Free Republic

Peter Schiff vs Linda McMahon. Who do you support? "Judging by the barrage of direct mail and TV commercials at least, political newcomer Linda McMahon is waging a serious and deep-pockets campaign for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, where should would ultimately face the increasingly unpopular and ethically challenged Sen. Chris Dodd. "

It’s hard to believe that just 11 short months ago, the Republican Party was all but declared a non-entity for the next 50 years in American politics. Now it seems by all poll indications, the Republicans are back and they may make the 1994 off-year elections look tame compared to what may be in store in 2010. The early scent of a future landslide defeat usually begins with the party’s own starting to withdraw as candidates. Early reports show Reps. Dennis Moore of Kansas, John Tanner and Bart Gordon of Tennessee, Brian Baird of Washington and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii...

Math was never my favovite subject, so let me borrow from someone who has figured out how Democrat mathematics works. Mendy Palumbo explains this in his blog post: “The Real Reason Dems Put Healthcare First.” Mendy sees the Democrats’ top three priorities as socialist healthcare, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and Cap and Trade, and he detects a method in the madness of pushing healthcare through first, against the wishes of a majority of (legal) Americans. Knowing that the cost of their radical healthcare makeover already spells economic death for America, Democrats want to get it shoved down the nation’s throat...

Health reform is shuffling toward its endgame, and even though the bill's popularity resembles George Bush's circa 2007, Democrats seem determined to push the bill through. Browse through certain liberal blogs, or listen to Democratic leadership speeches, and you'll read the same justification again and again: However bad passing this bill might be, politically speaking, not passing it would be much, much worse. I've been skeptical of this line of argument for quite some time. This summer, I showed that Democrats from Republican-leaning districts who supported President Clinton's agenda fared significantly worse in the 1994 midterm election than those who...

WASHINGTON – The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years — to 2050 — because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S. Census Bureau figures released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and the immigration policies imposed after the...

Ron Fusselman, Coffee D'Vine owner, has decided to step away from his candidacy for the District 17 Senate race. He has decides to bow out citing his support for Republican Candidate Jim Banks, a city councilman from Columbia City.

The Labour party is gearing up for an early general election as a new Sunday Times poll reveals a narrowing of the Conservative lead. Party chiefs have ordered staff to be ready to fight an election any time from the new year amid growing Labour optimism that a Conservative victory can be averted.

AUSTIN — Both Kay Bailey Hutchisons showed up to file for governor Monday — Primary Kay and General Election Kay. Like hyperkinetic twins, they tended to talk over each other. Primary Kay is very conservative. She talks about property rights, illegal immigrants and state-mandated vaccinations of teenage girls (a particular bugaboo of the Christian right). General Election Kay promises to expand the party — save it, she says — by appealing to the broad Texas electorate in November.

SARAH PALIN'S CERTAIN PATH TO ELECTION IN 2012 The McCain/Palin team were faced with almost every possible impediment to victory.Number one,and perhaps the key factor,was a media hugely,in fact obsessively in the can for Obama.Further,rather than as a corollary simply ignoring the GOP team the media embarked on a campaign of vilification perhaps unprecedented in recent electoral history-to the level in fact that any semblance of balance was destroyed. Secondly,the Republican team were shouldered with the burden of an extremely unpopular President,so unpopular that mechanisms were found to keep both Bush and Cheney from the nominating convention. Thirdly,and perhaps the...

SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)--Chilean markets will likely open on the uptick Monday morning, following the Sunday presidential election, despite none of the leading candidates winning a clear majority. With 60% of the votes counted Sunday night, conservative opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera was leading, with 44% of the vote, followed by Eduardo Frei, of the governing center-left Concertacion coalition, with 31% of the vote. These two will face each other in a January runoff election. As these numbers are similar to what several polls predicted, markets won't react in a knee-jerk fashion, analysts said. But what investors will be looking at is...

