Republican, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

Some of Mr. Romney’s most provocative language — calling Russia the nation’s pre-eminent foe, promising a virtual trade war with China and rattling sabers for a possible strike on Iran — seems calculated at least in part to appeal to conservatives eager for a more muscular policy. Mr. Romney will surely feel compelled by his own campaign language to enact tougher policies than Mr. Obama in those areas once in office, and conservatives have made clear they will hold him to his words.

A little more than a year ago, Frank VanderSloot contributed $1million to a "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney. Now, the Idaho-based health products executive is a sought-after donor at the Republican National Convention as he makes the rounds of independent groups backing the GOP ticket.

When Mitt Romney was searching for a ticket mate, Republicans pleaded: Don't pick another Sarah Palin. So it may come as a surprise that, in at least one important way, he ended up doing precisely that with Paul D. Ryan. Like Palin four years ago, the Wisconsin congressman has captured the heart of the Republican convention. The thunderous response to his speech Wednesday night was the latest indication.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is urging Republican Mitt Romney to connect to people emotionally if he hopes to persuade voters to support him. Bush spoke on ABC's "Good Morning America" in advance of Romney's address to the Republican National Convention Thursday night. He notes that Romney will have to show more of himself. Bush says that will be hard for Romney because he's not suddenly going to come across in a "new age kind of way."

...The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.

Paul Ryan's vice presidential acceptance speech ran into a lot of trouble with fact-checkers and journalists. It seemed like some reporters' heads were going to explode on Twitter as Ryan spoke. For instance, he blasted President Obama for not doing more to keep a GM plant in his hometown open. The problem was that the plant closed before Obama took office. He also criticized Obama for rejecting recommendations from a debt commission that he himself sat on, and whose findings he also rejected.

Ann Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie proved to be an attractive TV draw at the Republican National Convention. An estimated 22.3 million people tuned in to watch the first full night of the GOP convention last night, according to Nielsen, the ratings company. That was an increase of 800,000 viewers on the same night of coverage four years ago in St. Paul, Nielsen said.

Yahoo! News fired Washington bureau chief David Chalian after he was caught saying Mitt Romney and his wife are “happy to have a party with black people drowning.” POLITICO reported Chalian was caught making the remarks inadvertently on mic during an ABC News/Yahoo! News webcast. Chalian said, "They're not concerned at all. They're happy to have a party with black people drowning."

According to Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, Mitt Romney made his fortune exploiting two strategies that the Republican presidential candidate now decries: creating massive amounts of debt and milking federal government handouts... "The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It's a vision of society that's crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it's running for president, and it has a chance of winning."

Chris Christie is taking heat for something he said about 16 minutes into his keynote address on Tuesday. What exactly did he say? The name "Mitt Romney." The fact that it took so long for the New Jersey governor to actually mention Romney's name reduced the Republican presidential nominee to "almost an afterthought" in the GOP convention's keynote address, writes Howard Kurtz in The Daily Beast.