Free Republic

Sure, Mitt Romney just had a huge win in Florida—but his favorability ratings have been sinking miserably since the New Year. Andrew Romano on why the GOP’s long primary race in 2012 won’t mirror the Dems’ in 2008. Plus read more Daily Beast contributors on what Romney’s Florida victory means. On stage last night in Ballroom C of the Tampa Convention Center, Mitt Romney, the winner of the 2012 Florida Republican primary, tried his darndest to simulate the emotional state that Homo sapiens refer to as “happiness.” “Our opponents in the other party ... like to comfort themselves with the...

Richard Winger over at Ballot Access News has an EXTREMELY interesting post (link via here) on the mess that the Virginia Republican party has found itself in over… access to the ballot in Virginia. For those coming in late, background here and here: the very short version is that the VA GOP only certified Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for its primary ballot. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich both had too many signatures tossed; Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann didn’t even try. Of the seven candidates, one (Romney) had more than enough signatures (15K) to bypass the verification...

There are currently many news stories and blog discussions about the Virginia presidential primary ballot access law. Some large blogs, such as Red State, have over 300 comments about the story. Some defend the current Virginia ballot access laws on the grounds that in past presidential elections, a fairly large number of Republican presidential primary candidates managed to qualify. But what has not been reported is that in the only other presidential primaries in which Virginia required 10,000 signatures (2000, 2004, and 2008) the signatures were not checked. Any candidate who submitted at least 10,000 raw signatures was put on...

Karl Rove said Friday that Herman Cain had no evidence to accuse the Rick Perry campaign of driving negative stories against him, arguing that Cain did "exactly what [he is] accusing the media of doing." Rove said in an appearance on "Fox and Friends" that the "best way" for Cain to survive this week is to get the National Restaurant Association to release new information about the sexual harassment complaints lodged against him in the 1990s.

The lawyer for a woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in the late 1990s says that Cain may have violated the confidentiality terms of the agreement by commenting on its specifics over the past 24 hours. "Herman Cain and others have already disclosed that there was a confidential settlement," says Joel P. Bennett, a Washington-based attorney specializing in employment law, who also represented the woman when she negotiated her settlement. (snip) "I don't know if she'll ever go public," he said Tuesday. (snip) Without having the agreement in hand, Bennett says he doesn't...

SNIP Whether you are talking about George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Howard Dean in 2004, or even the second coming of McCain in 2008, they had considerably more of a campaign apparatus than Cain. Their campaigns were often unorthodox, but their actions were rarely random. They didn’t surge to the top based on seat-of-the-pants decisions. In short, there was method to their madness. With Herman Cain’s candidacy, there hasn’t been. There has been minimal fundraising. There has been truly bizarre scheduling that only seemed to make sense in the context of selling autographed books at $100 apiece....