The Republican National Committee is throwing their official support and all of its weight behind Governor Romney.

WaPo:

Less than 24 hours after sweeping five primaries and declaring the Republican presidential nomination fight officially over, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are moving quickly to coordinate their efforts.

“Governor Romney’s strong performance and delegate count at this stage of the primary process has made him our party’s presumptive nominee,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “In order to maximize our efforts I have directed my staff at the RNC to open lines of communication with the Romney campaign.”

The leading edge of the synchronization will be four liaisons between the two organizations. Brian Jones, who has been serving as an adviser to Romney since late last year, will lead that effort. Kevin Madden, who served as the press secretary for Romney’s 2008 presidential bid, will advise the communications operation and serve as a DC-based television surrogate for the Romney/RNC effort. Ward Baker, a veteran Tennessee-based GOP strategist, will help coordinate the political and field teams. Ron Kaufman, a veteran RNC member, and Ben Ginsberg, who served as national counsel to Romney’s 2008 race, will also facilitate interaction between the two groups.

From the beginning of the Romney’s primary campaign they stated that his planning and fundraising would be designed to perform a long slog through the primary season in order to win the nomination. They have done just that and a new election season begins. For many Romney diehards this moment has been six years in the making. For myself it almost seems surreal that it is finally happening.

The time has come to rally around the nominee. Please consider donating to Romney’s campaign what you can. Maybe pick up some promotional t-shirts and bumpers stickers too. Learn where and how you can volunteer to help the campaign. It’s only six and a half months until election day – let’s gear up for a tough fight now. You can start by watching Mitt’s speech from last night’s victories.

MRC Announcement: I’m pleased to inform you that my brother Luke Gunderson and I, along with staff writer David Parker, were elected as alternate national delegates for the RNC convention in Tampa and will be attending it in August. We look forward to doing some live blogging and tweeting directly from the big event.

~Nate Gunderson

UPDATE: The RNC has made good on their word to help Romney and have done so extremely quickly. Check out the new video they made entitled A Tale of Two Leaders

Because Super Tuesday is now in the rear view mirror, Mitt Romney supporters are breathing a little easier and enjoying a super Wednesday.

With Romney’s solid victories from Alaska to Vermont, we can see the path to the GOP nomination clearly (more on that in a moment). No rest for Governor Romney, however. He was up bright and early in Newton, MA to be interviewed on CNBC’s Squawk Box. He spoke about election results, Obama’s failed policies, jobs, economy, entitlements, and more:

● Romney on uniting different factions of the party if he’s the nominee:

“. . . When we we have a nominee, we will come together because Barack Obama has organized a conservative community. … The community organizer has organized us in a big way. We’re going to come together because we really believe he needs to be replaced – that he’s over his head, that the debt he’s amassed, the jobs he has not created – suggest that this is a guy whose time has come for early retirement.”

● Sidenote: Several days ago, when Sarah Palin stated on FOX News that the candidate who really focuses on gasoline prices would be the one to support, one didn’t have to rub a crystal ball to know that Newt Gingrich would somehow, out of thin air, come up with a gas plan real quick. Sure enough, the very next day, Gingrich announced his $2.50 per gallon meme. Now, he thinks he OWNS the issue. Wrong. Romney has been strongly advocating for energy independence since 2007, wrote extensively about it in his book No Apology (published spring 2010), and, at every opportunity, continues to stress the importance of using our own energy resources. (It’s no secret Palin voted yesterday for Gingrich.)

● During today’s interview, Romney spoke again on gasoline prices:

Are you happy with high gasoline prices in part because this administration has not been willing to take in energy from other places across America? . . . I think people recognize that the president can’t precisely set the price at the pump, but he can decide how much of the money that’s being paid for oil and gas is going to other nations. And, to get that money staying here and to create jobs here and to stabilize prices here, he ought to be taking advantage of all of our offshore and ANWAR and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Texas oil and gas resources instead of trying to hold them off. Natural gas is a huge win for us. And, through the EPA, he’s been trying to hold that off. Coal is, of course, a major source of our electric power. He’s made it more difficult to get the coal, more difficult to use the coal. And, of course, the Keystone Pipeline bringing energy in from Canada, that was a no-brainer. He failed that test. If we want to get America energy secure, you have to take advantage of the energy resources we have. And, fortunately, with recent discoveries from Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio, there’s a lot of energy in this country. Let’s take advantage of it.

