Free Republic

MANCHESTER – Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney yesterday agreed to participate in the WMUR/ABC/Facebook presidential debates just three days before the primary Jan. 8. They join fellow Republicans John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson in officially agreeing to the debates scheduled for Jan. 5 at St. Anselm College. The forums begin at 7 p.m. Bartlett said all the major Democratic and Republican candidates’ campaigns have been involved in discussions about the debates. Democratic presidential candidates who have committed to the debates include Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Joseph Biden...

...now have Cynthia McKinney, running for the Green Party Presidential nomination. Marc Cooper is decidedly unimpressed: Here's some news you might use about Barack Obama. Did you know he was, in reality, a government plant, a sort of Manchurian Candidate activated by Big Brother to confuse black people? That’s the political gospel according to the recently self-proclaimed Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney as she launched her national campaign this week from Houston. When asked by someone in the small audience at Texas Southern University about Obama, McKinney responded: “Look at the Colin Powells, the Condoleezza Rices, the Ward Connerlys......

It has been more than a year since the first group of Democratic hopefuls announced their candidacy for President of the United States. Seventeen debates or forums have been staged, and more than $150 million has been spent on advertising, polling and other campaign expenses. Pundits have pronounced their conventional wisdom, so easily reversed, on who is most "electable," "presidential" or "inevitable." Celebrities and surrogates have rung their appeals, and the deforming machinery of electoral money and math has whirled into place. And yet despite all this, something remarkable, almost magical in its resilience, will take place on January 3....

Today, I present my handy guide to choosing a presidential candidate. I call it the Asteroid Test. Imagine this scenario: A mile-wide asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. Scientists say a collision is imminent and that it will obliterate life on the planet. Now ask yourself this: What would each presidential candidate do? (Disregard my own candidacy, which is strictly a Flip Side phenomenon.) Here's how I see some of our presidential hopefuls reacting when I run through the asteroid exercise: • Joe Biden: He would speak at great length on how to solve the crisis. His plan might not work,...

While doing my DUmmie FUnnies edition today, I found out that Dennis Kucinich was excluded from today's debate in Iowa because he didn't have a COMMERCIAL campaign office space, although he does have one in the home of a supporter. The DUmmies actually made a good point out of the fact that Alan Keyes was included in yesterday's Iowa debate despite the probable fact that he has no campaign office in Iowa in a separate commercial space. I would like somebody out there to confirm this about Alan Keyes. If true, then the Des Moines Register will be exposed as...

Nurse Ratched doesn't like you. Watch out! You are in BIG trouble with with the passionless Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched wants you to raise your hands to answer the question. You will NOT be permitted to reply in any other way. Those are the rules as set down by Nurse Ratched aka Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register. Washburn has made herself the most unpopular debate moderator ever with her Nurse Ratched antics which were on full display last night particularly when she demanded that the candidates must ONLY raise their hands in response to a...

It was December 1978, the darkest period in Cleveland history. Just a year earlier, 31-year-old Dennis Kucinich had been elected mayor. Now the city was in bankruptcy. Six hundred jobs had been slashed, including 400 policemen and firefighters. The neighborhood development corporations, once the backbone of Cleveland's renewal, had been drained of their funding. And City Hall had been overrun with an army of novitiates, whose qualifications began and ended with their loyalty to the mayor. The man charged with averting disaster was the city's 24-year-old finance director, whose only work experience was a nine-month stint at Merrill Lynch. The...

There is, in fact, a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Why, on immigration, the difference can get into real money. The Democratic candidates were sitting around a big table in a radio studio the other day participating in an altogether civil and restrained debate on National Public Radio. There were no rallying supporters in the room to rile partisan passions and agitate competitive energy. The long-form format by which only three topics were discussed, those being Iran, China and immigration, served thoughtfulness over rancor. The moderator asked the hopefuls if they believed they should...

Actor-director Sean Penn issued a nonendorsement endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich on Friday in a speech to nearly 400 San Francisco State University students, urging his audience not to fall into the trap of voting for someone only because they could win. "We've got Iowa coming up; New Hampshire on its ass," said Penn. "Do we sell out for electability?" Penn, who spoke from a low wooden stage in the Creative Arts Building in front of a "Kucinich for President" banner, made it clear from the start that he was not issuing a traditional endorsement, a political tradition...

Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for President, after tipping off news agencies of a major political announcement earlier this week. While his choice of candidate may not suprise many, it should have surprised John Edwards. After all, Penn had already given him twice as many greenback endorsements as Kucinich (via the Political Machine): Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president in San Francisco Friday. Penn made what had been billed as a "major political statement" at San Francisco State University. Andy Juniewicz, National Press Secretary and senior advisor to Kucinich told NBC11 that Penn made the endorsement...

