Gov. Mitt Romney webcasted from Columbia, South Carolina to Bret Baier and three voters with the aid of the new Google+ Hangout program.

Add Mitt Romney to one of your circles on Google+ and add Mitt Romney Central while you’re at it.

It’s great to see Gov. Romney leading the pack when it comes to embracing new mediums and social networks in order to reach voters in a more personal way. Gov. Romney seems to be utilizing Tout and Foursquare effectively as well.

UPDATE: Check out these two encouraging video clips from Hannity:

Then, Ann Coulter came out with an article titled “IF NOT ROMNEY, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN?“.

Watch video of a marching band performing at the Mitt Romney Rally at the Polish Cultural Center in Troy, MI following the Republican Debates at Oakland University below the fold Read more…

Any grassroots site has the right to moderate itself any way it chooses. The main purpose of this piece is to present a few examples of Free Republic and Red State’s apparent disdain for Gov. Romney and spur discussion that will hopefully lead to discovery of what motivates those feelings because it seems very illogical considering our shared goals of nominating a conservative (which both sites seemed to think Mitt was in 2008) and making President Obama a 1-term President.

The editors at Red State and Free Republic (among others) have had the wool pulled over their eyes. They seem to actually believe the lies originally propagated by supporters of President Obama and, in some cases, even by President Obama himself. Now, for some reason, these editors/moderators are so insecure in their prejudice against Gov. Romney that they ban people who openly support Gov. Romney. Free Republic (mostly because of it’s owner Jim Robinson) has purged all of the Romney supporters they could from the site in two waves of purges over the last few years. The anti-Romney and anti-Mormon bigotry evident at Free Republic now is absolutely sickening.

I haven’t been to Free Republic quite as much as I used to partly because I have been banned from posting. During the 2008 election, Mitt was accepted and lauded by many at Free Republic like he was by most conservatives. One of the best summaries of Gov. Romney’s accomplishments was actually from Free Republic. However, Jim Robinson seemingly fell in love with Sarah Palin and initiated purges of anyone who wouldn’t pledge allegiance to her. A few months back, I tried to make a new account and see if I could post about Gov. Romney’s jobs plan and I was promptly banned and called a few derogatory names implying that I was a Mormon. Besides the fact that I am not Mormon, I can’t for the life of me figure out how a site like that, filled with such hate, can find enough donors to keep it going. When I think of Free Republic, I’m reminded of the scene from Star Wars Episode IV where Luke is warned that he is entering “A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany”.

Red State has been fairly hostile to Gov. Romney for awhile, but they have crossed into new lows now as well. The guys from WhyRomney.com have been working very hard and diligently to refute some of the many misconceptions about Gov. Romney, and I hope this unfortunate episode won’t dissuade them or anyone else from trying to correct the people endlessly smearing Gov. Romney. What so many of these people who don’t like Gov. Romney don’t seem to realize is that they have been fed reasons to not like Gov. Romney by highly-funded democratic think tanks. It’s abundantly clear now, no matter what Rush Limbaugh says, that President Obama is scared to death of facing Mitt Romney in the general election.

If you want to check out the three open letters posted to Red State, you can read the one on mandates and health care here, the one about abortion here, and the final one on miscellaneous issues here unless Red State removes the posts now that they have cowardly banned the authors of the letters. Also, I’ve saved a screen shot of the admin belittling the efforts of our friends from WhyRomney and giving his/her bogus reason for banning them which you can read here just in case the admin tries to cover his/her tracks in shame. If you want to see how rude Free Republic is without actually subjecting yourself to the hate, just click here for a screen shot of the reason they banned the author of a similar open letter.

I know there are bastions of bigotry against Mormons on other sites besides Free Republic and that Free Republic and Red State aren’t the only sites that have ever banned people they disagreed with, but I’ve concluded that they are the grandparents of this anti-Romney crusade that fortunately seems destined to fail. Some other sites seem predisposed against supporting Mitt, but not at the dangerous level of these two.

The motives of people like Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh to not want Gov. Mitt Romney to be the GOP nominee are easier to understand (hint: they make more money with President Obama in the White House). However, some have suggested they have just been fed a lot of misinformation like George Will has, but the fact that they all were much more supportive of Mitt in 2008 makes me skeptical of that explanation. I believe many other sites and conservatives are simply following the lead of Limbaugh, Levin, and Will which is reinforced by the disingenuous moderators at Red State, the sheltered leader of Free Republic, and the lack of journalistic integrity at Fox News when it comes to telling both sides of the stories involving Mitt. It’s hard to blame the average voter for believing a lot of the lies about Gov. Romney when they have to dig around all of these voices they used to respect and rely on.