The U.S. Department of Labor Official Employment rate in September 2009 is now 90% (Unofficial rate is 75%). And for those Americans who are still employed, they will find it harder to get that sweet deal on a new car because auto dealers won’t be competing with each other now that Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy made the decision (not the Chrysler bankruptcy judge), to close dealerships without regard to profitability. Deese, age 31, in his first government position, shuffles back and forth from the West Wing to the Treasury Department dismantling the US Auto...

ampaign Manager: We'll Battle Ds, Rs All Across Texas (Houston) - The Jeff Daiell for Governor Campaign has appointed Bill Grisham, CPA, as Campaign Coordinator for Bexar County. Mr. Grisham is an eight-year veteran of the U. S. Navy. In December of 1982, he graduated from Southwest Texas State University with honors. A native Texan, he has been a Certified Public Accountant since 1986.

Two Dem retirements in competitive districts have given GOPers new hopes that a wave of open seats can hand them new opportunities. Now, GOP strategists are putting extra pressure on more than a dozen Dem lawmakers, hoping to convince them to retire rather than face difficult re-elections. An informal list of 17 members the NRCC believes can be convinced to step down, privately called the "Dem Retirement Assault List," makes clear the party needs Dem incumbents to step aside if they have hopes of taking back the majority. The NRCC has taken pains to attack those lawmakers in recent weeks.

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird announced Wednesday he will not seek a seventh term in Congress next year. "Serving our country and representing the people of Southwest Washington in Congress has been the highest honor and greatest responsibility of my life," the Vancouver Democrat said in a statement. "Since the time I first announced I would seek election in November of 1995, I have done my utmost to work hard, tell the truth, listen, and do what was right for our nation. I am proud of the record of achievements for our district and I am incredibly grateful to the voters...

Central Kentucky voters rejected an attempt by Gov. Steve Beshear to erode Republican control of the state Senate Tuesday, choosing the GOP’s Jimmy Higdon over Democrat Jodie Haydon in a special Senate election. The election — one of the most expensive legislative races in state history — marks a setback for Beshear and the horse industry, who had hoped to advance a proposal to allow electronic slot machines at racetracks by narrowing the Republican majority in the Senate to one. [Snip] Though he was outspent, Higdon said it was “great strategy” by the state Republican Party to nationalize the race....

In my piece about Randall Terry’s Tea Party-driven comeback, I broke the news that Terry’s activists were going to mount congressional campaigns in 2010 for the express purpose of putting anti-abortion rights TV ads on the air inside the beltway. Along those same lines, the persistent Obama conspiracy figure Larry Sinclair — a felon who managed to get 1 million YouTube viewers to watch a video about his off-the-wall sex and drugs allegations about the president — has transitioned into a run for Congress in Florida’s 24th district, a swing seat that elected a Democrat in 2008. I found out...

The future of the worldwide Anglican Communion was in jeopardy last night after the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the election of a lesbian bishop in the United States raised “very serious questions”. Dr Rowan Williams added that the choice of Canon Mary Glasspool to be a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles had “important implications”. The election of Canon Glasspool, who has lived with the same female partner since 1988, is the second appointment of an openly homosexual bishop in the US Episcopal Church

In 2006, the Democrats, Moveon.org and George Soros were pissed. Not only had George W. Bush survived his 2000 election, but he won reelection in 2004 handily. The most galling part of the 2004 election for the Dems was the state of Ohio. Ohio's Republican Secretary of State had not only kept out questionable ballots that would have benefitted the Dems, but the Secretary allowed in ballots for Bush that seemed unkosher to the lefties. Bush carried Ohio and got 4 more years. What to do? What to do? The next election cycle, in 2006, saw the Lefties' creation of...

"I believe our country has been touched by God," said Palin, "because when we formed our union, leaders back then dedicated our country to God and said that we would seek His will for our great nation. "I think if we could get back to that humbleness," she added, "with that kind of contrite spirit, I think that we would be able to be provided more of the answers to so many of the great challenges that we’re facing." Gov. Palin noted that it takes Godly counsel, prayer and "a collective humble heart of a nation seeking God’s hand of...

History's most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros. A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field. This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of...

Jim Robinson's Free Republic started a great movement the other day...it's the RINO FREE AMERICA PROJECT...It is now on facebook also. If you are a facebook member, I ask you to join. We need to show Washington that there is a movement going on and RINO's will not be tolerated.