Entire transcript may be found here.

● Among the varied post-Super Tuesday analysis, we read ‘Romney is a frail frontrunner’. Uh huh. He’s so frail he has more than double the delegates Santorum has and Gingrich and Paul have been left in the campaign dust. No, talking heads. Romney is a formidable frontrunner. Today, Hugh Hewitt pointed out a fact the mainstream media is missing (and gave MRC a nod, as well):

Read more…

Drudge announced breaking news with an exclusive report early Wednesday evening, stating that ABC News had conducted an interview with Newt Gingrich’s second wife Marianne Gingrich for a program to be aired in the future. Following is that initial report:

**Exclusive**

Wed Jan 18 2012 18:47:14 ET

Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview.

Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

She spoke to ABCNEWS reporter Brian Ross for two hours, and her explosive revelations are set to rock the trail.

But now a “civil war” has erupted inside of the network, an insider claims, on exactly when the confession will air!

MORE

ABCNEWS suits determined it would be “unethical” to run the Marianne Gingrich interview so close to the South Carolina Primary, a curious decision, one insider argued, since the network has aggressively been reporting on other candidates.

A decision was tentatively made to air the interview next Monday, after all votes have been counted . . .

[emphasis added]

According to this first report, the breaking news stated that the interview would first be aired next Monday after the South Carolina primary. It was later reported that ABC News would air it on Friday. Then the Associated Press reported that ABC News would air it Thursday night. Sure seems confusing!

Contrary to what Gingrich keeps telling reporters this week (that Governor Romney will resort to “dirty tricks”), don’t believe any of it. This is between Ms. Gingrich and ABC News. According to Drudge, Gingrich cancelled a news conference yesterday to deal with the breaking news. What is there to “deal with” anyway? There is no new information except that she granted an interview.

Of course, without excerpts of the interview, it is difficult to know if what Marianne Gingrich discussed in the interview is revealing at all or just some additional insight into what is already known about the former congressman. But here’s a guess. Based on the fact that ABC News first intended to release it Monday, then moved it to Friday, and again to Thursday (“tentative”) seems to point to big news. Interviews with his second wife are rare in recent times. And if what she talks about is in fact big news, it is unlikely good news for Mr. Gingrich. Since we are precluded from publishing the AP short, click here to read the published report directly. It is hard to imagine Marianne Gingrich revealing anything more damning than what she said in August 2010.

Marianne Gingrich granted an interview to Esquire in 2010 in which she said of her former husband, in part,

“Newt always wanted to be somebody,” she says. “That was his vulnerability, do you understand? Being treated important. Which means he was gonna associate with people who would stroke him, and were important themselves. And in that vulnerability, once you go down that path and it goes unchecked, you add to it. Like, ‘Oh, I’m drinking, who cares?’ Then you start being a little whore, ’cause that comes with drinking. That’s what corruption is — when you’re too exhausted, you’re gonna go with your weakness. So when we see corruption, we shouldn’t say, ‘They’re all corrupt.’ Rather, we should say, ‘At what point did you decide that? And why? Why were you vulnerable?’ ”
[…]
Though Gingrich had made history and achieved extraordinary power, he still felt like an outsider, and the hatred touched something primal inside him. “All he wanted was to be accepted into the country club,” Marianne says. “And he arrives at the country club and he’s just not welcome. ‘Yeah, but I belong here,’ he said. ‘I earned my way to this. I earned it.’ ”

Next came the government shutdown of late 1995, which so alarmed the country that the poll numbers for Republicans went into a steep overnight decline. “Newt’s shocked, doesn’t know what to do,” Marianne says. “He’s like, ‘Whoa, wait, wait! This isn’t just my fault! We need to work this out!’ ”

Greta Van Susteren weighed in on Drudge’s “siren” with this in her GRETAWIRE:

This is not to say that news should be suppressed (it should not) but news should also not be used to ambush. Thus…in light of the close time to the South Carolina primary…if I were ABC, I would hold this interview until after the polls close on Saturday (or I would have showed it a week ago.)

