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FLORENCE, S.C. — Mitt Romney delivered a 13-minute speech here on Tuesday morning, shook hands with an audience that filled only a small part of a ballroom and caught a plane for a fund-raising gala in New York, a clear sign that he is looking beyond South Carolina. The outward confidence in Mr. Romney’s posture belied a deeply uncertain and fluid conclusion to the Republican presidential primary here. His rivals have shifted away from assailing his business record and are reminding conservatives through radio and television advertisements about the health care bill he signed as governor of Massachusetts and about...

Mitt Romney has been thought for months to have the New Hampshire primary in the bag. But one vote he didn't have locked up until Wednesday was that of Steve Rowe, a Vietnam-era veteran who spent much of the 1970s aboard the USS Saratoga, a US Navy supercarrier. Like a lot of New Hampshire residents, Rowe headed into the final week before the presidential primary still unsure whom to support. It was only the endorsement of another Navy vet -- US Senator John McCain, the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee -- that moved Rowe into the Romney camp.Rowe showed up early...

Newt Gingrich opened the Sunday morning GOP debate by going on the attack against Mitt Romney, taking the bait in a question from moderator David Gregory by delivering a lengthy denunciation of Romney’s record and economic platform. “I think what Republicans have to ask is who’s most likely to survive in the long run” against President Barack Obama, Gingrich said. Gingrich called Romney a “a relatively timid Massachusetts moderate who even The Wall Street Journal said had an economic plan so timid it resembled Obama” and noted that during Romney’s administration, Massachusetts was “fourth from the bottom” in job creation....

Commentary: Looking at his record, it's a losing argument BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Is Mitt Romney for real? Romney, who may well be President Barack Obama's opponent in 2012, he had great time last week blaming the president for the current jobs shortage. Speaking to the CPAC right-wing conference in Washington, D.C., Romney said that the dismal employment situation, a year after Obama took office, showed the president was a "failure" who was "going downhill faster than... Lindsey Vonn." OK, let's take him at his word. Then what does that say about Romney? The Republican contender was the governor of Massachusetts...

Conventional wisdom is that whoever wins the Iowa caucus has an encouraging boost to get the Republican nomination for president in November’s vote. Never mind that Mike Huckabee crushed Mitt Romney in the 2008 Iowa caucus, and neither went anywhere; in the 2000 caucus George W. Bush easily beat Steve Forbes and went on to win his party’s nomination; or that in 2000 Robert Dole edged Pat Buchanan and both fell by the wayside. So while winning in Iowa is a morale booster it doesn’t mean much, and will quickly be forgotten after New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. This...

And they're pulling out all the stops to prevent it... Even in the wake of a really unprecedented series of attacks on Newt Gingrich from Team Mittens, the GOP Beltway suits, and allied media types, the Georgia doughboy stands up a couple points nationally... while the upcoming primary slate still seems to heavily favor a Gingrich nomination. You scoff? OK, assume worse-case for Newt in Iowa (although one fresh poll still has him right at the top, with many undecideds expected to break back Gingrich's way).  Then -say- Newt scores a second or third in NH... he won't be doing any...

“Why Is No One Attacking Romney?” That’s the question I have been pounding all fall, particularly in the past 6 weeks. It’s also the question asked by Alex Roarty at National Journal:**snip** Think where Romney would be if he had been the recipient of the negative ads in Iowa on the scale directed at Newt:**snip** History tells us where we will be when there is a sustained anti-Romney negative ad campaign. It worked for Ted Kennedy (focusing on Bain) and John McCain (focusing on flip-flops and lack of core conviction). It also started to work over this summer and fall...

Mitt Romney has now jumped to his biggest lead ever over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. It’s also the biggest lead a named Republican candidate has held over the incumbent in Rasmussen Reports surveying to date. The latest national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters favor the former Massachusetts governor, while 39% prefer the president. Ten percent (10%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) A week ago, Romney trailed Obama 44% to 41%. The week before that, he held a...

7 Reasons Why Mitt Romney's Electability Is A Myth Dec 27, 2011. by John Hawkins Mitt Romney was a moderate governor in Massachusetts with an unimpressive record of governance, who left office with an approval rating in the thirties, and whose signature achievement was a Hurricane Katrina style disaster for the state. Since that's the case, it's fair to ask what a Republican who's not conservativeand can't even carry his own state brings to the table for GOP primary voters. The answer is always the same; Mitt Romney is supposed to be "the most electable" candidate. This is a baffling...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a conservative. At least, that is the point the former Massachusetts governor is trying to make with a new TV ad airing in Iowa. The new ad, titled “Conservative Agenda,” shows Romney speaking on the stump and meeting with voters, as he makes a series of commitments. “I am going to do something to government. I’m going to make it ‘Simpler, and Smaller, and Smarter,’” Romney says. “Getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states, and finally making government itself more efficient.” Romney pledges to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul and balance...