ANDREW APOSTOLOU Slow Clean in Tehran The limits of an Iranian purge 4 December 2009 Half a year after Iran’s disputed presidential election, the Islamic regime is suffering from partial paralysis. Despite thousands of arrests, scores of killings, widely publicized show trials, and the closure of independent-minded newspapers, the regime is seemingly reluctant to launch the kind of full-scale purge that could remove its opponents, who demand a new election and an investigation into the deaths and torture of detainees. The hesitancy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” and his ally, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is understandable. While a purge...

In the 1972 movie, “The Candidate”, Robert Redford plays the part of Bill McKay, a Senate Candidate who wins a crucial election in a huge upset. McKay has never served in public office before. Towards the end of the election, in his first quiet moment, McKay asks his campaign manager, “What do I do now?” On December 1, 2009 a number of Douglas County School Board Members are asking themselves the same thing. After a bruising off-year election in which the Douglas County voters turned their school board topsy-turvy, the December Board Meeting saw the swearing in of four board...

"...Hot, but a very nice breeze. I'm sure you've heard that the Republican party won the vote. Everyone on the island is very happy. On the voting day, many said "they weren't voting for a political party, they were voting for their freedom". Indeed, there is a renewed spirit among the locals. They are hopeful once again. I have to tell you, this country is very fragile. In a matter of four short months, many hotels, shops and restaurants have been forced to close. As a result of this political crisis, tourism all but came to a halt. Times have...

I hope Mike Huckabee meant it when he said recently that he's not sure he wants to make a second run for president. Though he's right up there with Sarah Palin in polls of the prospective Republican field for 2012, his odds of success are suddenly slim to none. You could argue that the former Arkansas governor is a victim of bad luck. You could argue that he's a victim of his own bad judgment. What's inarguable is that Huckabee commuted the prison term of a man killed by police after he allegedly shot and killed four police officers Sunday...

One of the big losers from yesterday’s successful election in Honduras has been Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who demonstrated that under his presidency, Brazil is not ready to play a positive leadership role in the hemisphere. Not only did Lula seem to be complicit in smuggling deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya into the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa—an irresponsible move that risked the possibility of major confrontations and bloodshed in that country—but he stubbornly refuses to recognize yesterday’s election as legitimate. Lula’s grandstanding has nothing to do with a supposed commitment to democracy, of course. After all he...

Honduran opposition candidate Porfirio Lobo is leading in a presidential election that could ease a five-month crisis following the June coup against President Manuel Zelaya, media exit polls said on Sunday. Lobo, a conservative, won more than 55 percent of Sunday's vote and was well ahead of ruling Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos, the HRN radio station said. A TV channel gave Lobo 51 percent. Lobo was seen as more likely than Santos to persuade foreign governments to recognize Sunday's election.

AUSTIN, Texas - Barack Obama has erased George W. Bush's inroads among Hispanics, with these influential voters consistently giving the president exceptionally strong marks and the White House employing an aggressive strategy to keep it that way. Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing minority group. The government projects they will account for 30 percent of the population by 2050, doubling in size from today and boosting their political power. If Democrats build on Obama's gains, Texas and other traditionally Republican states with huge numbers of Hispanics could be within reach in the future. That would mean deep trouble for a GOP...

Eleven months ago, he landed on the shores of the presidency, destroying everything in his path. A gigantic, fire-breathing monster wreaking havoc, consuming private sector industries, crushing institutions which have made America great, and destroying lives. With fear and trembling we dare to utter his name...Obamazilla! Though appearing indestructible and unstoppable, millions of brave patriots arose to challenge the beast, vowing not to sit idly by as America as we know it is terminated. As a patriot, I am totally focused on defeating Obamazilla, America's true nemesis. I will not allow myself to be sidetracked into participating in Tea-Party-movement family...