As a lifelong Democrat, I view with amusement their candidates' debate. My choice would be "none of the above." Regardless of the facts, people tend to believe what they want to believe. All the candidates propose what the people want to hear, rather than concrete proposals. The most realistic candidate is Dennis Kucinich, who witnessed UFOs flying. The problem is he looks as if he flew in on one. Of all the presidential candidates, there is one who stands out. He seems to have more intelligence, leadership qualities and would restore the image of our country to the rest of...

If DUmmieland could elect a President, it would no doubt be Dennis Kucinich. He's the wackiest of the current crop of Dems (with the possible exception of Mike "Potted Plant" Gravel), which naturally makes Kookcinich the Favorite Moonbat of the Reality-Based Community. So now when a new poll shows Kookie SOARING in the polls, it brings hope and elation to deflated DUmmie spirits! Get ready to pop those champagne corks, boys, Denny is ON HIS WAY! That's the optimistic outlook (aka wishful thinking) of this THREAD, "DETERMINED, STEADY KUCINICH QUADRUPLES SUPPORT." Uh, just one thing, though. Kookie's meteoric rise...

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Presidential hopeful John Edwards inadvertently made the late night comedy shows this year when his campaign spending reports included two $400 haircuts. Now Mrs. Edwards has joined other candidates helping a Concord hair stylist who wants to turn the controversy into help for a good cause. David Holden owns Hair Biz on Main Street, a couple of doors away from an Edwards campaign office. After the Democratic former senator's haircut made news last spring, Holden challenged presidential hopefuls to come in for $400 haircuts of their own, promising to donate all of the proceeds to autism...

TOM TANCREDO: Illegal immigrants. MITT ROMNEY: It's becoming too cold for flip-flops. MIKE HUCKABEE: Splenda. RON PAUL: The Internet. HILLARY CLINTON: A successful question-planting season. JOHN EDWARDS: No after-school detention for being tardy. FRED THOMPSON: The writers' strike. Maybe now somebody will have time to give him something interesting to say. JOE BIDEN: No time limit on Thanksgiving Day toast. JOHN MCCAIN: Not being tied up this holiday. BARACK OBAMA: The Obama girl. CHRIS DODD: A foxy wife. RUDY GIULIANI: November isn’t Gay Pride Month. DENNIS KUCINICH: Wife’s tongue stud.

If you want to know what the Democratic presidential candidates and the Democratic Party believe, the debates, often derided as intellectually inconsequential, reveal a great deal. The problem is that news media almost never report the most important statements the candidates make. Here then are some of those statements from the most recent debate, followed by a comment on their significance. Joseph Biden on how he'd handle Russia: "Who among us is going to pick up the phone and immediately interface with Putin and tell him to lay off Georgia because [Georgian President] Saakashvili is in real trouble?" Sen. Biden...

Once again, it slaps us hard in the face and then holds up a mirror so that we can look at ourselves; and we do, ignoring, of course, the bruising and welts that are forming from being slapped so hard. Once more, our nation must gaze into its collective soul and not, as President Bush once did, gaze into Russian President Vladimir Putin's soul that, as it turned out, is a really dark and terrifying place. No, our nation must gaze into its soul to see what kind of a people we truly are and if we are as open-minded...

They just can't help themselves. Despite the fact that even many on the Left have acknowledged that Kucinich is Wrecking the Dem 2008 Strategy, they just can't keep themselves from marching like Leftwing Lemmings towards the Impeachment Cliff. The embarrassed House leadership sent the Dennis Kucinich resolution to the House Judiciary Committee rather than have open debate on it on the House floor. At first it was thought that the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, would ease Kookcinich's Dick Cheney impeachment resolution into obscurity but now it appears that might not be the case as you...

It looks like the GOP Lucy has pulled the football away from the Democrat Charlie Brown by SUPPORTING loony left Dennis Kucinich in his bid to advance HR 333, his bid to impeach Dick Cheney. In a completely unexpected move that shocked the House Democrat leadership, the Republicans voted pretty much as a block AGAINST tabling the Kookcinich resolution and it now goes to the House Judiciary Committee where Kookcinich's fellow kook, John Conyers, is itching to hold hearings on impeachment. This is a total embarrassment to the House leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer who just wish...

Rep. Ron Paul, the maverick Texas Republican who is running as an anti-war libertarian in the Republican primary, has come charging out of nowhere to become the leading fundraiser in the brief history of the Internet. Yesterday, his campaign reported a one-day take around $3.8 million, with an average donation of $98. In one respect, Paul deserves his success. He is a far more articulate and coherent critic of administration policy in Iraq than any candidate on the Democratic side, speaking as he does the frank and plain language of the isolationist. “The fundamental question remains,” he said in 2004,...

House Republicans, changing course midway through a vote, tried to force Democrats into a debate on a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney on the grounds he purposely led the country into war against Iraq. The GOP tactics reversed what had been expected to an overwhelming vote to table, or kill, the resolution by longshot Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Midway through the vote, with instructions from the GOP leadership, Republicans one by one changed their votes from yes — to kill the resolution — to no, trying to force the chamber into a debate and an up-or-down vote...