Politico released a letter by Gingrich’s two daughters in their “Marianne Gingrich Speaks” article along with this,

But Drudge’s siren-headlined bulletin – his splash came a day after the 14-year anniversary of him breaking word of the Lewinsky scandal — ensures much more focus on [the] interview by the rest of the press.

The New York Times, in its “Gingrich Camp Responds to Ex-Wife’s Interview” article published the following,

Marianne Gingrich, the second of Mr. Gingrich’s former wives, was married to him for 18 years. After they divorced, Mr. Gingrich married his current wife, the former Callista Bisek, with whom he admitted conducting a lengthy affair while he was still married.

Word of the interview was leaked to The Drudge Report, which reported on Wednesday afternoon that a debate was taking place within ABC over whether it was fair to broadcast it so close to the crucial primary in South Carolina on Saturday.

An ABC source confirmed there was disagreement over the timing of the interview, which was conducted by Brian Ross of the investigative unit, which operates separately from the political news division.

The push-back on ABC from the Gingrich campaign was in the form of a letter signed by Mr. Gingrich’s two daughters from his first marriage, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman, who regularly accompany him on the stump.
[…]
An ABC News spokesman confirmed Wednesday night that “Nightline” will broadcast the interview at 11:35 p.m. Thursday; excerpts will be released earlier in the day, before a Republican debate sponsored by CNN on Thursday evening.
[…]
At ABC’s competitors like CBS and CNN, executives scrambled to figure out if someone at their own shop had scored a big scoop.

Just after 7 p.m., as the evening newscasts ended, the Web site revealed that it was ABC that had interviewed Ms. Gingrich.

The Drudge Report declared that there was a “civil war” inside ABC News about when to run the interview, though if there was, it was a short and bloodless one.

[emphasis added]

NOTE: It is the hope of the Mitt Romney Central team that ABC News will take a very responsible, fair, and truthful approach to their editing of anything Ms. Gingrich said. Reports indicate the interview lasted two hours. After accounting for TV commercials, the net broadcast time of the Nightline show is approximately 23 minutes total (normally divided among three segments). Even if ABC News takes the entire 23 minutes for this broadcast, they will edit out over 80% of it. With so little time left before voting in the primary, Team MRC hopes that whatever ABC News chooses to report is fair and not taken out of context.

Just prior to publishing this post, National Review Online reported this in “The Corner,” that the Gingrich campaign “will fight back” and then also later they “predict that Gingrich will likely ignore the story.” This is the last paragraph of the NRO post:

ABC News wanted Gingrich to come on Nightline to offer a rebuttal of sorts but Gingrich’s advisers declined. “This is a sideshow, a distraction,” the third source says. “Is it helpful? No. But is it a game-changer? No.”

Obviously this story will be all over the news today. Stay tuned. There is a very good chance that there is nothing new in the interview and that any hype associated with the Thursday teases will be nothing more than teases. In typical Matt Drudge style though, he gotten a lot of people to sit up and pay attention.

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keler

“Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

,

Wow! There’s nothing like actually being at the World Series or the Super Bowl. Watching on TV just can’t deliver the same sense of excitement, the electricity in the air. And for political junkies, there’s nothing like actually being on the ground helping in headquarters for a key caucus or primary. Things are buzzing, people are hustling, and there’s a palpable excitement when you feel you can win. Four years ago I was able to travel to Iowa and help in the 2008 caucuses, where we got an exciting 2d place, but the experience left me longing for more. This time I’ve been lucky enough to be able to come to New Hampshire to be “feet on the ground” for Romney 2012. And I think a 1st place finish is a realistic possibility!

