Free Republic

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...

For Mitt Romney this is like the good old days at Bain Capital, except this time his takeover involves not another company but the Republican Party. In fact, Romney is seeking a hostile takeover of the conservative movement, methodically moving to take over Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and finally Newt Gingrich. Conservatives might remember what Romney did after he took over companies. You did not want to be a worker in a firm Romney took over. He liked layoffs. I now expect Romney to move fast to the right for a few weeks while...

Could this be a watershed week in the Republican presidential primary? Joe Scarborough seems to think so. On today's Morning Joe, he said something remarkable: that in the last week, stalwart conservatives and "Republican leaders" have told him that they would rather lose" than elect Mitt Romney. View the video here.

If Mitt Romney can’t start locking up the GOP nomination now, he may never be able to. The former Massachusetts governor’s charmed path toward the presidential nomination was made even smoother Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opted out of a campaign and recommended that voters choose the candidate with the “best chance” of beating President Barack Obama. No white knight from Trenton, N.J., or anywhere else is riding into the race as the establishment’s savior. Romney’s would-be chief rival for the nomination, Rick Perry, is dropping in the polls amid doubts from conservatives and pragmatists. And the one...

Ken Vogel and I both have sources telling us that calls were made on behalf of a mystery candidate to various early states to determine presidential filing deadlines. Continue Reading The calls were made by representatives of the law firm Baker Hostetler - a firm that employs lawyer Mark Braden, who represents Sarah PAC, her political action committee. As Ken notes, while he nor representatives of Palin’s campaign would comment on the calls, Palin is the only GOP politician eying the presidential race who is represented by the firm. It wouldn’t be the first time that her representatives have sought...

In the recent Presidential debate, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said America’s voters did not need to “settle” for the moderate candidate. Amen to that. And gun owners do NOT want candidates who talk out of both sides of their mouths. As the Gun Owners of America’s Board of Directors looks at the Republican candidates running to unseat radical anti-gun President Obama, we see several who have strong pro-gun backgrounds. Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman all have solid pro-gun records and deserve a hard look from pro-gunners. At least one frontrunner candidate stands in contrast with a decidedly mixed record on...

Ohio Republican Party donors and other attendees at the state GOP's dinner tonight picked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in a straw poll to take on President Barack Obama in 2012. Romney finished comfortably ahead of the Republican field, picking up 25 percent of the vote. When state party chairman Kevin DeWine announced Romney as the winner, a few people in the audience booed. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (16 percent) finished second, followed by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (15 percent).

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Romney. How does that sound? Better than President Gingrich, President Pawlenty or even President Palin? You betcha. Why? Because for all his flip-flopping and lack of charisma, Mitt Romney is a serious person — an “adult” in today’s political parlance — with a real track record of accomplishment. This week, Romney actually showed what any serious Republican hopeful in the 2012 presidential election campaign needs to show: the beginnings of a backbone. It looks like Romney may have flipped his last flop on what is supposed to be the bane of his existence, the statewide health-care...

On his first trip back to the nation's first voting state as a soon-to-be declared presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney reaffirmed his support for federal ethanol subsidies -- an always important campaign issue in Iowa that figures to take on an even more central role in the divided GOP field. "I support the subsidy of ethanol," Romney told a potential voter after an event here was cut short by a fire alarm. "I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution in this country." Support for ethanol subsidies has long been considered a political necessity for...

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney announced this afternoon that a veteran public relations consultant was joining his burgeoning campaign as a senior adviser. Mark DeMoss is currently president of the DeMoss Group, which is a large Atlanta-based public relations agency that focuses on serving Christian leaders, businesses, and non-profit organizations. SNIP The campaign press release did not mention any religious component to DeMoss’s role, although in 2008 he was on the Romney campaign’s Faith and Values Steering Committee and spoke out prominently about why evangelical Christians should not discount Romney because of his Mormon faith. DeMoss said in an interview later...

For two years now, I’ve warned that the drive for so-called “gay marriage” was the greatest threat to religious liberty we’ve ever faced. But I think I may have underestimated the threat, because now I fear the democratic process and the rule of law are endangered as well. It was bad enough when the President and the Attorney General declared the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and would not defend the law of the land in court. Never mind that the DOMA was signed by President Clinton in 1996 after the Senate passed it 85-15 and the House by...