A powerful political clan allied to the Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is suspected of masterminding an election massacre that left 57 people dead, police said today. Four local commanders, including one provincial police chief, have already been relieved of their duties and confined to camp while being investigated for what the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called a "heinous crime". As the full extent of the carnage emerged, domestic and international pressure is growing on Arroyo to find and punish those responsible. In her first comments on the killings the president, who has declared a state of emergency in Maguindanao...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzpRZnnrjrs An empty suit? A Republican who hopes to prevent Democrat Evan Bayh from winning his third U.S. Senate term in 2010 is running his first commercial. The ad features Marlin Stutzman, a state senator from Howe, standing next to a suit on a hanger. "I don't approve of sending empty suits to Washington," he says, an implication that the moderate Bayh shifts with political winds. Stutzman is emerging as the front-runner among three Republicans who have entered the race. The empty suit commercial is running only on cable channels right now. Political observers think that to seriously challenge Bayh,...

Asian voters switching to Republicans? ... All this evidence strongly suggests that Republicans made gains and Democrats suffered significant losses among Asian, and specifically among Indian-American voters, in Middlesex County. This upscale group, ready enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008, seems to have been repelled by New Jersey’s high taxes and big government under Jon Corzine. There should be some lessons here for Republicans generally—and for Democrats as well.

Even the government-controlled media has had to take note of the wildly inaccurate numbers on the government's recovery.gov web site, and the stunning incompetence of listing tens of millions of dollars of stimulus as being spent in congressional districts that do not exist. Even Democrats are calling it sloppy and unacceptable. I'd suggest that it's worse than that, even. It's a small window into what Obama thinks of you. He holds those who distrust him and his policies in utter contempt and he doesn't feel accountable to those people at all. But possibly his greatest contempt is reserved for those...

Asian voters switching to Republicans? Prowling through the election returns in the governor races two weeks ago, I was surprised to find that Middlesex County, New Jersey, voted for Republican Chris Christie over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine by a 48%-44% margin, almost exactly the same as Christie’s 49%-45% statewide margin. Middlesex County has been a Democratic county for as long as I have been studying election returns (going back to the 1960 election). In close elections it voted 58%-42% for John Kennedy in 1960, 46%-43% for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (when he failed to carry New Jersey), 51%-47% for Jimmy...

Should Doug Hoffman had waited and let all the votes be counted? I’m certainly not a fan of taking election counts to the courts, but maybe Doug Hoffman should have let all of the votes be counted before conceding. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly got Bill Owens (D- N.Y.) down to Washington D.C. and swore him in within a few days so he could break his first campaign promise and vote to include a public option for health care. To be fair, Owens was against the public option early in the campaign, only to quietly reverse his opinion in the...

Newt Gingrich. His name became familiar in 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress following Bill and Hillary Clinton’s disastrous attempt to take over the health care industry. In the year or so that followed, Republicans instituted welfare reform and balanced the budget for the first time since LBJ’s presidency. Clinton, of course, was quick to take credit for the new fiscal conservatism in Washington, and he and the Congress were just as quick to spend the “surplus.” Many of the Republicans who won in 1994, as Newt will readily proclaim to all who will listen, were moderates. Therefore, moderate...

Honduras — Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya insisted late Saturday that he will not accept any deal to restore him to office if it means he must recognize elections later this month. In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, Zelaya also repeated his accusation that Washington reversed its stance on whether the Nov. 29 vote should be considered legitimate if he was not in office. "As the elected president of the Honduran people, I reaffirm my position that starting today, no matter what, I will not accept any agreement on returning to the presidency of the republic to cover...

Democrat's Winning Margin in Upstate New York House Race in DoubtUpdated November 12, 2009 by AP Though Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman conceded and Democrat Bill Owens was sworn into Congress last week, the routine recanvassing of votes shows Owens' lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes, with about 5,800 absentee ballots received so far that have yet to be counted. The special election last week for the 23rd Congressional District seat in New York may not be over after all. Though Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman conceded and Democrat Bill Owens was sworn into Congress last week, the routine recanvassing of votes...

There's something strange going on up in New York's 23rd congressional district, as noted by the TCOT guys. Unless Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman got exactly zero votes in the town of Fenner (Owens got 157, Scozzafava got 248), and at one polling place in the town of Hamilton (Owens got 75, Scozzafava got 79), and at one polling place in the town of Sullivan (Owens got 173, Scozzafava got 251), the initial vote totals look rather hinky.