Travel Log

I left California early this morning. For a point of reference, here’s what winter looks like where I live…

…but today flew to Boston, then drove to Nashua, NH, where the weather’s a bit different. Not that I’m complaining, but I had to dig deep in my closet for a coat that would suffice!

The Locals are Fantastic

One thing I noticed on the drive to Nashua: Boston / New Hampshire talk radio is great. We happened to catch an impromptu radio appearance by Governor Romney discussing the political events of the day. The excitement was high as we felt we had finally arrived into the center of the political universe. While the host didn’t shy away from tough questions, the tone was respectful and in the nature of dialog, not combat. Callers’ knowledge of the issues was refreshing, and it was clear voters here work to make informed decisions. The one main theme I heard repeated was the need to rally behind the most electable candidate to defeat President Obama, and the consensus is Mitt. While it appears Santorum is getting a closer look as a result of his performance in Iowa, any bump seems to be taking away from Huntsman and Gingrich, not Romney. The general thought is that Senator Santorum, while a solid social conservative, would not survive a general election, and is therefore unlikely to be the GOP candidate. It was also great to hear reports that the latest polling numbers show Mitt with nearly a 2:1 lead over the next closest candidate here, with leads nationally and in South Carolina and Florida as well.

A Visit to Mitt’s NH HQ

Soon after a trip to Mickey D’s for some sustenance, our group, which included Jim and Rod Davies (Ann Romney’s brothers) and Rod’s wife, Cindy, took a quick trip to visit Romney New Hampshire headquarters and get ready to dig in and work over the next few days. Here’s the group, ready to hit the ground running. I’m the goofy one on the right, and yes, that’s a vintage 2008 Romney beanie.

As for the staff and volunteers, I was very pleased to see that things were still buzzing for a Friday night. Phone calls were being made and people were getting things done. That’s one thing I love about the Romney campaigns: Mitt runs a tight ship!

I met Jill, who was clearly in charge and doing a great job. In her office she’s surrounded by calendars of key events, including one at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning where Governor Romney will be appearing with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. And of course there are two (2!) debates in a twelve hour period Saturday evening and Sunday morning, where Mitt is likely to be the primary target of newly negative Newt, big hopes Huntsman and slightly surging Santorum. There are appearances from Governors Chris Christie and Tim Pawlenty as well over the weekend. And then the big days: Monday’s last full day of politicking and Tuesday’s primary! Here’s Jill (on the right) with Stephanie, a member of her team.

A Quick Drive Through Manchester

As we went back to our hotel, we took a quick detour to look around Manchester. We saw that CBS had set up a serious broadcast booth outside the Radisson. That’s when I felt things were really getting serious!

Yes, this is the big time. If Mitt wins, it’ll be the first time in a long time a GOP challenger will have won both Iowa and New Hampshire. And with polls also encouraging in South Carolina and Florida, my (not so) secret hope is that voters in New Hampshire will select Mitt as their nominee and can give him the momentum to win South Carolina and Florida, permitting him to move more quickly to what everyone in the GOP really wants: defeating President Obama.

Occupy…Manchester?

One interesting note: the Occupy folks had set up camp across the street from the Manchester Radisson. They were very polite (offering us corn chips–see the bag in the photo) and said their numbers had reached a couple hundred during the day. But it seems most had gone home to spend the cold night indoors.

Stay Tuned!

I feel very lucky to be here and hope to be able to share with you what its like on the ground these last few days before the New Hampshire primary. For die hard Romney fans, there’s no place they’d rather be. And I’ve got to say, it is pretty cool. The people here know Governor Romney can win. There’s a lot to do between now and Tuesday, but if he does win, as expected, it’ll be because Mitt and his great New Hampshire team “Earned it!”

We are pleased to announce that MittRomneyCentral.com is joining efforts with UltiMitt.org and GotMitt.com to launch a new campaign to promote Mitt Romney online!

