Here are 56 things Republicans have had to say about Mitt Romney.  1. “If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong. I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people.“ ~Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, calling for Romney to release more years of tax returns, AP, July 14, 2012  2. “Now Mitt is not a perfect candidate. He has a number of problems. It’s hard for him, for blue collar families like mine to identify with him. It’s hard for economic conservatives to identify with him. He needs to do more to reach out to Latinos…” ~Former Republican NY Governor George Pataki, “endorsing” Romney and then telling the world how weak he is as a candidate, MSNBC, April 2012  3. “They (voters) want to know what’s the truth. They’re not interested in a chameleon.” ~Michele Bachmann, criticizing Mitt Romney’s flip flopping, speech in Florida, December 2011  4. “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again. But I will say, if you look at the exit polling data in Illinois, you’ll see that Mitt Romney is broadly acceptable to most of the factions in the party. You have to do that in order to become the nominee…” ~Romney Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom, describing his boss as a man who can’t make up his mind, CNN, March 21, 2012  5. “There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for President, but they didn’t. I think Mitt Romney would be a fine President, and he’d be way better than the guy who’s there right now.” ~Republican Senator Marco Rubio, wishing there were another candidate to pick from, The Daily Caller, March 2012  6. “He’s not a bold decision maker like Newt Gingrich is. Every time I talk to him, he says ‘well let me think about it.’” ~Romney supporter Sheldon Adelson, describing his new favorite Presidential candidate as a weak man who can’t make decisions, Jewish Journal, March 28, 2012  7. “I do know that all of the Michigan delegation worked very hard as related to the revival of the auto industry. There was really a choice between bankruptcy and liquidation. There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars. There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government. [The auto bailout was] ï¿¼ï¿¼â bipartisan from the get-go. [Without it,] Michigan would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.” ~Republican Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, endorsing Romney and then disagreeing with him about the auto bailout which has been a major Romney attack point, WMUK Radio, February 2012  8. “Mitt Romney and I don’t agree on every issue and certainly housing is one of them. When you look at what is going on here in Southern Nevada, you can’t say you got to let the housing market hit bottom. We have been bouncing along the bottom for years. And the fact is we have to do everything possible to: 1) keep people in their homes and 2) get people who are out of their homes back into their homes.” ~Republican Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, endorsing Romney, then distancing himself from Romney’s call to let home foreclosures hit the bottom, Las Vegas Sun, February 2012  9. “Santorum connects with some people. Unfortunately, my guy has a hard time doing that.” ~Former AZ Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen, endorsing Romney and then tearing him down, CNN, February 2012.  10. “Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big bold visionary stuff…We’re gonna have problems politically until we get some sort of third party movement or some alternate voice out there that can put forward new ideas.” ~Jon Huntsman, saying that we need a third party not long after endorsing Romney. Also implying that Romney is not bold, nor a visionary leader, “Morning Joe,” MSNBC, February 2012  11. “He may not be Mr. Personality, uh, you know, this is a guy who gives a fireside chat and the fire goes out.” ~Former GOP Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, endorsing Romney and then announcing how bland and boring Mitt is, News Channel 8 interview, March 2012  12. “Self-deport? What the heck does that mean? I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign. But now there’s an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why. I absolutely advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Republicans want to be tough and say, ‘Illegals, you’re gone.’ But the answer is a lot more complex than that.” ~New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, slamming Romney’s stance on immigration, Newsweek, May 2012  13. “Pick any other Republican in the country. He is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.” ~Rick Santorum, calling Mitt Romney the worse Republican anyone can possibly pick to be the nominee, Racine, Wisconsin, March 2012  14. “He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It’s crazy. You’ve got to release six, eight, ten years back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two. He has to give a big speech in defense of capitalism, and that will elevate, I think, this race above this tactical back and forth, which I do think he’s on the margin of losing.” ~Bill Kristol, criticizing Romney’s refusal to release tax returns on Fox News, July 15, 2012  15. “He glosses over and doesn’t even tell the truth. … Here is a guy who is the ultimate flip-flopper running for president, and he’s attacking me for not being principled? That doesn’t wash.” ~Rick Santorum, campaign event in Tennessee, February 2012  16. “Mitt Romney’s losing at this point in a big way. If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why — given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again — that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.” ~George Will, criticizing Romney for not releasing more tax returns, ABC, July 15, 2012 ï¿¼ ï¿¼ï¿¼  17. “One of Governor Romney’s aides today on television said that Governor Romney, after he wins the primaries, will be like an [Etch A Sketch] — you take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone, and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election.” ~Rick Santorum, Harvey, Louisiana, March 2012  18. “I do not yet know if I will find a Romney presidency more acceptable on foreign policy. But I do know that I must oppose the most recent statements made by Mitt Romney in which he says he, as president, could take us to war unilaterally with Iran, without any approval from Congress.” ~Rand Paul, National Review, June 2012  19. “We can’t nominate such a weak candidate. I’d love to be able to get one-on-one with Gov. Romney and expose the record that would be the weakest record we could possibly put up against Barack Obama.” ~Rick Santorum, ABC, March 2012  20. “Gov. Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and people are wanting to know, is there proof of that claim? And was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens?” ~Sarah Palin, Hannity, January 2012  21. “I heard Governor Romney here called me an economic lightweight because I wasn’t a Wall Street financier like he was. Do you really believe this country wants to elect a Wall Street financier as the president of the United States? Do you think that’s the experience that we need? Someone who’s going to take and look after as he did his friends on Wall Street and bail them out at the expense of Main Street America.” ~Rick Santorum, Rockford, Illinois, March 2012  22. “I don’t know who all of his advisers are, but I’ve seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought.” ~Colin Powell, MSNBC, May 2012  23. “Running a business is not the same as being president of the United States.” ~Rick Santorum, CNN, March 2012  24. “If you’re not sure about whether to support Mitt Romney, whether you’re liberal, or whether you’re very conservative, you ought to be excited, because he’s been on your side at one time or another. So I’m not completely misunderstood. I’m not as excited as I am desperate.” ~Louie Gohmert, Republican conference, April 2012  25. “Governor Romney supported the bailout of Wall Street and decided not to support the bailout of Detroit.” ~Rick Santorum, Detroit, Michigan, February 2012  26. “At some point he has to show that he has a vision of a better way. He can’t just say ‘The future is bleak, follow me.’ Because no one will.” ~Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, according to Politico  27. “This is the free enterprise system. The only place in the world that I can recall where companies never failed was the old Soviet Union. This is what investors do in the free enterprise and capitalism system. And, yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel. But the problem with this administration is that small businesses have been the ones that have suffered the most, the kind that need investors, the kind that don’t need the hundreds of pages, the thousands of pages of regulations that continue to plague them and have them continue to hold back on hiring and investment.” ~John McCain, calling Romney’s tenure at Bain ‘cruel,’ Fox News, May 2012  28. “He changed his position on virtually everything. I’m a moderate Republican, that’s what I am, so I’d be inclined to support someone like Mitt Romney. But all those changes give me pause.” ~Rudy Giuliani, February 2012  29. “If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership.” ~American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer during his radio program, May 2012  30. “I’ve never seen a guy change his position so many times, so fast, on a dime.” ~Rudy Giuliani, MSNBC, December 2011  31. “We’re not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs while it forecloses on Florida and is himself a stockholder in Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together to understand what this is all about.” ~Newt Gingrich, Mt. Dora, Florida. January 26, 2012  32. “Don’t just talk about Hispanics and say immediately we must have controlled borders. It’s kind of insulting when you think about it. Change the tone would be the first thing. Second, on immigration, I think we need to have a broader approach.” ~Jeb Bush, criticizing Romney’s stance on immigration and his attitude toward Hispanics, Q&A session, June 2012  33. “[Mitt Romney is a] Massachusetts moderate who, in fact, is pretty good at managing the decay.” He’s “given no evidence in his years in Massachusetts of any ability to change the culture or change the political structure.” ~Newt Gingrich, Des Moines, Iowa, January 4, 2012  34. “You can talk about the other back and forth, and flip-flopping and the other things. … If you’ve wrapped yourself up in too many pledges, that diminishes your ability to do what needs to be done in the final stretch to some extent.” ~Jon Huntsman, MSNBC, April 2012  35. “You can’t be a perfectly lubricated weather vane on the important issues of the day, whether it’s Libya, whether it’s the debt ceiling, whether it’s the discussion around the Kasich bill in Ohio, where Gov. Romney has been missing in action in terms of showing any kind of leadership.” ~Jon Huntsman, CNN, October 2011  36. “Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in ’94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn’t have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what you do. You were running for president while you were governor.” ~Newt Gingrich, NBC News/ Facebook debate, January 8, 2012  37. “I would just have a different policy than what he has espoused… We need to recognize we are not going to deport 12 million people, and … we shouldn’t.” ~Haley Barbour, criticizing Romney’s ‘self-deportation’ immigration stance, Christian Science Monitor breakfast, June 2012  38. “Now you have to ask a question – is that really, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that in fact somehow a little bit of a flawed system? And so I do draw distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and then leaving a factory that should be there.” ~Newt Gingrich, Manchester, NH, January 9, 2012  39. “Maybe Governor Romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he’s