Free Republic

Former Republican nominee Mitt Romney said earlier this month he thought Donald Trump could win the presidency, citing Hillary Clinton’s high unfavorable numbers and the unpredictability of the race. Romney was speaking with Republican consultant Mike Murphy’s Radio Free GOP podcast released two weeks ago when he made the comments. “You have to give Donald Trump credit, he was able to bring a rhetoric and a style that he had perfected over his career to the political sphere and connect with people and become the nominee,” Romney said. “Despite the fact that I and a lot of other people thought...

Mitt Romney’s advisers begged him not to go to war with...Trump. After he decided to go ahead, Mr. Trump dismissed him as “lightweight” and “failed candidate.” This week, Newt Gingrich called him “pathetic.” Mr. Romney, sticking to his guns, has become a rare figure in American history—a former presidential nominee openly defying the man succeeding him as his party’s standard-bearer. Sitting at his home on the Pacific Ocean last week, Mr. Romney reflected on the waves he created by attacking Mr. Trump, how his family helped persuade him it was the right thing to do, and how he increasingly finds...

DECEMBER 31, 2007) MassResistance is the major pro-family activist group in Massachusetts. We've been fighting for pro-family causes here since the early 1990s. We saw the Romney administration close up (although very few social conservatives were actually involved in it). We're disturbed at recent claims that Romney's campaign is making about his record. We offer the following to set the record straight. (See our Romney Report, published in November 2006.) Basically, Mitt Romney campaigned - and governed - as a social liberal. Sodomy laws and domestic partner benefits. When campaigning for governor, Romney told the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows that...

The Michigan Republican Party voted to break a delegate tie Wednesday night, awarding 16 delegates to Mitt Romney and 14 to Rick Santorum. The decision, which broke a 15-15 tie that would have resulted under the pre-primary interpretation of the rules, caused disbelief at Rick Santorum’s campaign. A spokesman rejected the decision. Even Romney supporters in the Michigan GOP said the decision was unfair to Santorum. “I have this crazy idea that you follow the rules,” said former Attorney General Mike Cox said after a 4-2 vote by a Michigan GOP credentialing committee, according to the AP. “I’d love to...

Romney clarifies his position on Blunt amendment By PHILIP ELLIOTT | Associated Press – 10 hrs ago Email 6 WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Wednesday he opposed Senate Republicans' effort that critics say would limit insurance coverage of birth control, then reversed himself quickly in a second interview saying he misunderstood the question. Romney told Ohio News Network during an interview that he opposed a measure by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., that was scheduled for a vote Thursday. "I'm not for the bill," Romney said before urging the interviewer to move on. Romney later said he didn't...

To understand Mitt Romney, you have to understand the most difficult passage of his political life: how he changed his position on abortion. Not the story he tells about it, but the real story. Romney began his political career as a pro-choicer. In the story he tells, he had an epiphany, a flash of insight, and committed himself thereafter to protecting life. But that isn’t what happened. The real story of Romney’s conversion—a series of tentative, equivocal, and confused shifts, accompanied by a constant rewriting of his past—paints a more accurate picture of who he is. Romney has complex views...

John Hinderaker encapsulates an assumption which has started to take hold among many of Mitt Romney’s backers: that the fault for what appears to be an increasingly likely 2012 election loss lies with conservatives for making this a real primary. Speaking of the see-saw of not-Romney candidates, he writes: The same pattern has been repeated more than once during the current, discouraging presidential nominating process. If the GOP loses this year’s presidential contest, the party will have no one to blame but its own activists. I'm hearing this meme repeated by many increasingly dejected Romney supporters around Washington, D.C. See,...

Back in the thick of the 2008 Republican presidential race, I asked a captain of American finance what he had made of Mitt Romney when they were young colleagues at Bain & Company. “Mitt was a nice guy, a smart businessman, and an excellent team player,” he ­responded without missing a beat. Then came the CEO’s one footnote, delivered with bemusement, not pique: “Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we’d always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us had any idea who this guy was.” Here we are in...

On Friday, Ann Coulter turned up on Medved's radio show to talk about Mitt Romney. During the interview Coulter claimed that conservatives aren't going for Mitt because he's "too square". Coulter has not only jumped the shark by endorsing Romney in the first place, she's gone stupid. Conservatives don't like Romney for one obvious, glaring reason: he can't be trusted. Ann (along with many other Romney supporters) has become expert at providing lame excuses and explanations for Romney's past proclamations that he was "more gay-friendly" than Teddy Kennedy, has "always supported a woman's right to choose", and "doesn't want to...