Ultimitt.org is a grassroots forum that many may remember as a popular pro-Romney hangout during the 2008 campaign. Today each of its 1,500+ members will receive an email calling them back into active duty.

GotMitt.com is a website that provides news links in a style similar to the Drudge Report.

The three sites (UltiMitt, GotMitt, and Mitt Romney Central) will be linked together by easily navigable tabs which you now see on the top right of our page: News, Forum, Blog.

Each of these sites would exist and function perfectly well on their own, but there is a specific purpose for us combining together, and that is simply to promote…

The “One a Day for Mitt” Campaign

This simple campaign is designed to take supporters, who are willing to dedicate a few minutes a day, to engage in meaningful and effective activism. Campaigns are much like people pushing a big boulder. If people push at this boulder one person at a time, or if multiple people push in different directions the boulder doesn’t move. If the people coordinate, push all together, in the same direction, they will find that their combined efforts will have much greater impact. Pretty soon this rolling boulder will attract the attention of onlookers willing to join in the big thing that’s going on, wanting to do their part.

Once each day at the UltiMitt forum there will be posted a simple task that people can complete, return and confirm their efforts. Tasks will include sharing items such as sharing things on Facebook, tweeting, writing emails, creating a MyMitt account, making calls from home, and inviting others to join the effort.

The role of this site (MRC) will be to continue helping people be informed of the on-goings in the campaign, but also to utilize our large readership and 30,000+ Facebook fans to direct supporters to UltiMitt.org and join in on the “One a Day for Mitt” campaign.

It has been my observation that only a small percentage (about 1%) of people who keep up on the news of political campaigns actually put forth the effort to support that campaign in whichever way they can, thinking their contribution will be insignificant. I’m hoping that you will be one of the few who will realize that if you push, other people will too. Please push with us to make this a successful campaign.

Go now to UltiMitt.org. The registration is very simple. The forum set-up is simple. Get started on your first One a Day for Mitt task by inviting your friends to join today.

~Nate Gunderson

Two years ago today we launched this site with hopes of it gaining traction and being a source of news and info – all with one purpose in mind: help Governor Romney become President of the United States. Thanks to dedicated writers, and a successful promotional push, and a little SEO magic, we’re very pleased today with the results and that it is indeed a valuable resource for Romney supporters and newcomers all over the country. We have received no outside funds to run or manage this site, and all our contributors are unpaid and uncompensated in any way. True devotion to the cause and very supportive readers are what has spurred us along.

It’s not often (enough) that I get to do this, but I want thank Jayde for her unwearyingness in keeping fresh content on the front page day in and day out. Due credit should also be given to Ross and Luke who have done much behind the scenes to promote and maintain the site, and also to Dave P. for his efforts in developing many of our static pages. And to our rag-tag group of writers past and present we greatly appreciate your efforts: David K., Thomas Alan, Vox Patriota, Bosman, Jared A., and Jeff Fuller.

Just for fun I looked-up on the internet archive what our site looked like 2 years ago. Below is a small screen-grab of the oldest version I could find, October 5th 2009, about one month after we began this site. Click here to see the whole page as it was nearly 2 years ago.

Romney’s team promised that his campaign would kick it up a few notches after Labor Day, and they have kept good on their promise. Things are going to get a lot busier here over the next few months leading into the primary, and will get even crazier when he wins it. Two years down, 14 months to go.

A big thanks to all of you!

~Nate G.

Governor Romney’s Statement on Memorial Day:

As we observe Memorial Day, we owe thanks to the many Americans who have fought and died to defend our country. Their courage, their willingness to lay down their lives, reminds us that the United States is not a country like any other. Rather, we are an exceptional nation. Those patriots who are on the battlefields today or have gone to battlefields in the past, some never to return, have left us a stronger country, a great nation that, whatever its divisions, shines as a beacon of liberty before the peoples of the world. Memorial Day is a solemn day, but it is also a holiday of barbecues and family gatherings and vacations. Today, let us give remembrance and respect to those who have sacrificed everything to keep us safe.

