Free Republic

New Hampshire has long had a reputation as the most conservative state in the Northeast. Its license plates even say, "Live Free or Die." The Tea Party ought to be a force here. Just days before the state's primary, New Hampshirites may help Mitt Romney consolidate his position as the Republican front-runner. Not because they support him, but because they cannot unite behind another candidate.

Talk with Tea Party leaders here in South Carolina and you quickly realize that the toughest job in the Mitt Romney campaign would be the assignment of doing outreach to these activists. Maybe not a mission impossible, but close. They really want no part of Romney. And there appears to be little he could say or do between now and Jan. 21, the date of the South Carolina primary, to change that. The Massachusetts health law Romney enacted as governor with its individual mandate called Romneycare by critics is just one of several reasons they give for their animus. There...

"I'll point at my record, and I the nice thing about New Hampshire for instance we looked at the Tea Party voters. Those who identify themselves as Tea Partiers and said, 'Who's your favorite candidate?' I have a good lead with Tea Partiers and people who consider themselves very conservative. So where I'm known pretty well, where my record is pretty well known, why I have very good support from very conservative Tea Partiers," Mitt Romney said when asked how he will make his closing argument to conservatives.

WASHINGTON - For much of the past year, Mitt Romney seemed to strenuously avoid looking as if he were too closely linked to the Tea Party. No longer. In an apparent strategic shift, Romney will be standing beneath a Tea Party Express banner in New Hampshire on Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon he will be at a Republican gathering in South Carolina hosted by Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican and Tea Party kingmaker. What changed?

Until now, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was the only Republican presidential candidate, with the exception of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, to show virtually no interest in the tea party since its inception. While Tim Pawlenty craned and gyrated to fit under the movement's ideological limbo stick, adding flares of indignation and fiscal conservatism to his stump speeches, Romney generally shrugged, in the same way he shrugged off a question about whether his No Apology book tour could match the fervent crowds drawn by Sarah Palin for Going Rogue signing events. (The answer was no.) Romney made no attempts...

WASHINGTON — Rick Perry is the 100 million dollar man of Texas politics. Over the past decade, he has been a political money machine, raising more than $100 million for three gubernatorial campaigns and another $50 million for GOP candidates as chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2007-2008. But the Texas governor's fundraising prowess will be tested as never before if he runs for president in 2012. While he's raised more campaign cash than anybody not named Bush in Texas history, Perry faces different rules and greater demands should he set his sights on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "In order...