Former Governor of Mass. Mitt Romney said, before addressing Massachusetts delegates to the Republican National Convention, that he is not disappointed not to be John McCain’s running mate.

“I think Sarah Palin connects very, very well with the base of our party and with individuals who are undecided across the country,” Romney said. “I think she’s going to bring a lot of moms and dads to our team. I think she’s going to strengthen the McCain ticket dramatically.”  (more…)

I’m not sure Mike Huckabee could have received worse news than Mitt Romney’s endorsement of John McCain. Not because Huckabee had a chance to get the Republican nomination (that miracle ain’t coming) but because Romney suddenly looks like the man at the top of McCain’s VP list.

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After months of intra-party sniping, I had forgotten what the taste of good old fashioned partisan slime tasted like.

I exaggerate you say? Romney never said any such thing? Well, look for youself:

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Mitt Romney is done. He’s suspended his campaign for the good of the party so Republicans can focus on stopping the Democrats.

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(3 Updates below…)

Mike Huckabee, winner of the West Virginia Republican caucus earlier today, is doing better than I, for one, had expected in the Republican South, winning - as projected by ABC - Alabama by a significant margin and, as expected, his home state of Arkansas.

More importantly, Huckabee is leading in Georgia with over 85% of the vote in. Huckabee also leads in Missouri, a state where John McCain expected to do better tonight than he has, and is also ahead of McCain in Tennessee.

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With friends like these, who needs enemies? (more…)

TPM reports that the Romney campaign is cutting way back on advertising, buying only California TV ads so far in advance of the Feb. 5th “Super Tuesday” races.

The only possible way to read this dramatic ramp-down of effort is that the Romney campaign seems to be giving up. In combination with McCain’s receipt of Schwarzeneggar’s endorsement and his likely receipt of the lion’s share of Giuliani and Huckabee voters, the Romney campaign may have concluded that there is simply no conceivable route to victory remaining.

UPDATE: Romney may be running more ads than previously reported, but the lateness and narrowness of the ad buy indicates a significantly more selective and targeted approach than we have grown to expect from Romney.  As Romney is in large part self-financed, this sudden care with money indicates a significant decrease in Romney’s own confidence level.  Expect Feb. 5 to be Romney’s “last stand”.

Ramesh Ponnuru is right:

It has seemed a bit like the 1996 race. McCain is Dole: the old war hero who has run before, who does not enthuse either economic or social conservatives but has a pretty conservative record. Giuliani is Forbes: the socially liberal, economically conservative New York candidate. (more…)

Ed Morrissey had the honor to interview Governor Mitt Romney for his Blog Talk Radio show Heading Right. It’s an interesting interview. You can listen to it via the player below. Fast forward to 35 minutes into the show or something: that’s when the interview starts. (below the fold follows the player) (more…)

The only truly well funded Republican candidate is Governor Mitt Romney. All the other candidates have to scramble for $. John McCain is one of them: he has seven - 7 - fundraisers scheduled in the weak leading up to Florida’s primary. If he wants to compete with Romney, who is able to spend tens of millions of dollars on his own campaign, he has to raise much. Very much. (more…)

It’s amazing to note that everyone talked about how Mitt Romney destroyed the opposition in Nevada partially because of overwhelming Mormon-support, but that these same people forget to point out that Barack Obama wouldn’t even have come close in Nevada if it weren’t for overwhelming black support. 84% of African-Americans voted for him. Why is that deemed irrelevant, while the 94% of Mormons who voted for Romney is deemed relevant? Strange that.

I haven’t had the time to give Governor Mitt Romney’s economic stimulus plan the attention it deserves, but I thought I’d publish it here nonetheless. I’d say take a look at it, and let me know what you think. (when the other candidates publish their plans, these will be published here as well) (more…)

I think that Mitt Romney can feel increasingly confident about his chances in Nevada. The race in South Carolina is a two-men race - Romney has withdrawn - which can develop into a three-men race if Thompson surges, but in Nevada, Romney has surged well ahead of his opponents, at least according to the polls. Not only that, he has also been endorsed by Nevada newspapers, yesterday or two days ago by one and today by yet another one. (more…)

Later today former Governor of Massachusetts and now presidential candidate Mitt Romney will address members of the Detroit Economic Club. His speech is called “Keeping Michigan and America Economically Strong,” here are some excerpts of the speech as prepared…

Money-quote: “Washington politicians look at Michigan and see a rust belt. But the real rust is in Washington.”

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It’s a fair question. Yesterday I published a post about McCain’s record on CAFE standards which has / will, according to several news outlets, cost Michigan tens of thousands of jobs. Not only that, according to the same newspapers and channels, McCain doesn’t exactly have a lot of respect and appreciation for the automobile industry. This while Michigan has a lot to thank to this same industry.

Now Team Romney published the following research briefing: “McCain’s ‘Wrongheaded’ Energy Tax Hike.” (more…)

Red State reports that sources have told them that Governor Mitt Romney will shake-up his staff today and “that he has shifted some staff around, pulling people from Florida and sending them to Michigan.” These sources also say that he will take more control over the campaign himself.

Red State’s short post is confirmed by a longer article over at the Seattle Times. (more…)

After much fanfare, the next great “swift-boat” campaign has revealed itself and turn out to be just another embittered anti-Mormon playing on a distant past link with Mitt Romney to get some ink and sell a few books. This Ed Decker wannabe claims to expose the true danger of a Mormon in the White House, but all he does is recycle some very old lies about what Mormons actually believe. (I won’t cover that here — if you want to know what Mormons really believe, ask one. You will find them persistently and at times even annoyingly eager to share.)