Last night, BuzzFeed got a hold of the 2008 John McCain campaign's research book on Mitt Romney. In over 200 painstakingly researched pages, it notes every slip-up, political fib, and potential liability for Romney going forward. And of course it picks apart all the times Romney has said one thing, and then when the political winds changed, said something else. Read more: 14 Bald-Faced Mitt Romney Flip-Flops That Were Dug Up By John McCain

Mitt Romney's Multiple Political Personalities (John McCain's ad - 2008) Before his recent endorsement...John McCain didn't think much of Mitt Romney. He released this ad highlighting Romney's affinity for taking whatever position necessary to get elected. Paid for & approved my John MeCain! Mitt Romney's Multiple Political Personalities That was then, this is now. McCain raps Newt for 'liar' comment

MANCHESTER N.H. — On the day Mitt Romney rolled out the endorsement of Senator John McCain of Arizona, a “super PAC” backing Newt Gingrich dug out an old gem and put in on the Web. The PAC, Winning Our Future, posted a commercial slamming Mr. Romney by using past footage of him offering conflicting positions on issues like abortion, gun control and what it means to be a Republican. “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard,” he says. But moments later, in another clip, he...

Mitt Romney was more nuanced Thursday when questioned about radio show comments he made regarding deporting President Barack Obama's uncle. According to The Hill, the former Massachusetts governor was asked by radio host Howie Carr if Onyango Obama, who is allegedly in violation of his immigration status and was arrested for drunk driving this summer, should be deported.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been unofficially running for president for the better part of five years, and in that time, he has been asked about immigration over and over again. Now some of his rivals are arguing that his answers to the question have been inconsistent. And the issue blew up last week at a CNN debate on national security. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said someone who has lived peacefully in the United States for many years with a family, a community and a job should have an opportunity to become a legal permanent resident. Mitt Romney...

Anyway, all that is by way of introducing a couple of comments Romney made in an interview with the editorial board the Seacoast Media Group, a Fox subsidiaries that owns small newspapers on the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. Romney was asked about the inconsistencies in his positions on certain issues over the years and the poor guy just tried too hard to make the problem go away without explaining it: “I’ve been as consistent as human beings can be,” he said. And then, maybe even worse, "I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every...

For those who believe the current commentariat consensus that Mitt Romney should be coronated as the inevitable Republican nominee, consider the excellent story by Alicia Cohn in The Hill about conservatives uniting to defeat Romney, and remember the GOP primaries in 1976 when Ronald Reagan was almost nominated after a late surge. Cohn's included one bit of news that has not been adequately covered by most media, the creation of a group of conservatives to be found at the notmittromney.com, and one subject that has also not been adequately covered: the importance of the Florida primary in late January and...

Immediately after Nikki Haley's overwhelming victory in the South Carolina Primary, we noted Team Mitt's panic over the credit Governor Palin received: It appears Mitt Romney is getting a bit nervous as a result of all the well-deserved credit Governor Palin received for helping Nikki Haley in South Carolina, both in the media and by Haley herself. In fact Romney is so nervous he feels compelled to return to South Carolina to campaign for Haley before the runoff on the 22nd. [...] This is classic Mitt Romney. When all the mud was flying and Governor Palin publicly and steadfastly stood...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Mitt Romney is likely one of several Republican candidates who will vie for the GOP nomination and the right to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama. For his 2008 attempt at representing Republicans, Romney caused consternation by talking about his position change on abortion and he is doing it again. Appearing on the "Imus in the Morning" radio program with Don Imus this morning, Imus asked Romney to revisit his position change. "Well, you know, I never really called myself pro-choice, but I did say when I was running for governor that I would keep the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Romney kicks off a 19-state book tour observers say could be an effort to garner support for a 2012 presidential run. The three-month tour to promote his book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," includes speeches and appearances in early-primary states as the one-time 2008 Republican presidential hopeful wages what some see as the most methodical campaign of any GOP presidential wannabe for the 2012 party nod, USA Today reported Monday. The tour begins next week. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington during the weekend, Romney polled...

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...