Most other conservative sites that support candidates other than Mitt at least vow to support Mitt if he is the nominee, but I worry about what is festering at Free Republic and now, Red State. Once our nominee is selected, we will need all hands on deck to defeat President Obama. The members of these two sites should realize how detrimental the actions of their leaders may end up being to the ultimate cause of making President Obama a one-term President. I hope they will ask for their leaders to act in a more responsible fashion.

What can Romney supporters do about this other than expose and confront the lies and hope the people we are talking about become ashamed of what they’ve done? At the very least, some of their followers might stop listening to them and give Gov. Romney a fair shake. Telling the truth and persisting in spreading that knowledge like the folks at WhyRomney did and so many of us already do is great. A new tool has just launched to help us as well. MittFitts.com has launched promising to provide us with numerous cartoons we can use to supplement our pro-Romney facts and arguments. You can learn more about the new site here, but before you do, check out their inaugural cartoon. This cartoon could very easily be used to point out the prejudice of someone like Free Republic’s Jim Robinson as well. I look forward to next week’s cartoon(s) now as well. Welcome to cause MittFitts!

UPDATE by Jayde Nov 10,2011

I was surprised to see this letter on Erickson’s site today. Maybe he is paying attention…

Click on letter to enlarge

UPDATE 2: Politico has discovered that George Will’s wife work for the Perry campaign, so that’s one less person we need to try to discover the motivations of their flip-flopping on Mitt.

OhMyGov! is a website that monitors the interconnection between media mentions and social media activity. Their analysis reveals that the Romney campaign is the most financially supported and in the best social media position at this point in the 2012 GOP presidential race:

Romney Leads GOP Race for Money and Social Media

[...]
First, as always, we concentrate on the money. According to his Federal Election Committee quarterly report for the period March – June 2011, the former Massachusetts Governor has over $18.3 million in donations to his credit. That puts him second only to President Obama in terms of money raised, and far ahead of the rest of the GOP field. Just for some perspective, Romney raised nearly half (46%) of all the money donated to major Republican candidates in the last quarter. No other candidate raised more than $4.5 million, putting Romney in an enviable financial position.

[...] According to OhMyGov, Romney accounts for nearly 45% of the Facebook audience for Republican candidates, and ranks highly on Twitter as well.

With more than a million Facebook fans, Romney is in a class by himself in the GOP field. The second most popular Facebook candidate is Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has almost 620,000 fewer fans than Romney. [...]

It is not only the size of Romney’s share of the Facebook pie that is impressive, but the rate at which he’s picked up followers. During the 2nd quarter of 2011, Romney gained Facebook fans at an intimidating rate (188,000+), far ahead of rivals Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Hunstman. [...]

Surprised at who has the most Twitter followers?

So what can we glean from these numbers? Are Tea Party favorites like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann hot on the heels of establishment pick Mitt Romney? No, they probably aren’t. What one can begin to assume from these numbers however is that while some may go to Twitter for quick blurbs and sound-bites from entertaining characters (do you really think all of Sarah Palin’s followers actually like Sarah Palin?), they go to Facebook for news and updates on people they are legitimately interested in or support. Mitt Romney’s relative Facebook popularity is matched only by his undeniable financial support, a combination most candidates would take over 10,000 new Twitter followers any day.

(emphasis, italics added)

For further details, click here.

► Jayde Wyatt

Looks like Romney is participating in today’s Twitter Townhall with the President. Here’s what Mitt asked:

Will you go to Twitter and “retweet” this? If we get enough retweets, maybe Obama will consider answering the question. (Wouldn’t bank on it, though.)

Also, you can submit your own questions to @BarackObama by using these hashtags: #askObama and #ObamaIsntWorking

I thought I’d use this slow news cycle bring to your attention that the future First Lady, Ann Romney, now has an official fan page on facebook:

Ann Romney's Facebook

Please take a second to head over there and click ‘like’. You may notice there has been a minimal amount status updates thus far from Mrs. Romney, but surely the future FLOTUS will use facebook as a tool to keep us updated on all the Romney-related happenings as election season nears. Let’s let her know how much her husband is needed in the Oval Office!

~Luke G.

Mitt Romney 2012: It Has Begun.

I was just monitoring the traffic coming into our site today when I noticed an unusual amount of visitors coming in from various search engines after searching the words ‘Mitt Romney 2012′!

It seems that fans everywhere are as eager as I am to capitalize on yesterday’s conservative victories by gearing up for the eventual replacement of our dear Obama.

Screenshot: As dust settles from midterms, many searching for 'Mitt Romney 2012'

For those that are new here, welcome! We hope you’ll join us in our efforts! We are an up-and-coming grassroots community with the end goal of putting Mitt Romney in the captain’s chair come 2012 (early 2013). For our families, for our future, for America.

