Free Republic

I have observed that the polls and the news readers have taken to reminding us that Sarah Palin's nomination spells certain defeat for the GOP in 2012. Let's examine the question of Sarah Palin's prowess as a candidate, measured against the current field: It has been noted that former Senator Rick Santorum won his Senate seat in a big GOP year (1994) and lost it big in a Democrat year (2006), sweeping in with one tide and out with another. This is evidence of weakness as a candidate. Let's examine the rest of this field, using 2006 as the barometer....

Just caught Beck on the car radio. A quick summary. After Huckabee emailed Beck about Beck calling him a "progressive" on air, Huckabee also followed it up with a piece on his site ridiculing Beck and his "bugga bear" conspiracy theories. Beck played it on the air this morning. After playing Huckabee's comments, Beck detailed how Huckabee (a Christian and someone who he has met, interviewed and knows many people who are friends of Mike Huckabee -- and that his comments are in response to Huckabee's big government politics) isn't a conservative and is someone who raised taxes when he...

1. She just launched a new website yesterday that could significantly boost her grassroots outreach and fundraising. On the site, supporters can ask Palin to appear at events, donate money to her political action committee and follow her latest musings on Facebook and Twitter 2. Palin has said repeatedly that she’d only get into the race if there was no other viable candidate. “I would consider it if there is no one else running who represents the common sense principles our country needs to secure our children and grandchildren’s futures,” she told me last November. Now, let’s look at the...

(AP) Democrat Barack Obama on Friday blamed high gasoline prices on Washington and a political establishment that he says hasn't stood up to oil companies, his two rivals for the presidency included. "The candidates with the Washington experience - my opponents - are good people. They mean well, but they've been in Washington for a long time and even with all that experience they talk about, nothing has happened," Obama said in remarks delivered at a gas station.

<p>Wandering round this great republic predicting the apocalypse, I’m often asked by audience members why it is I’m being quite so overwrought if not an hysterical old queen about the whole business. After all, President Obama’s now-forgotten “Deficit Commission” produced a report melodramatically emblazoned “The Moment of Truth” and proposing such convulsive course corrections as raising the age of Social Security eligibility to 69.</p>

Having just plodded through former Senator and currently failed politicician John Sununu's turgid little hit piece in the Boston Globe, I am struck by the irony of his premise. In his article, he lumps Sarah Palin and Donald Trump together as candidates and dismisses them as "two media stars" with an overweening ambition to BE President (as opposed to wanting to DO things as President): "Both Trump and Palin also seem captivated by the idea of BEING president. They obviously like the idea of running for president, and spend a great deal of time talking about what they would do...

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in LOVE. Eph 4:2 Ah, Rio and Carnival is so nice this time of year to visit as Dictator of a Country. While you continue punish your Country with illegal bans and regulations you enjoy the joys and festivities of Brazil with your family. Then of course since you have imposed unconstitutional moratorium on drilling for oil and your subjects are struggling to fill their tanks and pay their mortgages you make sure Rio’s gummit owned Petrobras will have plenty of money to drill in the way you forbid...

If I was younger and still serving I would be honored to have her as my commander in chief. You can keep the phony tough guy men that get trotted out as candidates. I saw REAL leadership up close and I know what it looks like. Sarah Palin has “IT.”

In a guest column, John Ziegler, radio host, Palin confidante, and the filmmaker behind Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted, offers his unique perspective on Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity, and its specific implications towards a potential presidential run in 2012. The views expressed in this guest column are those of John Ziegler alone. ******* As dangerous, counterproductive, and pointless as it can be to try and predict whether Sarah Palin will run for president in 2012, I found myself changing my mind last night about what she likely will, and should, do regarding the...

Sen. John McCain helped catapult former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the national stage and now he's equating her to former President Ronald Reagan. He made the comparison Sunday when asked if Palin is "divisive." "I think anybody that has the visibility that Sarah has is obviously going to have some divisiveness," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I remember that a guy named Ronald Reagan used to be viewed by some as divisive." The former Republican presidential nominee called Palin "an incredible force in the American political arena" and said she's "keeping her options open."

This is “Dear Leader” stuff. Here is video from Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s goodbye today at the White House as he leaves the job to return to Chicago in order to run for Mayor. Emanuel actually called Obama the “toughest Leader” any country could have, and then added that Obama has led in “the toughest times any President ever faced.” You’re kidding. No, they are not. I guess Abraham Lincoln facing the dissolution of the Union and a long Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans was just chicken-feed compared to what our Dear Leader has...

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t stopped raiding marijuana dispensaries operating in states where sale of the drug is legal for medical purposes. But the DOJ has demonstrated one marked change now that it’s under Democratic control: The department has stopped publicizing medical marijuana raids, both by requesting that more cases be sealed under court order and by refusing to distribute press releases. Late last week, DEA and FBI agents raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in Nevada. In July, DEA agents raided the home of 65-year-old...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Immigration: An Arizona official asks a good question: If California wants to boycott Arizona over the way it enforces federal law, what about the electricity California gets from there? The problem with righteous indignation is that when others call you on it and tell you to put your money where your mouth is, it can cause an embarrassing leak in your hot air balloon. Gary Pierce, a commissioner on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission, has done just that, calling the bluff of the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Pierce wrote Villaraigosa a letter saying in essence that...

Diplomacy: The administration's apology tour continues with a mea culpa to the world's worst human-rights violator for Arizona's enforcement of U.S. immigration law. You'd think Tiananmen Square was in Phoenix. In talks last week with China on the subject of human rights, the U.S. delegation volunteered how sorry we were for Arizona's decision to protect its citizens and its border against illegal immigration — the operative word being "illegal." You would assume the Chinese broached the subject to blunt any criticism of their policies and record. But our delegates beat them to it by groveling on their own initiative in...

Illegal Immigration: Los Angeles' city council votes to boycott Arizona for its enforcement of existing federal law. No word yet on how China's human rights violations will be treated. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The next time the Lakers play Los Suns in Phoenix, traveling fans are advised to bring their own snacks. The L.A. City Council voted 13-1 on Wednesday to economically boycott the state of Arizona for daring to protect its borders against the crime, violence and illegal immigration that recently took the life of an Arizona rancher and has made Phoenix the kidnapping capital of...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

Great virtual video! PATRICK HENRY, first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, gave his famous and fiery speech before the Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775 imploring his fellow Americans to take up arms against the British colonialists that ended in the immortal lines "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death!" [youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W72tx_UW9TM;"] link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W72tx_UW9TM link: http://factreal.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/founding-fathers-and-war-give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death-by-patrick-henry/ more

The United States seems to be under the impression that being the ‘strong horse’ in international affairs harms our standing in the world. We are retreating from the international stage, seemingly happy in the idea of turning both national and international security policy over to a combination of global UN agencies and regional authorities we hope will cooperate with us, and motivated more by good will than hard interests. As members of Congress review the administration’s proposals on counterterrorism, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, and proliferation, this retreat seem to be the ‘elephant in the room’ about which few appear willing...