made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.” ~Newt Gingrich, CNN debate, January 26, 2012  40. “Clearly while the president is overseas, he’s at a conference and while the president is overseas I think it’s appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country.” ~John Boehner, in response to a question by NBC News on whether Mitt Romney’s criticism of President Obama is inappropriate since Obama was in Russia at the time, March 2012  41. “Now, for Romney to believe that somebody’s grandmother is going to be so cut off she is going to self deport… He certainly shows no concern for the humanity of people who are already here… I think you have to live in worlds of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic $20 million a year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality.” ~Newt Gingrich, Univision, January 25, 2012  42. “This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC – it’s baloney. He’s not telling the American people the truth… I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don’t think he’s being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won’t level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine.” ~Newt Gingrich, CBS’ “The Early Show,” January 3, 2012  43. “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” ~Newt Gingrich, January 8, 2012  44. “Now I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I’m sure he was worried that he’d run out of pink slips. There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business and I happen to think that’s indefensible. If you’re a victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it.” ~Rick Perry, South Carolina, January 9, 2012  45. ” I think it’s that program, just updated.” ~RNC spokesman Alexandra Franceschi, admitting that Romney’s economic plan is the Bush plan on steroids, The Fernando Espuelas Show, April 2012  46. “There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he’s going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any. That’s not what we’re looking for in a president of the United States. We’re looking for someone that knows how to build jobs, create jobs. And that’s what I’ve done in the state of Texas. So there’s no use trying to paper this over. That is a problem for Mitt, and he’s going to have to face it.” ~Rick Perry, Hannity, January 2012  47. “I think that it has to be a very humane approach to this issue, and we have to come up with solutions to it. But we also have to do something about the drugs that are coming across our southern border that are killing our kids… I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution that that, and we all know that.” ~John McCain, slamming Romney’s ‘self deportation’ immigration plan as an inhumane idea, Univision, February 2012  48. “I know the difference between venture capital[ism] and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism is a good thing, comes in, gives that gap funding to help these companies get off and get started creating jobs, and work. But Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were involved with what I call vulture capitalism. And they walked into Gaffney and took over that photo album company for no other reason than to basically pick the bones clean. And those people lost their jobs.” ~Rick Perry, referring to a local photo-album manufacturer in Gaffney where 150 jobs were cut when Bain assumed control, January 10, 2012  49. “I believe most Americans want their next President to remind them of the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off.” ~Mike Huckabee, describing Mitt Romney in a 2008 campaign ad.  50. “There is no one who’s gonna be sitting on that stage who has the record of job creation I have. There’s one in particular who’s created jobs all around the world. While he was the governor of Massachusetts he didn’t create many jobs.” ~Rick Perry, attacking Romney’s record of outsourcing and job creation, September 2011  51. “Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate… Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis…” ~George Will, blasting Romney’s flip flopping, Washington Post, October 2011  52. “He spent more time on the road to Damascus than a Syrian camel driver. And we thought nobody could fill John Kerry’s flip-flops! … [Romney's record was] “anything but conservative until he changed all the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for President.” ~Mike Huckabee, attacking Romney in his book for flip flopping, Do The Right Thing, 2008  53. “Bless his heart, I have respect for Mitt Romney, but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. He waited until it was a done deal that we would increase the debt ceiling and more money would be spent, more money would be borrowed and spent on bigger government, and then he came out and made a statement that he didn’t like the deal after all. You can’t defer an issue and assume that the problem is then going to be avoided.” ~Sarah Palin, ripping Romney for avoiding taking a position on the debt ceiling debate until after Congress voted to raise it, Hannity, August 2011  54. “I don’t think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO (leveraged buyout) business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits. All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size.” ~Former Reagan OMB Director David Stockman, on Romney’s job creation experience, Fox News, May 2012  55. “The fact is, there are a couple of years he may not have paid any taxes. Maybe he’s concerned about that. But if it’s going to come out, he needs to get it out now so he has a couple of months to explain it.” ~Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, “Morning Joe,” MSNBC, July 16, 2012  56. “All we have to do is replace Obama. We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”
WINDHAM, N.H. – Speaking in a hot, crowded gymnasium here, President Barack Obama kicked off a day of campaigning in this key battleground state where he is running neck-and-neck with his challenger, Mitt Romney.