If you like what you see, please consider sharing this website with your friends, and joining our network on facebook and twitter!

IT’S TIME TO COME TOGETHER.

~Aaronius

One of my favorite videos on YouTube has the tag-line: “Bring America Back – Mitt Romney for President in 2012″. The video is included below in case you haven’t seen it yet or you just want something to put a little extra pep in your step.

Here at Mitt Romney Central, we’ve spent much of our energy covering many of the ways that Mitt Romney is working his keister off to elect conservative candidates around the county. People need look no further than the extensive list of candidates his Free & Strong America PAC is supporting for the upcoming elections. Mitt follows up most of his endorsements with monetary donations, physical appearances to raise the profile of these candidates and often raise even more money, and even share donor lists sometimes (I think).

Mitt is doing everything to Bring America Back like we want him to. However, the problems our country is facing require that as many of us as possible do what we can in our spheres of influence to help. All of us here at MRC want Mitt Romney to be our next President, but a President can only do so much. We need to elect as many conservative candidates to offices ranging from local city councils all the way up to Congress as we can.

This brings me to the big question that I hope many of you will answer in the comments of this post. With only three weeks left until the biggest election day until 2012, what are you personally doing to make a difference?

As you can see by looking at the Team here at MRC, we are spread out around the country and we are all focusing on some races closest to us where we can make a difference. I’d love to hear which races you are focusing on and what you’re doing to help those candidates win.

UPDATE: Just a day after we publish this piece, Politico has released a piece highlighting many specific ways that Mitt is helping conservatives around the country. Check it out for yourself here.

Congratulations to the Governor! Be sure to ‘like’ his page if you haven’t already. Find it by clicking here.

Our 21,000 ‘likes’ for our unofficial page pales in comparison, but we’re quite proud of it. As far as I know it is the largest unofficial Facebook page in support of a 2012 candidate.

BOLD PREDICTION: Sarah Palin just passed 2 million ‘likes’ on her page. I predict Romney will pass her someday. It will certainly be AFTER he wins the nomination…. maybe even after he becomes president.

~Nate Gunderson

Dear Facebook,

Sincerely,
Nate Gunderson

A few nights ago I attended (with my brother Aaron and his wife) a heal-the-wounds event that was meant to reunite Utah conservatives after a hard-fought primary for the Senate seat. Both Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee, along with many other Utah notables, agreed to attend the event before it was known who would win the primary election. Our small group arrived extremely late, too late to see Lee or Bridgewater, but we we’re in time to talk with the one person that I most wanted to meet: Morgan Philpot.

There are many congressional races in the 2010 elections where the average conservative can make a large impact – the Utah 2nd district is right at the top of that list. Morgan Philpot is the Republican nominee to run against the 5-term Obama-endorsed Democrat incumbent Jim Matheson. In this short post I hope to convince you that Morgan Philpot is not just worth voting for, he is worth investing your precious time and your hard-earned money.

Morgan Philpot for UT-2

Meet Morgan Philpot:

Morgan Philpot and his wife Natalie currently reside in American Fork, Utah with their 5 children. Philpot has served 2 terms as a Utah State Representative. He did not run for a third term, instead he chose to attend the Ave Maria School of Law in Michigan. After returning from school Philpot again became heavily involved in Utah politics where he served most recently as the Vice-Chair of the Utah Republican party, until he voluntarily gave up that post in order to run for congress in January of this year. Philpot had also worked for Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff after his graduation.

Philpot vs. Matheson

Jim Matheson is a moderate Democrat at best, but Utah can do much better. As members of the reddest state in the union, Utahns don’t have to settle for a mediocre, luke-warm moderate when we have the wherewithal to elect a full-blown conservative. Jim Matheson voted for the stimulus package to nowhere, cash-for-clunkers, and enough other high-spending bills to make the average fiscal conservative go bonkers. He has done nothing to put the brakes on the out-of-control-freight-train spending in Washington. And though Matheson didn’t vote for ObamaCare (likely due to intense pressure from the Tea Party crowd at home), he has made it clear that he will not seek to repeal that bill in anyway.

On the other hand we have Morgan Philpot, a constitutional loving, card-carrying conservative. Morgan Philpot will fight to protect the constitution, halt and reverse the rapid growth of the federal government, protect states’ rights, restore fiscal sanity (fiscal restraint as he calls it). He recognizes that government is most often the cause and not the solution of our problems. Josiah Schmidt of RightOSphere.com recently touted Philpot as one of “5 Super Awesome Underdogs To Get Behind Now“:

Philpot’s campaign is being fueled by Tea Party energy and lots of state/national support. Philpot is a proud “liberty candidate” who will oppose deficit spending, tax increases, and government regulations, and will fight to stop any increase in the national debt ceiling. He is a strong supporter of limited government and 10th amendment states’ rights.

