Free Republic

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.—The establishment of the Republican party is playing with fire by seeking to smother Donald Trump. Because the embers of rebellion are crackling in this Florida retirement community. Trump-supporting seniors here are unfalteringly determined to cross the street in two weeks, enter the local polling station, and vote for the swirly-haired scourge of party elites. They exude indifference to an anybody-but-Trump strategy, articulated by Mitt Romney and proposed by the party bigshots desperate to wrest the nomination on the convention floor. The party’s 2012 nominee proposed the following: Voters should rally behind Marco Rubio in the March 15...

Herschel Walker's got his old boss' back -- ripping Mitt Romney for his anti-Trump speech this morning ... essentially calling the guy a loser. Walker has been an extremely vocal supporter of his 'Celebrity Apprentice' boss -- previously telling TMZ Sports he believes Trump will "save America." Now, with Mitt Romney blasting Trump this morning as a "phoney" who is dangerous for the country -- and John McCain also denouncing him -- Walker went to bat for Donald with a new statement: "McCain and Romney lost the playoffs years ago yet they want to talk about someone getting ready for...

Mitt Romney gave the dumbest political advice of the year last Tuesday in an appearance at Babson College. He started off OK. He said he understands the frustration of voters--after all, GOP leaders have failed to deliver on many of their promises. But what should GOP leaders address, according to Romney? He "urged national leaders to take on big problems, including issues that the GOP has rarely put at the fore during the past year, such as climate change, poverty, education and income inequality." Are you kidding me? Was this advice for Bernie Sanders or the GOP? The GOP is...

More and more it seems a real possibility that Mittens might get into the race. Rubio is a little shaky and The Establishment is getting a little desperate. How would you react? If you encountered a neighbor you really liked, what would you say about this? Would you vote for another Republican again..?

With Donald Trump’s ruinous domination of the Republican primary polls showing no signs of abating, top leaders in the GOP are reportedly now preparing for the possibility of a contentious brokered convention next year in Cleveland. If that happens, a small group of wealthy donors and die-hard loyalists close to Mitt Romney will be ready with a strategy to win him the nomination from the convention floor.

Rumors are starting to fly that Republican elites are considering adding Mitt Romney to the Republican primary in a last-minute attempt to destabilize the popularity of non-traditional candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, The Washington Post reported. But this seems to be mostly rumor and speculation from his friends, since Romney himself has said he won’t run again and no one has gone on record yet with specific plans to draft him. What’s really going on? Here’s what you need to know....

"Mitt wants to run. He never stopped wanting to run," an anonymous senior adviser of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign recently told New York magazine. Other members of Romneyworld have denied the former governor is interested in another campaign. But at this stage in the 2016 race, Mitt Romney should start preparing to get back in the arena.Romney should be ready to enter the field to save his party from an awful reckoning between its leadership and its base, a reckoning that has been brought on by Donald Trump's campaign. Trump has proven that the "strongest GOP primary field in...

As Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican presidential race, frustration and panic have become high enough to make some inside the party Establishment pine for a candidate they roundly rejected as recently as January: Mitt Romney. Romney himself has become one of Trump’s most vocal detractors inside the party. “He’s someone to whom civility means a lot. The whole Trump thing really bothers him,” a close Romney adviser told me — and some Romney-ites are only too happy to talk up the prospect of their man jumping into the race if the Establishment fails to stop Trump, whose support...

2. An anti-Trump ad deluge after Labor Day? It's no secret the Republican establishment is unnerved by Donald Trump and his lead in national and key state polls. And now, after weeks of assuming his support would be fleeting, there is a debate about how to take aim at Trump -- and just who should finance such an effort. CNN's Maeve Reston noted that most GOP strategists see risks in having the attacks come from the other candidates or their directly affiliated super PACs. So, she reports, there is conversation about what other group might raise money for anti-Trump TV...

Colorful former Trump advisor Roger Stone thinks 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney is thinking about getting back in the presidential race. Stone tweeted his suspicion, and told CNN he had heard that Romney was considering a run from his sources. The move could indicate Romney sees an opportunity to better confront and challenge front-runner Donald Trump. Some see current establishment standard bearer former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as flailing. Trump has mocked Bush for being "just flat" on the campaign trail and Sunday called him a "low energy" candidate. Romney publicly considered a third run as recently as January, but...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wants failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney to get off the stage as Romney, the career candidate, seriously considers a third run White House run.

