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Mitt Romney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mitt Romney

 
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.
The son of George W. Romney (the former Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney, Mitt Romney was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and later served as a Mormon missionary in France. He received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, and thereafter earned Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration joint degrees from Harvard's law and business schools. Romney entered the management consulting business, which led to a position at Bain & Company, where he eventually served as CEO and brought the company out of crisis. He was also co-founder and head of the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. The wealth Romney accumulated there would help fund his future political campaigns. Very active in his church, he served as ward bishop and later stake president in his area. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, losing to incumbent Ted Kennedy. Romney organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and helped turn the troubled games into a financial success.
Romney was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, but did not seek reelection in 2006. He presided over a series of spending cuts and increases in fees that eliminated a projected $3 billion deficit. He also signed into law the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, which provided near-universal health insurance access via subsidies and state-level mandates and was the first of its kind in the nation. During the course of his political career, his positions or rhetorical emphasis have shifted more towards American conservatism in several areas.
Romney ran for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, winning several primaries and caucuses, but eventually losing the nomination to John McCain. In the following years he gave speeches and raised campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans. On June 2, 2011, Romney announced that he would seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Political observers and public opinion polls consistently place him among the front-runners in the race.

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Newt Gingrich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Newt Gingrich

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich ( /ˈnuːt ˈɡɪŋɡrɪtʃ/; born Newton Leroy McPherson; June 17, 1943) is an American politician, author, political consultant, and history teacher who served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He represented Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. He is a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Born and raised near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gingrich attended Emory University and received his Ph.D. from Tulane University. In the 1970s he taught history and geography at West Georgia College. During this period he mounted several races for the United States House of Representatives, before winning the election of November 1978. He served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.
A co-author and architect of the "Contract with America", Gingrich was at the forefront of Republican Party success in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him "Man of the Year" for his role in ending 40 years of majority control by the Democratic Party. During his four years as House speaker, the House enacted welfare reform, passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, and in 1998 passed the first balanced budget since 1969. He was disciplined in January 1997 by the House of Representatives for ethics accusations, although a full hearing was avoided. Following a poor Republican showing in the 1998 Congressional election, Gingrich resigned from the House on November 5, 1998, under pressure from his Republican colleagues. He had "been a lightning rod for controversy ever since he steered his party to the majority in 1994 and took control of the speaker's gavel."[3]
Since resigning from the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates by working as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. He has written or co-authored 23 books. In May 2011, he announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination to run for the U.S. presidency.

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Rick Santorum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives (1991-1995) and the U.S. Senate (1995-2007). While a senator, Santorum was chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, making him the third-ranking Senate Republican from 2001 to 2007.
Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative.[2] He is well-known for his socially conservative positions,[3] his role in enacting welfare reform in 1996,[4] and his views on U.S. foreign policy regarding Iran.[5]
Since losing his 2006 re-election bid, Santorum has worked as an attorney, served as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and been has a contributor to Fox News Channel.
Santorum is a candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on June 6, 2011. After running in the bottom tier of candidates for months, Santorum gained significant momentum in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses, scoring a second-place finish with eight votes behind the first-place candidate, Mitt Romney.

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Ron Paul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American physician, author, Republican United States Congressman, and a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination. He has been an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies, recognized for sharply opposing his own party on many issues. Since 1979, he has been elected to ten terms in the House of Representatives, separated by a hiatus of 12 years, during which Paul returned to his medical practice,[citation needed] and he filled a vacated seat for most of 1976.[citation needed] Since 1997, Paul has represented Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes Galveston. Paul serves on the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Financial Services, and on the Joint Economic Committee, as well as chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist during the 1960s and 1970s, delivering more than 4,000 babies, before entering politics in 1976.
Following his 2008 run for the Republican Party presidential nomination, Paul became the initiator of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty and his ideas have been expressed in numerous published articles and books, including Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (2011), End The Fed (2009), The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008), Pillars of Prosperity (2008), A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (2007), and The Case for Gold (1982). His son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010, making the elder Paul the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate.[3] Paul has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement.[4][5] He has become well known for his libertarian ideas on many political issues, often differing from both Republican and Democratic Party stances.
On May 13, 2011, he announced formally that he would campaign again during 2012 for the Republican presidential nomination.[citation needed] On July 12, 2011, Paul announced that he would refrain from seeking another term in Congress in order to concentrate on his presidential bid.[6] He campaigned for President of the United States twice before, first during 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party and again during 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination.

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