselves once again uninsured. This is a double-edged sword for Republicans....

prominent Republican delivered a direct request to Mitt Romney not long ago: He should make a third run for the presidency, not for vanity or redemption, but to answer a higher calling from his faith. Believing that Mr. Romney, a former Mormon pastor, would be most receptive on these grounds, the Republican made the case that Mr. Romney had a duty to serve, and said Mr. Romney seemed to take his appeal under consideration. Three years ago, Mr. Romney’s tortured approach to his religion — a strategy of awkward reluctance and studied avoidance that all but walled off a free-flowing...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)With all due respect, the Republican Party could probably do with a lot less of what was heard at the Iowa Freedom Summit Saturday. On one hand, that might seem strange, considering that the Iowa Freedom Summit was all about getting America back to its "core principles of pro-growth economics, social conservatism, and a strong national defense," according to the event website. What could be more Republican than that? Combine that with the fact that a number of potential Republican presidential candidates appeared to see the event as the unofficial kickoff for the 2016 campaign, and it seemed a snapshot...

Republicans are shifting their tactics on ObamaCare, an abrupt change from the party’s repeal-only rhetoric that dominated the last five years of debate. The GOP is coalescing around the idea that incremental changes, rather than a sweeping repeal effort, can be more appealing to voters — while also holding out the possibility of hollowing out the law from within.

In 2007, when President Obama announced that he was running for president, he did it in Springfield, Ill., to highlight his supposed connection to Abraham Lincoln. He brought in his biggest fans to cheer him on. When George W. Bush announced in 1999, he did it in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Bush campaign, likewise, brought in a big crowd of supporters. John Kerry announced in Patriot's Point, S.C., in 2003, amid a sea of American flags, war veterans and an aircraft carrier in the background. And where was Mitt Romney when he announced on Friday that he was thinking of...

The 2012 Republican nominee for president holds a leads a broad field of GOP potential contenders in the Townhall/Gravis poll conducted Jan. 5-7 among 404 registered Republican voters queried. Note: the polls were conducted using IVR technology and weighted by historical voting demographics. Former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney has never left the hearts and minds of Republican voters and he will hold the dominant position in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination until the other candidates spin up their own campaigns, said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, a Florida-based pollster and call center that executed...

Mitt Romney is moving quickly to reassemble his national political network, spending the weekend and Monday calling former aides, donors and other supporters — as well as onetime foes such as Newt Gingrich. Romney’s message was that he is serious about making a 2016 presidential bid. He told one senior Republican he “almost certainly will” run in what would be his third campaign for the White House, this person said. His aggressive outreach over the past three days indicates that Romney’s declaration of interest to a group of donors in New York Friday was more than the release of a...

On Sunday's broadcast of ABC's This Week Democratic strategist and Clinton confidant James Carville predicted not only will Mitt Romney enter the presidential race, but that he will campaign as the "conservative alternative" to Jeb Bush. "Of course he's going to get in and he's going to run against Bush from the right," Carville said on the panel portion of This Week. "I think he has a strategy that he didn't have before. And his strategy is he's the conservative alternative." VIDEO at link.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said he hopes his GOP colleagues hold off on a vote to fully repeal Obamacare until after Republicans have shown they can govern. “I think it’s important that we demonstrate that we can be productive before we have the inevitable fight over repealing Obamacare,” the Texas Republican said in an interview with CQ Roll Call Wednesday. “We are going to have that vote. But my own preference would be we have it after we’ve been able to demonstrate that we can actually get some things done.”

Now that Republicans will control both houses of Congress, they will have an opportunity to deal with Obamacare. What should be done? They can begin by repealing the worst features of Obamacare. They can do that by keeping three promises many of them made to voters during the last election: Keep your job; keep your health insurance; and keep your doctor. The most direct way to get rid of all the anti-job provisions of ObamaCare is to repeal the employer mandate. The most direct way to insure that people can keep insurance they like is to repeal the individual mandate....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Apparently back then when Romney was thinking of putting [Chris Christie] on the ticket when he was running, when he was running, he discovered there were some problems, alright? Do you think he might use those problems against him next time? DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Well, that opposition book is rather thick. If Romney doesn't use it, somebody else will. MATTHEWS: And therefore -- but I keep thinking Romney is going to be the nominee after all this is over. CORN: No. MATTHEWS: Look, I'm pretty good at this. CORN: No. No... He's not going to run....

Mitt Romney held meetings with donors in New York this week that left one attendee convinced he is running for president again in 2016. A member of Romney's inner circle who spoke to Business Insider said the former governor of Massachusetts traveled to New York City on Monday where he met with key financial backers of his past campaigns to lay the groundwork for a 2016 White House bid.

This month, two developments have shaken the conventional wisdom that repealing President Obama’s healthcare law is an impossibility. First, Republicans scored a historic election victory, not only taking control of the Senate but likely winning the most House seats since 1928 — the year before Ernest Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms. Second, the Supreme Court took up another case on Obamacare, and if the justices rule against the administration, it would force a re-opening of the law. This doesn’t even account for the recently released videos of one of Obamacare’s main architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, conceding that Democrats...

Here to Stay: Why the New Republican Congress Can't Gut Obamacare BY MAGGIE FOX Republicans may have promised to repeal or at least do a big makeover of Obamacare now that they control both the House and the Senate, but most experts believe it’s lip service only. The 2010 Affordable Care Act is in full force across the country, with internet-based health insurance exchanges up and running, expanded Medicaid in 28 states and strict new requirements for health insurers. Here are five reasons the GOP-led Congress won’t be able to change much. The veto. This is the big one: President...

VIDEO Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragging about deceiving the American people, who he thinks are stupid.