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Utah Senate hopeful Mitt Romney was narrowly defeated at Saturday’s state GOP convention and will be forced into a June primary, a setback in his political comeback bid.

On Election Night 2012, Democrats had more than the reelection of President Obama to celebrate. Karl Rove, the mastermind Republican strategist hated and feared by Democrats, had a meltdown live on Fox News. A new documentary, "Mitt," Greg Whiteley's film of Mitt Romney and his family during his 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, released on Netflix on Friday, sheds more light on that bizarre incident. Rove's famous hissy-fit took place when the network called the state of Ohio for Obama, putting the president over the 270 electoral votes needed to win reelection. Rove argued that Fox's analysts had acted prematurely.

The GOP is working with Silicon Valley investors to digitally target voters and donors in a broader effort by the Republican National Committee to revive the party. The venture, whose mission is still being refined, will create an interactive platform available to any GOP campaign to access the party's vast amount of data on voters. This platform will likely work in conjunction with the RNC's efforts to improve its own database of voter information. The venture is being backed by Karl Rove and fomer Bain & Co. executive and private equity investor Richard Boyce. Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy will...

It’s hard to be honest in politics. Perhaps that has been Gov. Mitt Romney’s real problem all along. Romney’s candor came out in a recent conference call that was reported by the New York Times in which he said that President Obama offered free “gifts” to both illegal aliens and American citizens. Romney’s observation about rewarding illegal aliens with citizenship and giving free benefits to people exploiting the system is not the same as criticizing minorities—but for decades the Left has manipulatively used racism, sexism and discrimination to intimidate the Republican Party into cowering into the aimless, weak institution that...

SAN DIEGO — The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning now without a plan. Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla...He devours news from 2,600 miles away in Washington about the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, shaking his head and wondering what if. Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There's no aide to make his peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and emailing his CEO buddies, who've been swooping in and out of La...

GOP ready to forget Romney and embrace Rep. Ryan on MedicareBy Sam Baker and Elise Viebeck - 12/02/12 02:45 PM ET Mitt Romney’s Medicare budget might be fading away just as quickly as Romney himself. During the campaign, candidate Romney repeatedly hammered President Obama for cutting $716 billion from Medicare as part of his signature healthcare law. Romney pledged to repeal those cuts in a break from his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman, had preserved Obama’s Medicare cuts in two consecutive budget proposals that repealed the rest of the Affordable Care Act. Ryan...

President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney talks in the Oval Office following their lunch. Bitter campaign foes just weeks ago, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney met for lunch at the White House on Thursday, sitting down with an eye on overlapping interests rather than the sharp differences that defined their presidential contest. In their first meeting since the election, Obama and the Republican nominee met in the White House's private dining room, fulfilling a promise Obama made in his victory speech the night of Nov. 6. Romney arrived at the White House early Thursday afternoon in...

According to ABC, campaign manager Matt Rhoades told Romney: 'We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.' Colleagues also stood and clapped for Rhoades and Mitt's 'Body Man,' Garrett Jackson who often tweeted behind-the-scenes pictures during his many hours at Romney's side on the campaign trail. The defeat was a stunning blow to the Republican camp who had been confident they would win even in the last few hours of the campaign.

Claws came out this week during nearly back-to-back speeches from President Barack Obama and Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. The two spoke on Tuesday and Wednesday during a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and from the sound of it, you’d think they were the only two candidates left in the race. Obama and Romney gave the news media a taste of the talking points that could fill ads, news coverage, op-eds and talk-show airtime during the fall election season. The president criticized Romney’s support of Wisconsin Republican Rep Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, saying the GOP is too...

NBC: Santorum Wins La. Primary By Significant Margin Sean Gardner / REUTERS Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum signs placards as he greets supporters at a Get Out The Vote rally in Mandeville, Louisiana March 21, 2012. By Michael O'Brien Rick Santorum’s campaign netted a victory Saturday night in Louisiana, where NBC News projected he’d won that state’s GOP primary by a significant margin. The win sparks hope of a campaign rebound, following Santorum’s lopsided losses to Mitt Romney in the Illinois and Puerto Rico primaries. The former Massachusetts governor finished second and Newt Gingrich third in...

