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Mitt Romney held meetings with donors in New York this week that left one attendee convinced he is running for president again in 2016. A member of Romney's inner circle who spoke to Business Insider said the former governor of Massachusetts traveled to New York City on Monday where he met with key financial backers of his past campaigns to lay the groundwork for a 2016 White House bid.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has come out in support of President Obama's decision regarding the Osama bin Laden pictures. This took place after all GOP candidates taking part in a debate yesterday with the exception of Herman Cain said that they would (even Ron Paul). Romney is towing a different line: "It's best not to release the photo because it has the potential to incite retaliatory violence against Americans," Romney, the nominal front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Mitt Romney tonight pushed back against those in his party who are questioning President Obama's citizenship, suggesting his fellow Republicans should put their energy into more substantive issues. "The citizenship test has been passed," Romney said tonight on CNBC's Kudlow Report. "I believe the president was born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office...but his citizenship isn't the reason why." Several prominent Republicans -- including Donald Trump and Sarah Palin -- have once again tried to stoke controversy by questioning Obama's citizenship even though his birth in Hawaii has been confirmed by...

First they had to pass it so we could find out what’s in it, and now they know what’s in it but they can’t talk about it: The progressive coalition Health Care for America Now fought hard to pass health care reform. Now it’s fighting hard to help reelect lawmakers who voted for the bill — even if it means not talking about it. While polls show that health reform has become slightly more popular since passage, it’s still a polarizing issue, particularly in districts where Republicans and conservative groups have bombarded voters with negative ads. Now, HCAN’s field crews...

Scott Brown, with some justification, makes frequent claims to bipartisanship. But as the Republican senator from Massachusetts prepared to cast another vote next week against an extension of benefits for jobless Americans, he expressed frustration. Democrats, he said, never gave his alternative plan to extend benefits a serious look. “Why is it that I’m always the one that has to vote with the Democrats?’’ Brown lamented. “Bipartisanship is a two-way street, you know? Why can’t they also work together to pay for these things within the budget, within the monies that we already have? Why is it that we always...

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman received high-profile support in appearances in Escondido and Fullerton Saturday, with former Gov. Pete Wilson and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney stumping for her. In Fullerton, Whitman appeared in the courtyard of the mission-style Villa Del Sol complex where she made her candidacy official in September. Like that event, several hundred people stood under the baking sun to listen to the candidate. Wilson preceded Romney and called Whitman a threat to public employee unions, warning, "They have a very good reason to be scared to death of Meg Whitman." Whitman has pledged to cut state...

If Sarah Palin, with her mega-wattage superstar status sucking up all the available oxygen in the room, is it worth sharing a stage and competing for some attention? Between now and the first GOP nomination season debate a year from now, that will be the question asked over and over again by the smart political operatives plotting Tim Pawlenty's, Mitt Romney's, and other nonreality show starring Republicans' paths to the White House. The cattle call season for the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls is upon us, but the media obsession with all things Palin and her knack for dominating a news...

Officials are planning to shutter at least four Hub libraries and sack 100 workers to close a $3.6 million cash shortfall, infuriating residents who use the beloved branches now on the chopping block. “A lot of kids around here live in the projects, and it’s going to be hard to get to a library far away. It’s a bad idea for these kids. They’re going to get in more trouble at home,” said Vera Mbah, 16, inside South Boston’s Washington Village Library, one of the four doomed branches. “I don’t have a tutor,” added Mbah, who visits the library every...

GOP Sees Risks in Push to Repeal Health Law WASHINGTON -- Top Republicans are increasingly worried that GOP candidates this fall might be burned by a fire that's roaring through the conservative base: demand for the repeal of President Barack Obama's new health care law. It's fine to criticize the health law and the way Democrats pushed it through Congress without a single GOP vote, these party leaders say. But focusing on its outright repeal carries two big risks. Repeal is politically and legally unlikely, and grass-roots activists may feel disillusioned by a failed crusade. More important, say strategists from...