As reflected by Captain Ed’s dismissive post on this wackadoodle, this is nothing new. (more…)

Today, the people of New Hampshire will let the country - and the world - know who they want to be both parties’ nominees. What’s at stake? (more…)

Joe Klein wrote a fascinating post for Swampland (the blog of TIME) about John McCain, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire and last weekend. He first mentions that he too has seen the polls which put McCain firmly in the lead in the Granite State but he goes on to say that he doesn’t “believe them.”

Why not? Because McCain just had a horrible weekend. He performed lousy during Saturday’s debate, and he didn’t do much better during Sunday’s debate either. Romney on the other hand has proven to be a man who performs well under pressure: his performances were perhaps the best of his entire campaign. (more…)

Update with campaign response
In every campaign mistakes are made. Some are little mistakes, others are big mistakes. The question, therefore, isn’t whether one will make a mistake - one always will - but only how big the mistake is and whether one will correct it in time.

One of the campaigns that made a big mistake is Mitt Romney’s. As for ‘correct it in time,’ I fear that the correction comes too late. At least for New Hampshire (although he could in theory still win there). He could, of course, win in in Michigan, but two weeks ago everybody basically agreed that if Romney wanted to have a shot, he had to win either in Iowa or in New Hampshire. He failed in Iowa and he could fail in New Hampshire as well. (more…)

During yesterday’s debate, Mitt Romney did incredibly well. It looks like Mitt Romney finally did what he had to do and may make a comeback in New Hampshire. (more…)

One of the states that’s being ignored this election cycle in Wyoming. Wyoming usually awarded its delegates after the primary in New Hampshire but the state moved it up this time around hoping that it would get more attention. Sadly not so. As Ed Morrissey explains, the state lost half its delegates as a punishment (quite ridiculous in my humble opinion, but ok).

Anyway, delegates wise Wyoming isn’t worth significantly less than New Hampshire and, what’s more, a win is a win. And Wyoming had good news for Mitt Romney: he won 73% of the vote, and six of the first eight delegates to be selected. He was followed by Fred Thompson and… Duncan Hunter. (more…)

And not just my respect, also the respect of Republican voters (watch the lines go up when Romney speaks about policies and how they go down when McCain and Huckabee attack Romney):

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Ed Rollins, the newly appointed Huckabee campaign chairman and famous for throwing with mud, playing it dirty, going negative, is quoted by the Washington Post as saying: “What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process.”

Excuse me? “Whose teeth I want to knock out”? And this guy is on Huckabee campaign, more, the chairman of the former preacher’s campaign? There’s nothing even remotely Christian about saying something like that.

Mitt Romney’s reaction is an instant classic though: “don’t touch the hair.” (more…)

Evangelical blogger Joe Carter worked for Governor Mike Huckabee and published a fascinating post about his work - all from a pro-Huckabee perspective of course. I encourage you to read it in its entirety, here are some excerpts and my thoughts on them:

Firstly, Carter’s view on Romney. We can now be fairly sure that the target of Monday’s smear campaign is Mitt Romney. UPDATE: Carter answered my e-mail, saying that the thing he’s referring to is not the same thing as what’ll happen Monday. Joe writes: “Mitt Romney will never be President — I won’t be surprised if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucus. I will be surprised, however, if he’s still in the race when the South Carolina primary comes around. Even if the impending scandal that has been rumored for weeks doesn’t derail his campaign (I can’t say what it is but you should hear about it before Jan. 8), his inherent dishonesty will eventually do him in.” (more…)

Seeing how Governor Mike Huckabee is attacking his main rivals, albeit especially Mitt Romney, I wonder whatever happened to the 11th Commandment as defined by Ronald Reagan (thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican)?

Tommy Olliver of Race42008 linked to one of my posts yesterday, and I saw that a reader (JR Cutler) left quite a good comment at his blog. Here’s what he said: “Huck attacks people’s character, Romney attacks people’s positions. I hope that people catch on to that pattern. It’s called the 11th commandment.” (more…)

Here’s a video all those who say that Mitt Romney flip-flopped on the Iraq war, changed his stance, whatever should watch this video. It was posted on YouTube on February 18, 2007.

It seems to me that those who attacked Romney, calling him a flip-flopper etc. because he basically repeated recently what he said a year ago owe Romney an apology and their readers a retraction. H/t Ed. Below the fold follows some criticism of the latest New Hampshire Union Leader article blasting Romney. (more…)

Shortly before the first states will hold their primaries, Mitt Romney has decided to spend even more millions on his candidacy. The Boston Globe quotes him as saying that he’s not willing to say how much he loaned himself in the fourth quarter, but it’s clear that he didn’t loan himself only a couple of thousands of dollars.

Romney said: “I’m sure I made additional contributions in the fourth quarter, but I don’t have any numbers for you. And we’re not going to get into the numbers probably until sometime in the middle of the month. Right now, we’re focused on voters.” (more…)

Reuters has a story up that became reasonably popular in the blogosphere. Andy Sullivan - the journalist who wrote the article - claims that Mitt Romney distanced himself “from his party’s unpopular president” by saying that the Bush administration mismanaged the Iraq war.

Sullivan quotes Romney as saying: “I think we did a less than effective job in managing the conflict following the collapse of Saddam Hussein. I think we were under prepared for what occurred, understaffed, under planned, and, in some respects, under managed.” (more…)

With only one week to go before the primaries of Iowa and New Hampshire, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has stepped up his attacks against his main rivals in both states: Mike Huckabee and John McCain.

The campaign has made and aired two ads that compare Romney to Huckabee and in the other one to McCain, both indicating that his two main competitors aren’t the best for conservative voters.

The Washington Post explains: (more…)