Newt Gingrich intends to draw a contrast of his own with Mitt Romney when he buses through Iowa next week in the lead-up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses – and he’s going right for Romney’s economic plan and experience. The Gingrich campaign has spent the past week on the defensive in the face of criticism from Romney himself that the former House speaker is unreliable, from the Romney campaign for not being staunchly conservative, and from a Romney-affiliated “Super PAC” with an onslaught of negative advertising. But after spending the week scolding the Romney camp for negativity in order...

It might have been Mitt Romney’s most revealing moment in all the Republican debates. Badgered by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was continually interrupting him, Romney appealed to CNN moderator Anderson Cooper to reassert the rules of the debate: “Anderson?” That one-word plaint could stand for all of Romney’s straight-arrowness. It is a virtue and a curse. “Scandal” and “Romney” are two words you expect never to have to see in a sentence together. He’s every bit as upstanding as you would expect from a former Mormon bishop, a father of five and grandfather of 16. Romney is a familiar...

BOSTON — On the Republican campaign trail, the health care debate has focused on the mandatory coverage that Mitt Romney signed into law as governor in 2006. But back in Massachusetts the conversation has moved on, and lawmakers are now confronting the problem that Mr. Romney left unaddressed: the state’s spiraling health care costs. After three years of study, the state’s legislative leaders appear close to producing bills that would make Massachusetts the first state — again — to radically revamp the way doctors, hospitals and other health providers are paid. Although important details remain to be negotiated, the legislative...

<p>Our purpose and goal on FR is to restore, defend, preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity!!</p> <p>The goal of the domestic enemy (the left), i.e., the statist liberals, Marxists and progressives is just the opposite.</p>

Those words were spoken today by Georgette Mosbacher, RNC Finance Co-Chair and huge GOP fundraiser, after Chris Christie’s announcement. The “we” is all the big bundlers, fundraisers, and money folks who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the field to be set — and that quote represents the coalescing around Mitt Romney that is expected to happen rather quickly now. Mosbacher went on to say: “I think tomorrow, we’ll be contacting one another and probably put something together with Romney… And I would say that the race is now Romney and Obama. Quite frankly, the enthusiasm wasn’t there...

Election '12: At more than 150 pages, Mitt Romney's long-winded "jobs plan" is an attempt to portray him as the candidate of substance. Unfortunately, it's more a pondering than a plan.

A large group of 2008 Barack Obama supporters are now banking on Mitt Romney for the upcoming presidential election. That’s according to a report from Fox News that says a shift in Wall Street support could mean as much as a $150,000 boost for Romney’s campaign. “I think Romney could at least split Wall Street with Obama, which is something McCain really didn’t do,” said Charlie Gasparino, a reporter for Fox Business News. None of the expected bank presidents showed up to a recent fundraiser for President Obama, he added.

As a presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney says he opposes revenue-boosting tax increases. But back when he was Massachusetts' governor, he bragged about them. The Romney administration in 2004 and 2005 quietly highlighted the state's recent tax and fee hikes as part of an effort to persuade the financial rating agencies Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings to improve the state's bond ratings.The administration's bullet-point presentations to the agencies, made public through freedom of information requests, sought to make the case that Massachusetts had "acted decisively" to address the state's fiscal problems with a combination of streamlining, belt-tightening budget cuts,...

Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray, citing the growing cost of maintaining the state’s transportation infrastructure, said today the administration may soon be seeking an increase in the gas tax. Reports indicate that the state’s transportation needs appear to be growing faster than the state can afford to repair and update its infrastructure. Mr. Murray said a discussion about raising revenues for transportation needs is coming in the next year or two. “I think there are still a few items left on the ‘reform before revenue’ punch list, but I do think we are getting close (to needing to look for...

In his latest Time column, Republican super-strategist Mike Murphy outlines why the Michele Bachmann surge may be short-lived, and why it helps Mitt Romney for the time being: Finally, the billion-volt electron microscopes of the national media will soon be trained on Bachmann now that she’s the official Iowa front runner. I’ll bet dollars to Minnesota lutefisk that despite her new squad of professional handlers, we are in for more of Bachmann’s factual fumbles. Her latest mix-up, confusing the birthplace of beloved American icon John Wayne with that of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, hints that Michele’s next moves on...