When To Start Watching: Polls will close for the Louisiana Republican primary at 8 p.m. CDT (9 p.m. EDT). Results will begin to come in around 8:30 p.m. CDT. What's At Stake: Twenty of the state's 46 delegates are up for grabs Saturday, divided proportionately among all candidates who receive more than 25 percent of the vote in the state. Louisiana hosts a closed primary, meaning only registered Republicans may vote for the four candidates in the GOP contest.

Mitt Romney wanted to use his CPAC speech Friday to allay concerns about his candidacy on the Republican right, but with one ad-libbed word he reinforced conservative fears that he’s not one of them. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” Romney told the annual gathering. The response was immediate. “Severely?” “I have never heard anybody say, ‘I’m severely conservative,’” Rush Limbaugh noted on his show. “That didn’t get a lot of applause,” firebrand Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) observed with a tight smile. “Some things are too funny to comment on,” a laughing Newt Gingrich commented as he walked into...

Mitt Romney's march to a possible Republican presidential nomination just got a lot longer and harder. Front-runner Romney left Tuesday's round of three nominating contests with another reminder of his own shortcomings, after a two-state winning streak that had placed him firmly in the driver's seat in the nomination race. Bad losses to rival Rick Santorum in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota raised more questions about whether conservative Republicans are ready to give their hearts to a millionaire former Massachusetts governor who once supported abortion rights and a government requirement that people have health insurance.

Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable. In Minnesota, a state which Mr. Romney carried easily in 2008, he has so far failed to win a single county — and got just 17 percent of the vote. That put him 27 points behind Rick Santorum, and 10 points behind Ron Paul, who finished in second. Missouri is a less important result since its beauty contest primary did not count for delegate selection and since turnout was...

As we enter the GOP primary season, I'm starting to notice more and more an annoying trend here in FR. It seems as though everytime there's an article, or someone posts a comment about Romney, either pro or con, it nearly always devolves into an extended, and acrimonious discussion about the Mormon faith. Those who defend it, and those who, for whatever reasons, can't abide it, both sides seem determined to wage an "end of times" batte on all the FR threads. Frankly, I'm tired of it, and just wish it would stop. I think that probably 99% of others...

The leaders of the New Hampshire Republican Party have spoken, and they have given Mitt Romney the early presidential lead in the Granite State. In the first-of-its-kind straw poll of members of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, Romney drew 35% of the total vote. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) came in second with 11%. The straw poll was conducted in Derry, NH and was sponsored by ABC News and WMUR-TV. ABC News political director Amy Walter tweeted the results of the poll this afternoon: Mitt Romney 35.14% Ron Paul 10.51% Tim Pawlenty 7.61% Sarah Palin 6.88% Michele Bachmann 5.07%

Healthcare reform is another problematic area for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as he seeks the GOP nomination for President in 2012. During Romney's tenure as Governor he submitted a plan that would cover virtually all of the uninsured in the state. Legislators and special interest groups submitted their own plans. In 2006 all of the various plans were reconciled and Romney signed into law the bill that became known as 'RomneyCare':

Given that Medicare is already on track to bankrupt the United States, you'd think the government would be looking to reduce its health care responsibilities, not increase them. However, the government being the government, is looking to take over the rest of our health care system in a move that would spike costs, ruin the quality of care, and involve the government even more deeply in the daily lives of Americans. However, let's take a look at how the state government in Massachusetts, where they have Romneycare -- which incidentally, is looking less and less appealing -- to see how...

As Jim Geraghty notes over at the Campaign Spot, the race for Massachusetts governor is heating up. Yesterday, Charlie Baker, the relatively unknown CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, announced his plans to face off against Christy Mihos in the Republican primary, in hopes of challenging incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick in the general election. As the CEO of a major regional insurance company, Baker’s a health-care guy, and that’s very important in Massachusetts. Under Patrick, the Bay State has struggled to effectively institute the comprehensive health-care plan devised by former governor Mitt Romney. Though Massachusetts has achieved nearly universal health-care...