Election Night Last Tuesday, with 93% of the vote counted Doug Hoffman was down 5,335 votes with and he had barely won his stronghold in conservative Oswego County. Hoffman did the right thing and conceded the special election in the NY 23rd Congressional district. Democrat Bill Owens was seated in Congress (based on the Hoffman concession) even though NY State had yet to certify the election. Among his first acts was to vote for the Obamacare bill with the government option even though he promised that he would vote against any bill with a government option. The Central New York...

What caused the US department of state to change their mind on the Honduran elections after months of saying that they would not recognize the Honduran election process leaving everyone in the world aghast at how the US could not recognize a free election...read on you will enjoy learning how DeMint became a hero and beat Hillary at her own political hardball.

State Rep. Kurt Kelly says he would "seriously consider" challenging U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the controversial Orlando Democrat who has lit a fire under liberals and conservatives alike for his provocative rhetoric on health care reform, the wars in the Middle East and even Fox News.Kelly, an Ocala Republican, said in an interview Wednesday that he's waiting to see how the GOP search for a candidate in Grayson's 8th District shakes out before deciding to enter the race.Kelly admitted he is conflicted about the decision. Victory would mean leaving a job he loves - representing Ocala in the state Legislature.Yet...

Tulsa Businessman Wins Mayoral Election Posted: Nov 10, 2009 7:21 PM * Tulsans have selected Republican Dewey Bartlett as their next mayor. NewsOn6.com TULSA, OK -- Tulsans have selected their next mayor and he is a Tulsa businessman. The results are in and the win goes to Republican Dewey Bartlett. “I am so very pleased, so very happy and very humbled by what the citizens of Tulsa have now given me -- the responsibility of leading this city,” said Dewey Bartlett, (R) mayor-elect. It's Bartlett's second run for mayor and supporters of the local oilman are gushing. He previously served...

John Faulk is running against Sheila Jackson Lee for a second time in a Houston, TX congressional district and launched an interactive campaign. I thought the banner ads on Drudge were pretty funny. See them here.

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is trying to literally take Sen. Barbara Boxer's title from her. Fiorina has launched a new Web site, callmebarbara.com, to attack her opponent and create a future where people call the senator by her first name, rather than using her title and her last name. "Call me Barbara is an effort to ensure that nobody ever has to call Barbara Boxer 'Senator' ever again," the site reads. The site's name is in response to a situation earlier this year when Sen. Boxer asked Brigadier General Michael Walsh to call her "senator" instead of "ma'am" during...

Do you think President Obama will be a one-termer? Yes - he's already showing everyone his true "abilities" ( 84% ) No - not if the media has anything to say about it ( 10% ) Undecided - it's too early to tell, it hasn't even been a year ( 6%

Meredith Shiner and I write today on the GOP's persistent trouble recruiting, retaining and attracting women, particularly in the House. The exception seems to be among hard core conservatives, with Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Virginia Foxx (R-NC), emerging as populist folk heroes on the right. But that doesn't necessarily make them appealing to independent and moderate women, says Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), herself a rising star among a larger class of Democratic women. Asked about Foxx and Bachmann, Wasserman Schultz, blasted away: “This is a party that doesn’t respect women, a party that doesn’t believe women are equal to...

LEWISBORO, NY -- The voters' revolt against high taxes and a deep recession was so intense that even community leaders of New York's sleepiest hamlets got tossed. Nowhere was this more evident than in the tiny town of Lewisboro -- a northern Westchester municipality of 12,000 near the Connecticut border. Mirroring the upheavals in higher-profile races, like the defeat of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, cranky voters in Lewisboro threw out their own Democratic leaders.

Last Tuesday’s election in Virginia has been reported by some as a vote of no confidence in the Obama administration. Maybe it was – but a closer look indicates that seven of the nine incumbents who lost were caught flat footed on gun rights. . . . Philip Van Cleave, President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. feels that "the results show that this election was open season on anti-gun incumbents. The antis have lost at least five reliable anti-gun votes in the already pro-gun House of Delegates, and their perennial bill to restrict private firearm sales at gun...