Memorial Day reflections…

Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more.
Days of danger, nights of waking.
~ Sir Walter Scott

This weekend we remember our fallen, those in the United States military who, throughout our history, bravely and freely sacrificed their tomorrows for our today…

Memorial Day 2011 ~ by Oliver North

Quantico National Cemetery – When I was a kid, we called May 30th “Decoration Day.” It was an occasion for Boy Scouts to be up before dawn and report, in uniform, to the American Legion hall. There, Cub

Boy Scouts laden with flags & flowers to decorate graves of veterans on Memorial Day. 1928

Scouts would be paired with older Boy Scouts, organized into detachments of a dozen or so and issued bags of small American flags. Each group then “deployed” in station wagons and pickup trucks to local cemeteries and churchyards, where we placed Old Glory on every veteran’s grave. Later in the morning, there was a parade down Main Street, led by a color guard, the high-school band and ranks of veterans from World War I, World War II and the war of the moment, Korea. The Veterans of Foreign Wars sold red poppies to raise funds for the disabled. Politicians made speeches, and citizens prayed in public. It was a solemn annual event that taught us reverence for those who served and sacrificed for our country. It’s no longer so.

Begun as a local observance in the aftermath of the Civil War, the first national commemoration took place on May 30, 1868, at the direction of General John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Though his General Order No. 11 specified “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion” – meaning only Union soldiers – those who tended the burial sites at Arlington, VA, Gettysburg, PA and Vicksburg, MS, decided on their own to decorate the biers of both Union and Confederate war dead.

For five decades, the holiday remained essentially unchanged. But in 1919, as the bodies of young Americans were being returned to the U.S. from the battlefields of World War I, May 30th became a truly national event. It persisted as such until 1971, during Vietnam – the war America wanted to forget – when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by Congress went into effect and turned Memorial Day into a “three-day weekend.” Since then, it’s become an occasion for appliance, mattress and auto sales, picnics, barbecues and auto races. Thankfully, there are some places besides Arlington National Cemetery where Memorial Day still is observed as a time to honor America’s war dead.[...]

Continue reading here.

This video, made by a Canadian, represents the gratitude we feel for all American allies, who share the battle and give their lives for freedom…

May Angels Lead You In


Words can’t convey how thankful we are for those in our military who pay the ultimate price for our freedom! They are liberty’s heroes. A tribute… (Misspelling in title and last year’s date doesn’t alter the tribute.)


Better than honor and glory, and history’s iron pen,
Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men.
~Richard Watson Gilder

May you have a meaningful Memorial Day!
from all of us at MRC


► Jayde Wyatt

Governor Romney’s Free and Strong America has just released some exciting behind-the-scenes footage of Governor Romney’s speech at CPAC. What makes it even more exciting is that MRC’s own DaveP can be heard speaking @ 1:21 and then a few seconds later you see him! Lo, and behold… MRC’s Rebel Ross is standing right next to him! And, there is a quick glimpse of Aaron Gunderson (the guy wearing glasses) behind Ross.

Believe In America – Behind the scenes at CPAC 2011

“I believe that America is an exceptional nation of freedom and opportunity and hope. Believe in America. Our freedom depends on it.” ~Mitt Romney

Inspiring speech, Gov Romney! (And, great job, MRC guys!)

UPDATE: Upon closer inspection, Orit Sklar, prominent Jewish activist from Georgia and Romney supporter, can be seen listening intently to the Governor @ :45. Read more about Ms. Sklar here. During the last presidential election, Ms. Sklar blogged for Mitt. Check out her Facebook page and/or follow her on twitter.

Our good friend, Jeff McGee from NY for Mitt, can be seen shaking Romney’s hand @ :53. Happy to catch a glimpse of Jeff; his tweets from CPAC, along with those of of Team MRC, were very helpful!

