Free Republic

What’s the prescription for a famously brilliant venture capitalist who has trouble connecting with blue-collar voters in his native state? How about bringing in a far more controversial venture capitalist who’s claim to recent fame is in firing people on national television? What could go wrong?With just over a week to go before Michigan voters head to the polls, Mitt Romney is enlisting the help of one of his highest-wattage surrogates: Donald Trump. The real estate mogul is preparing to spread his pro-Romney, anti-Rick Santorum message in a series of radio interviews this week on local stations from Traverse City...

“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...

A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race. “If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity. The senator believes Romney will ultimately win in Michigan but says he will publicly call for the party to find a new candidate if he does not. “We’d get killed,” the senator said if Romney manages to win the nomination after he failed to win...

Mitt Romney, whose campaign is preparing a multi-million dollar wave of negative advertising to persuade voters that Rick Santorum should not be president, says he is open to the possibility of choosing Santorum to be his running mate should Romney win the Republican nomination. Romney appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and was asked, "You and Rick Santorum, we haven't seen you go head-to-head yet…In the big picture, could you see a scenario where you two team up?" "Oh, I think it's always possible to have people come together in our party, whether it's Rick and I, or others in...

As I’ve been noting here, one key metric to determine whether the prolonged GOP nomination process is damaging Mitt Romney’s general election prospects is his standing among independents, many of whom remain sour on Obama’s economic performance. Today’s new Pew poll offers another installment. The topline is striking enough — it finds that Rick Santorum is surging among Tea Partyers and conservatives, again suggesting that they just can’t come to terms with Romney as the nominee.

Obama cannot run on his record (Obamacare, Frank-Dodd, Porkulus, the bailouts, Obamacare exemptions for some and and some states, but not others, green jobs, etc, ) and doesn't want to run on his record. He will smear the eventual GOP nominee, and run a negative campaign, and actually let superpacs do it for him. Same with Romney. He cannot run on his record as governor, his position on global warming, etc, and so, sit back, say nothing, and allow superpacss to run his GOP opponents (like Gingrich) into the ground through negative campaigning. I don't care for Newt "Scozzafava" Gingrich,...