The 2012 Republican nominee for president holds a leads a broad field of GOP potential contenders in the Townhall/Gravis poll conducted Jan. 5-7 among 404 registered Republican voters queried. Note: the polls were conducted using IVR technology and weighted by historical voting demographics. Former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney has never left the hearts and minds of Republican voters and he will hold the dominant position in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination until the other candidates spin up their own campaigns, said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, a Florida-based pollster and call center that executed...

Dear Mitt, I know we haven't always seen eye to eye. And I've been tough on you in the past but you need to hear this from someone...drop the idea of running again. It must stick in your craw that you lost to an idiot like Barack Obama. But that's the problem, you...lost...to….an…idiot…like...Barack...Obama. Yes, defeating an incumbent President is hard but it's a lot easier in times of economic distress (see Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, granted he invented his own time of distress but "it's the economy stupid" carried the day). Even with crushing levels of unemployment, anemic growth...

Mitt Romney has formally expressed interest in trying his luck for a third time, just weeks after former Florida governor Jeb Bush announced the launch of an exploratory committee to run for president in 2016, The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday. “I want to be president,” Romney reportedly told about 30 donors in New York. Everybody in here can go tell your friends that I’m considering a run.” Romney on Friday also e-mailed his donors with invitations to his fourth annual policy summit in Park City, scheduled for June 11-13. Just a year ago, in an interview with The...

Scout’s honor: Not until today, having read the words of the man himself, have I sincerely believed he might run again. The RomneyWatch™ posts are fun to write but not because Mitt 2016 was a real thing — I thought. They were fun because it wasn’t a real thing. It was a way to collectively pretend-scare ourselves, like playing with a ouija board. Now, suddenly, I look down and the planchette is moving by itself. And it spells M-I-T-T. A recent column by the conservative pundit Byron York noted that Romney had kept in close contact with many of his...

For those of you who did not get or see the memo from Vince Haley, Mitt still has some major problems. Here is the Haley Memo, in relevant part: [H]ere is the crucial news about why --- with 17 states to go -- the Romney forces are worried, worried that the frontrunner's weakness is surfacing again in the Republican primaries. Here are two crucial news items causing Romneyites to worry. -- Despite much pressure from Romney forces, Colorado Republicans last weekend at their Denver convention surprised political observers by electing - and by a large margin -- more uncommitted than...

APPLETON, Wis. — Mitt Romney’s advisers and top supporters have begun informally discussing potential vice presidential candidates and although they are careful to note that the campaign is far from putting together a short list, key supporters and strategists said Friday that they are beginning to see the outlines of the kind of person Romney will choose — and the kind he will avoid. The conventional thinking has been that after a long and divisive primary campaign, the challenge of uniting the GOP would force Romney to pick a running mate with strong appeal to tea party activists and evangelicals....

Myths have this habit of hanging around, growing and even be repeated and believed. Mitt Romney is the center of one of the biggest myths going around. What is the myth of Romney? The myth of Romney is that he is electable. It is right up there with the myth he is a conservative. The headlines for today by the Romney friendly media are that Romney one two states. As always the drive by media does not go into the story the way it should be delved into. Romney won Arizona handily. He took 47% to Santorum’s 26%, Gingrich’s 16%...

The Washington Times is usually pretty good, but they really blew this one. They claim that Romney is now getting Tea Party support. The writer for the Times either didn’t know better or engaged in some creative writing. Among other things, he claims that Freedomworks has dropped its opposition to Romney, something that Freedomworks denies. The Times in its blatant desire to see Romney as the nominee claims that Freedomworks launched the Tea Party movement. Ignoring the fact that is not true, I don’t think even Freedomworks makes that claim. They did help organize a big DC rally in 2009,...

Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama holds a double-digit lead over GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in hypothetical general election matchups, according to a new poll. And a CNN/ORC International survey released Wednesday also indicates that the president's approval rating has inched over the 50% mark in CNN surveys for the first time since last May, when the polls were still registering the after effects of the death of Osama bin Laden. The number of Americans who say the economy's in good shape has jumped 13 points since January, though the survey shows a majority still think...