Mitt Romney

Eric Kleefeld points to a Rasmussen poll of Minnesota that has only 42 percent of voters in that state backing Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) in a possible presidential bid; 46 percent would oppose him.
This shouldn’t be surprising. In his two successful bids for governor, Pawlenty has received 46 percent and 47 percent of the vote. [...]

The results of Public Policy Polling’s survey are here: only Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee hold Obama below 50 percent support, and both trail outside the margin of error.

Back on March 31, a new neoconservative think tank called the Foreign Policy Initiative launched with a conference on the subject of “Afghanistan: Planning for Success.” Yesterday and today, the FPI has been holding another star-studded series of panels on the need for a muscular foreign policy in general and an Afghan surge in particular. [...]

In my story today, I quote Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-Texas) incredibly specific reading suggestion for the audience at the Values Voter Summit.
“Lately,” said Perry, “I’ve found myself going back to a book that’s titled ‘The 5000 Year Leap.’”
There were head nods and noises of approval from many members of the audience. That book, written by [...]

While usually attendees at the annual Values Voter Summit focus on hot button social issues, this year the hotel buzzed with the 10th amendment and national debt.

In a telling, but non-scientific, survey of the Republican Party’s social conservative base, former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) won the 2009 Values Voter straw poll with a 28 percent plurality of the vote. Five-hundred and ninety-seven people voted.
In October 2007, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) won the first straw poll held by this young event, [...]

Mitt Romney at the Values Voter Summit this morning:
When government is trying to take over health care, buying car companies, bailing out banks, and giving half the White House staff the title of czar – we have every good reason to be alarmed and to speak our mind!
Romney at the Conservative Political Action Conference in [...]

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.)’s Free and Strong America PAC put his speech to Values Voters online before he began speaking: the whole thing is here. But there was some back-and-forth that isn’t in that transcript.
“Candidate Obama promised not to raise taxes—’by one dime’—on people making less than $250,000 a year,” Romney said.
“He lies!” [...]

The third annual “Value Voters Summit,” a conference sponsored by the Family Research Council and other leading Christian conservative groups, kicks off tomorrow in Washington. Organizers have just released the names that will appear on a 2012 presidential straw poll:
Newt Gingrich
Mike Huckabee
Bobby Jindal
Sarah Palin
Ron Paul
Tim Pawlenty
Mike Pence
Mitt Romney
Rick Santorum

From the lessons to be learned (or not) from the Massachusetts experience with health care reform comes this bit of history from James Mongan, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare: The policy matters less than the framing of it.
Speaking yesterday at a health reform forum in Washington sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Mongan, a [...]