I was not surprised to read yet another editorial in the Journal yesterday criticizing the health-care reforms we enacted in Massachusetts ("Obama's Running Mate," May 12). I was, however, not expecting the distortions of what we accomplished. Let me deal with some of them. One, the editorial asserts that people in Massachusetts who wouldn't buy coverage, even though they could afford it, was not a major fiscal problem. But as a state we were spending almost $1 billion on free care for the uninsured. What we did was convert that money into premium support for those who needed help buying...

Mitt Romney wants to become America's next president. He's been very successful, according to a number of reports, at raising millions on Wall Street. But the paper named after it, the Wall Street Journal, isn't satisfied with Romney. In a lengthy and extraordinary editorial, it calls him the worst epithet a conservative could probably think of—"Obama's Running Mate." When a political party is out of power, or at least doesn't hold the presidency, numerous dissenting voices are usually heard. It can be a fructifying time. But it can also be a time when ideological agendas are ruthlessly enforced. The Journal...

Republican Mitt Romney faces a deeply unpleasant choice in his all-but-announced bid for the White House. He signaled Thursday that he'd rather be charged with inspiring President Barack Obama's health care overhaul than with switching positions on a fourth big issue that's vital to conservative voters. Either accusation, if it sticks, might deny him the GOP nomination. Conservatives despise Obama's 2010 health care law, especially the requirement that everyone obtain medical insurance. That same requirement is a cornerstone of the 2006 Massachusetts law that Romney championed as governor. Many advisers have urged Romney to apologize, say he made a big...

...Like Mr. Obama's reform, RomneyCare was predicated on the illusion that insurance would be less expensive if everyone were covered. Even if this theory were plausible, it is not true in Massachusetts today. So as costs continue to climb, Mr. Romney's Democratic successor now wants to create a central board of political appointees to decide how much doctors and hospitals should be paid for thousands of services. The Romney camp blames all this on a failure of execution, not of design. But by this cause-and-effect standard, Mr. Romney could push someone out of an airplane and blame the ground for...

Mitt Romney can’t seem to win for losing when it comes to some of the criticisms he faces on pro-life and health care issues. The former Massachusetts governor is giving a major speech today about health care in an attempt to overcome the hurdle he faces about the health care plan implemented during his gubernatorial administration that requires state residents to purchase health insurance in a way similar to Obamacare. Romney has already faced questions about the sincerity of his conversion on abortion — from abortion to pro-life before the 2008 presidential campaign — and the location of his speech...

Here are the first three words Willard Mitt Romney needs to say in Michigan tomorrow, but never will. “I screwed up.” The only way for Willard to move on, get some closure, etc. on this grand fiasco of RomneyCare is to finally man up and admit that in 2006 the Democrats in Massachusetts beat him like a rented mule. Acknowledge the undisputable truth that, thanks to his raw political ambition, we have tax-paying American citizens being fined $2,000 for the crime of having no dough, to quote The Band. Oh, and by the way, illegal aliens still get free health...

It is that sort of no-nonsense, principled conservatism that has made him a favorite among the staunchest Tea Party activists. But wait, now he’s saying, in essence, that’s no big deal. The Hill reports: DeMint blames Democrats in the Massachusetts State Legislature for adding many of the features to Romney’s plan that many on the right decry. “It just depends on how he plays it. For me, I think he started with some good ideas that were essentially hijacked by the Democrat Legislature,” DeMint said.

Last August, I wrote the following about Mitt Romney’s odds of winning the Republican nomination: In a sense, the stronger President Obama looks next year, the better Romney’s chances of being nominated. He needs the prospect of an uphill general-election battle to keep his potential rivals for establishment support safely on the sidelines. And then he needs that same establishment to rally around him once the primary voting starts — not out of love or admiration, but out of fear of the populist alternative. Six months later, this is almost exactly how things are playing out. In many ways, Romney...

What do Mitt Romney and Mitch Daniels have in common? Both are Republican governors who have presidential aspirations, and they are making the rounds on political talk shows to keep a high profile. Both men also face a common roadblock: Both have to explain how they can oppose ObamaCare while implementing programs in their state that are awfully close to the rules of Obama’s programs.