Plus Morgan Philpot is a Romney endorsed candidate to boot.

Can Morgan Philpot Win?

YES!! But only with your help. Patrick Ruffini captures well why Morgan Philpot could and should win in the Utah 2nd district:

Over the coming days, I’ll outline exactly where I think the “sleeper” seats are, and this past weekend, one more popped on my radar: Utah’s 2nd Congressional district.

You might be asking why Utah, one of the most Republican states in the Union, sends a Democrat to Congress, and it’s a good question. In a year when Republicans got massacred, McCain still managed 58% of the vote in the Salt Lake City-based UT-2, making it #5 on my PVI-ordered list of Republican targets for 2010.

The vulnerability for now rests on the Democratic side of the ledger. In a sidenote to Bob Bennett’s ouster at the state Republican Convention last weekend, Blue Dog Democrat incumbent Jim Matheson was forced into a primary with pro-HCR liberal Claudia Wright. In a shocker, Matheson only managed 55% among party insiders against an opponent with $9K cash on hand.

The Republican nomination fight is clearer: Morgan Philpot managed to clear a primary and is the nominee. We need to get behind him with our dollars now.

In a wave year, I’m watching for dozens of mini rogue “waves” to take out incumbents previously thought safe — think of how Rosty was famously ousted in 1994, or Joseph Cao’s shock victory against Dollar Bill Jefferson, or races like Tim Walz vs. Gil Gutknecht or Nancy Boyda vs. Jim Ryun in 2006 that were basically thought safe.

Philpot is an appealing grassroots candidate who could capitalize on a national wave and take the seat.

In a year when Republicans got swept across the board McCain won 58% of the vote in Utah’s most liberal (or rather least conservative) district! The UT 2nd district has a Republican +15 PVI (Partisan Voting Index) meaning the GOP should have a 15% edge over the Dems, making it the 5th highest GOP leaning PVI in a district that has a Democrat incumbent. Utah has taken steps recently to vote-in more conservative candidates (ie. Chris Cannon and Bob Bennett – I should note that Mitt’s endorsement of Bennett is one of the very few things I disagree with him on.) We can do more of the same with the Matheson/Philpot race. With the proper organization, funding and national attention there is no reason Matheson should be allowed to retain his seat, especially against a strong conservative like Philpot.

No matter where you live, this is a battle worth fighting. Or, as a businessman, I’d like to say this race will give me the highest ROI for my money and efforts. Morgan Philpot is a candidate that all Utah Republicans can agree on, whether they be moderate, conservative or libertarian.

What you can do to:

Give Philpot your vote: If you by chance live in UT-2 be sure to register to vote, and get 10 of your friends to commit to register and show up at the November elections to vote for Philpot.

Give Philpot some of your hard-earned money: DONATE HERE. Plenty of funding is ABSOLUTELY VITAL for any campaign. Matheson is an incumbent and well-funded. He will not go down quietly. He will have plenty of money to spend on advertising to assuage conservative family-centered Utah voters into thinking he is just like them. Let’s level the playing field and give Philpot the boost he needs to compete.

Give Philpot some of your precious time: If you live in or near the 2nd district please consider volunteering for his campaign. Volunteers can post signs, do neighborhood walks, and even join Philpot in marching in some summer parades.

Spread the word: If you are not on Facebook yet it is time to sign-up and get with the action. It is extremely easy to network with friends (who are all on FB already) and share with them Morgan Philpot’s Facebook page. In fact MittRomneyCentral.com will be doing a one-day “Like-Bomb” on our Facebook page to encourage people to “like” or become a fan of Philpot’s page. Our goal is to push Philpot’s fan total (currently at 760), past that of Jim Matheson (1242) by the end of tomorrow.

Last thoughts:

1 - I’m convinced Morgan Philpot is right for the Utah and right for the nation. I plan to use whatever influence, time, and energy I have to help promote him. I have a 80% probability of going to march with him during the American Fork Steel Days parade this Saturday and will bring as many family and friends as I can. I would thrilled to meet any of our readers there. Any supporter that attends will get a free PHILPOT PHAN t-shirt from his campaign, and (if you want) a free MITT ’12 sticker from me. If I’m not able to make it I’m certain that either Luke or Aaron, or both, will be there.

2 – A vote for Matheson is a vote for Pelosi. The UT-2 district is only one of many seats currently held by Dems that we can and will take back this November to oust Pelost as Speaker of the House.

3 – I’m a Philpot Phan!

~Nate Gunderson