Free Republic

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign on Monday rejected a Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, repudiating a contention made in last week’s Supreme Court decision that the law’s requirement that individuals carry medical coverage amounts to a tax. The Romney team’s refusal to invoke the word “tax” with regard to the individual mandate puts the candidate at odds with others in his party at a moment when Republicans are attempting to capi­tal­ize on the Supreme Court’s decision, which deemed President Obama’s health-care law constitutional. Some Republican-led states are trying to thwart the legislation’s effort to cover the poor. In an...

<p>Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the power to do just about anything it desires provided it's called a tax. It's hard not to notice that the Progressive march toward totalitarianism in America has a decidedly bipartisan feel. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the high court's majority opinion, is an appointee of "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush.</p>

No link yet. I'm just seeing it on CNN. Reuters said Fox called it as well.

For those out there loving the current Republican race but worrying that it has become somewhat orthodox in appearance and stable in candidates and support numbers, fear not: ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has the blind item for you. In the most mysterious and, for the GOP, worrisome dispatch on the Republican field in a while, Karl reports that a “prominent Republican senator” told him that the Party will not stand for a Mitt Romney loss in Michigan, and that he expects a result like that to lead the Senator to “publicly call for the party to find a new candidate,”...

[Big SNIP] ....If Romney can't win, he'll be certain that the person who beat him is so damaged, so beaten up by his negative campaign ads that they will have no chance against Obama. Unfortunately for Republicans, it creates a lose-lose situation. Mitt Romney cannot defeat Obama. His flipping and flopping is well documented and will be highlighted by the Obama campaign as the signature of one with a lack of character. He is such a poor speaker in interviews that he attempted to appeal to the middle class by trying to bet Rick Perry $10,000 and later saying that,...

Follow the bouncing ball. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has now bounced to a 12-point lead over Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters finds Santorum with 39% support to the former Massachusetts governor’s 27%. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich follows from a distance with 15% of the vote, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul runs last with 10%. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Just over a week...

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union today, Rick Santorum told host Candy Crawley that his loss yesterday to Mitt Romney in CPAC's annual straw poll was because he didn't pay for votes. From Politico: "Well, you know, those straw polls at CPAC... for years Ron Paul has won those because he trucks in a lot of people, pays for their tickets, and they come in and vote and they leave. We didn't do that, we don't do that. i don't try to rig straw polls." Pressed further on whether or not he felt Romney had rigged the poll, Santorum...

Ann Coulter wrote an article today called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare” where she defended Mitt Romney and RomneyCare. Mark Levin decided to read her article, fresh off the presses, on the air and go through it line by line, “reeducating” her on why RomneyCare is not only wrong, but a big problem for Mitt Romney and all of Massachusetts. This is the rebuttal in its entirety. It runs 30 minutes:

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney rolled to victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday evening, according to early returns and exit polls, dispatching an insurgent threat from Newt Gingrich and reclaiming his dominant position in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has called for Gov. Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, as well as the data that could substantiate his claim of having created 100,000 jobs as CEO of Bain Capital. Romney has resisted releasing his tax returns, and his campaign has thus far refused to provide the hard proof to back up his claims about Bain. “Governor Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, and people are wanting to know: is there proof?” Palin told Sean Hannity on Fox News. Rick Tyler, former Gingrich aide and head of Newt Gingrich’s...

With Wall Street out of fashion this election season, can Mitt Romney fend off the attacks on his tenure at Bain Capital? Some GOP presidential rivals, especially Newt Gingrich, have laid into his private equity past, accusing him of "looting companies" and laying off workers. While those attacks may backfire now — conservatives have rallied to Romney's defense — they might work in the general election.

(CNSNews.com) - Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania won a plurality of votes from the Tea Party supporters who attended Tuesday night's Iowa caucuses, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won a plurality of those who say they oppose the Tea Party, according to an entrance poll published by CNN. Sixty-four percent of caucus-goers described themselves as Tea Party supporters, 10 percent described themselves as opponents of the Tea Party, and 24 percent said they were neutral about the Tea Party. Among Tea Party supporters, Santorum won 29 percent and Romney and Rep. Ron Paul tied for second with 19...

Santorum says Romney nomination "will destroy this country"

Mitt Romney once again pitches himself as the presidential candidate best poised to effectively reform government, in a new ad set to run in Iowa. The 30-second spot, which features footage from a speech by the former Massachusetts governor, will run in the Hawkeye State ahead of the first-in-the-nation Jan. 3 caucuses. "I'm going to do something to government. I'm going to make it simpler and smaller and smarter, getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states, and finally making government itself more efficient," Romney says in the commercial, titled "Conservative Agenda."

In an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" a few days ago, Mitt Romney was asked whether, given what we know today, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Romney wouldn't say. "Oh boy, that's a big question," Romney answered. "And going back and trying to say, given what we know now, what would we have done? Would we have invaded or not? At the time, we didn't have the knowledge that we have now." Romney mentioned intelligence before the war suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After the war, U.S. and international...

The Club for Growth wrote a white paper on Governor Romney back in 2007. Most of the information below is from that repory, but since Romney has been outspoken on several issues then, weve updated his record to reflect those positions. ...During his initial 2002 campaign Romney refused to sign an anti-tax pledge, but he pledged to balance the budget without raising taxes and touted his fulfillment of that pledge throughout his term. But the details suggest that he broke his verbal committment. Romney did not impose any broad-based tax hikes he imposed a slew of fee hikes. He opposed...

Guy Molinari, the Republican power broker and former Staten Island Beep, ripped Newt Gingrich as unfit to be president yesterday — a day before the front-running GOP candidate was set to attend a Tea Party rally in the borough. At least 600 people are expected to pack the Staten Island Hilton Garden Inn today to hear Gingrich speak at a 2 p.m. town-hall meeting. But Molinari, who served with Gingrich in Congress and supports Mitt Romney, rained on the former House speaker’s parade. “God help us if Newt Gingrich is elected president. I won’t vote for him. I love my...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused on Wednesday of flip-flopping for comments he made in 2007 indicating he was open to a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Romney's remarks, made on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he was a candidate for president, were circulated by rival Newt Gingrich's campaign the day after the former Speaker of the House of Representatives came under similar fire for suggesting during a debate Tuesday night that he was in favor of such a pathway for immigrants. Opponents of a pathway, a large swath of the early-voting Republican electorate, have...

Don’t expect Mitt Romney to backtrack on his Massachusetts health-care plan at any point this election cycle. “I am sure there are many people who have calculated, and perhaps correctly, that the healthcare plan I put in place in Massachusetts is not good for me politically, and if I want to encourage my political future, I should say it was a mistake and walk away from it,” Romney told Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto in an interview set to air later tonight. “You have seen a lot of candidates look at their biggest vulnerability, call it a mistake, and...

Former Massachusetts Governor, and GOP presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney has found himself on the defensive regarding his health care reform law in the Bay State. Most of the criticism has focused on the fact that the Massachusetts reform, like President Obama’s reform, included an individual mandate, requiring that all citizens purchase health insurance or pay a fine. But, for Catholics and other pro-life voters, Romneycare holds a different problem. It explicitly provided government funding of abortion. The Massachusetts health care reform established a government funded program, Commonwealth Care, that includes coverage of abortion. Commonwealth Care was made available for free...