UPDATE 2: CPAC Facebook has posted six photos of Governor Romney. While checking them out, be sure to click on each one and leave a supportive comment (photos at top of page). Click here.

UPDATE 3: Thanks to Romney supporter dcMike for sharing a few photos he took of Mitt and Ann at CPAC. Here’s evidence he was up close and personal!

► Jayde Wyatt

The straw poll results have been announced, Allen West has finished speaking, most of the bloggers are off to the bars… CPAC 2011 is over and winding down.

Governor Mitt Romney gave a remarkable speech (with a special intro by Ann Romney), and performed very well in the straw poll.

We’ve had an extraordinary time here at the convention. We met a lot Romney fans, got acquainted with a number of our readers, had great discussions with all sorts of conservatives, and did a number of interviews with various media and blogs. We’ve also made some good connections that will help us in promoting our site, as well as networked with other pro-Romneyites that will help us in promoting Romney.

It doesn’t hurt that we probably sold a few of our shirts along the way (since most of us were sporting them through the halls.)

We want to give a big thanks to those who support us by reading our content, sharing links on Facebook and Twitter, and leaving comments on our posts. But the biggest thanks of this evening goes to those who donated to help us get here because our trip would not have happened otherwise. We still have some costs to make up and would still appreciate any purchases from our store to assist in bearing the financial burdens of the site.

Also (before I forget), thanks to Ross, David, Luke, Aaron, Jeff, and the many others who made the trip here to support Romney in the straw poll and listen to the great speakers of the conference. It is fun and enjoyable, but still a sacrifice of funds and time away from family and work.

This is going to be a fun and interesting year in politics as the GOP primary shifts into gear – starting in 3..2..1…

MRC’s own Rebel Ross shot a little video footage of the surprise post-speech party for Governor Romney:

“Romney! Romney! Romney!”

UPDATE by Jayde – CPAC 2011 Official Video “Taking America Back” Day TWO (2/11/11 – the day Mitt spoke):

Additional links:
CPAC 2011 Official Video “Taking America Back” Day ONE

The importance of CPAC

~Nate G.

Hello stalwart Mitt fans! I am making an official request for financial help in order to send members of our hardworking team to CPAC this year. Since we are an independent site and have no financial backers we are left to our own means in order to make this trip. We have two team members Ross and Dave P. who are already attending at their own expense. There are 4 of us who’d like attend but our respective personal finances would not allow for that. Collectively we have put in literally thousands of hours to produce this website, and no team member receives compensation for doing so. Time is something we have, and have sacrificed. Money is something we have not. Will you help us?

If we are able to attend we will do our best to promote Romney for President, promote this site, and provide frequent and interesting updates on CPAC. We will bring our video and still cameras, laptops and our iphones, everything at our disposal to bring you live updates on this site and via Twitter.

It will cost us about $500 per person to attend. That cost includes airfare, hotel, and cost of registration. If there were a little extra we’d also like to throw a little lunch reception to meet with any of our readers who may be attending also. (I highly recommend attending if you are able. I attended last year and had an absolute blast.)

Depending on how much we raise, this is what we will do with the money:

$500 – We send Aaron the stalwart.
$1000 – We send Luke our SEO expert and page manager (He’s got the nice camera, too.)
$1500 – We send dedicated contributor Jared A.
$2012 – I (Nate G.) will attend myself. I have attended before and want to make sure the younger chaps get an opportunity first.
$2300 – We will rent a meeting room and hold a small lunch meet-up where we can train team members and any readers who want to attend.

Anything more than that we will use to bring promotional items such as fliers, button, bumper sticker, and perhaps some of our t-shirts.

Can you help by contributing $100 or more? Even $5 will help. But my favorite is $20.12, just to send a message. Just click the button to donate.

We will run this drive through the day and keep you posted on our progress. Thanks!

~Nate Gunderson

Update: Wahooo! We just cleared $500 – Aaron is packing his bags as we speak! Now we just need another $500 to send Luke… Thank you so much!