Free Republic

Washington – The starting bell has just rung for the 2012 presidential election, and the unofficial Republican front-runner is … former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The occasion is the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, which serves as a cattle call for presidential wannabes. For the past three years, Mr. Romney has won the CPAC presidential straw poll, and in recent months, the more scientific surveys usually have shown him coming in first for 2012. Not that any of these early polls mean a whole lot. Two years ago, even as he was winning the CPAC poll, he...

The upper echelon of Republican Scott Brown’s Senate campaign in Massachusetts is filled with staffers who once worked in former Gov. Mitt Romney’s employ. But with the eyes of the nation on the state’s Jan. 19 special Senate election — and with other Republican luminaries such as Rudy Giuliani traipsing through Massachusetts for Brown in recent days — Romney himself has been conspicuously absent. Despite his status as one of the GOP’s most prominent national figures and a prospective 2012 presidential candidate, the former Massachusetts governor hasn’t appeared publicly with Brown since late October. Back then, when almost no one...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will make two stops in Iowa in March as part of his nationwide book tour, following visits by fellow 2012 GOP hopefuls Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty. Romney’s second book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” is due out March 2, and the promotional tour will take the former GOP presidential candidate to 18 states. Romney will visit first in the nation Iowa on March 29, signing books at the Des Moines Central Library and making a speech at Iowa State University, located in Ames.

Mitt Romney - that rare political breed, a Republican elected statewide in Massachusetts - told supporters yesterday that if Scott Brown can pull off a similar feat next month in the US Senate special election, it “would shock the country and send a strong message that business as usual in Washington is coming to an end.’’ “He would bring badly-needed fiscal restraint to an out-of-control budget process that is adding trillions of dollars to our national debt,’’ said Romney, the former Bay State governor who gives every indication he’s preparing a second presidential bid in 2012.

Whether or not anyone prefers to acknowledge it, Mitt Romney is already the default, de facto Republican presidential nominee in 2012 – and, too, he is already the clear loser. Health care, singularly, will guarantee Barack Obama a second term – even if he never actually achieves meaningful “reform,” or even if he manages reform but it ends up becoming a festering, hemorrhaging mess … like anything the government runs. Sure, the health care issue appears to be a political landmine for Obama right now, but he just can’t lose for winning, and there’s no area in which that rings...

In the early stages of the undeclared race for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney is the frontrunner. The former governor of Massachusetts has the best-developed national network of supporters of any of the potential candidates. He is the one doing the most party-building across the country; of his potential rivals, only Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty comes close. He is the one to whom other Republicans are most likely to turn for answers on economic policy, and on many issues he is the only one giving them. When the auto companies came to Washington only Romney had a plan (“Detroit...

Many GOP insiders, Beltway mavens, and East Coast conservatives have held up Mitt Romney as the presumptive 2012 GOP presidential nominee and, indeed, he appears to be quietly laying the groundwork for another presidential run. However, with all of the Tea Parties, town meetings, and ObamaCare protests, he has been strangely silent. This is exceedingly odd behavior for a man who would be president. What could he be thinking? Well, I am not a mind reader, but I would guess that his silence is motivated by two concerns. First, he wants to keep his powder dry for 2012. He does...

Sarah Palin finally came out and made her stance on illegal immigration clear. She is pro amnesty for illegal aliens. In an interview to Univision she stated unequivocally that she is for a pathway to citizenship. In the same interview she says she is against amnesty for illegal aliens. Have your cake and eat it to, I think that is called. Back on the same day that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate I started investigating Palin's past on illegal immigration. I invited others to send in anything they found. There was nothing on the record. Many...

Consider this: In the first half of 2009, Mitt Romney’s political committee paid $188,000 to a small army of consultants, Newt Gingrich’s dropped $628,000 on charter flights, Mike Huckabee’s wrote staff paychecks totaling $131,000 and Sarah Palin’s spent $107,000 raising more money. All four are considered potential presidential candidates, and the flurry of campaign finance activity, outlined in reports filed late last month with the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service, may hold clues about their prospects — and intentions. Each insist they’re using their efforts to help rebuild the party — and the conservative movement — after the...

Gov. Charlie Crist says his health-insurance idea should be a national model, even though it's done little to help Florida's uninsured. BY MARC CAPUTO TALLAHASSEE -- A success rate of less than a tenth of a percent might not sound like much, but to Gov. Charlie Crist it's campaign-trail bragging material for healthcare reform. Crist's new Cover Florida healthcare proposal has signed up only 3,757 people in a state with nearly four million uninsured. Meantime, an estimated 77,250 Floridians have lost health-insurance coverage since Cover Florida began releasing statistics in March. Yet Crist touts Cover Florida as a ``national model''...