Free Republic

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — When John McCain and Barack Obama appear on the same stage today, they will vividly demonstrate the reach that has made the Rev. Rick Warren among the most significant evangelists of his generation. He's a megastar who leads the nation's fourth-largest church and reaches thousands of ministers through the Internet and crusades against poverty and AIDS. That globe-trotting work and his successful book — "The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?" — puts him at the vanguard of a movement that inspires young, socially conscious Christians. But his willingness to soft-pedal political issues...

I have been reading for some time about Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate controversy. At first I dismissed it because I thought there was no way the Democratic Party would allow someone who is not qualified to run for the office of President. I now understand that at least half of the state attorney generals in the country will challenge Obama’s residency before certifying his nomination. Lawsuits will be filed to clarify Obama’s birth in the United States. Until today I simply believed that Obama was born in Hawaii. After doing some research I found it is not so clear...

HILLARY Clinton would be the Democrats' White House nominee today if former presidential hopeful John Edwards had come clean earlier about an extra-marital affair, a top aide to Senator Clinton believes. "I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," Howard Wolfson, who was the combative communications director for Senator Clinton's doomed campaign, said on ABCNews.com today. Mr Wolfson also said Senator Clinton's campaign knew about the affair but kept quiet. "Any of the campaigns that would have tried to push that would have been burned by it," he said. Former senator Mr...

Clinton is expected to throw her support behind Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign during an event at noon ET Saturday at the National Building Museum in Washington.

Will keep this short. Networks preparing for Hillary to (finally) quit in speech Tuesday night. Will be from NY, Staffers being told to turn in expenses, resumes being FedExed to Obama and other state/local campaigns. Staffers at one network recalled from lunches to prepare. Campaign staffers being told to go home. One network had long conference call among suits last night, followed by conference call between tech types to set up remotes, back-hauls, break-ins, etc. Union technicians, cameramen, audio, video engineers, etc. told to expect overtime. More as available From Associated Press RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose. Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage - money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president....

Barack Obama yesterday launched his search for a running mate - as Democratic calls for a "marriage" to rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reached new heights. With the party sharply divided after a bruising primary season - and with Clinton having won many key states - a growing number of Democratic officials are now openly talking about an Obama-Clinton ticket that could unite the factions and take back the White House in November. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a Clinton booster, told The Post, "I am one that believes that if it works out that Senator Obama is the nominee, the...

ABC News' Ed O'Keefe Reports: Perhaps there will be a Madame President Clinton after all. No, not Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. How about former first daughter and active campaigner Chelsea Clinton? "If you asked me (if Chelsea would run for office) before Iowa, I would have said, 'No way. She is too allergic to anything we do.' But she is really good at it," former President Bill Clinton tells PEOPLE magazine in their latest issue, hitting newsstands Friday. In the PEOPLE exclusive, Clinton called his daughter's "emergence" the "second best thing" of the campaign, after his wife's "ability to endure...

Sioux Falls, S.D. (AP) -- Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race. McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama. After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern says it's virtually impossible for Clinton . . .

Barack Obama made an impassioned appeal to voters last night to end Hillary Clinton's dreams of another comeback in the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told Democrat voters heading to the polls today in Indiana and North Carolina: "I need help." With less than a month to go before the state-by-state vote ends, the Obama camp is desperate to finish off Mrs Clinton's campaign to become the Democrat's presidential nominee. Barack Obama is desperate to beat Hillary Clinton, so much so that he is counting on support from celebrities including Tom Hanks. Mr Obama, 46, also broke...

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom. [SNIP] Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted. Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of...

LOS ANGELES — I hate pundits who remind you when they were right, and conveniently forget all the times we’re wrong. Half the fun of being a pundit is that it really doesn’t matter; that unlike the situation when you’re running a campaign, our mistakes don’t count for anything but amusement. Even so, when I turned my computer on at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and saw, on my favorite such source, the Primary Day Drudge report, the report that the exits were closer than expected, I couldn’t help but start laughing. My students thought, probably not for the first...

In last week's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton said she would commit the United States to a retaliatory attack against Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it dropped the bomb on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Kuwait. Asked if "it should be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack against the United States," Clinton astonishingly responded that she'd use American nukes not just to defend Israel, our traditional strategic ally, but also other neighboring states such as the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait from an Iranian nuclear attack. Barack Obama's...

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continued to pull away from rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois as the campaigning in Pennsylvania ended and voters prepared to cast ballots Tuesday, the latest Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows. Clinton now leads Obama, 51% to 41%, having gained three points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, pushing her beyond the poll’s margin of error to create a statistically significant lead for the first time in the Pennsylvania daily tracking poll. Meanwhile, 6% remained undecided and another 3% said they preferred someone else in the two-day tracking poll....

RUSH: Do you remember the genesis of MoveOn.org? The whole point of MoveOn.org, it was a Clinton front group. "Move on," meant, "Can't we move on from the impeachment? Can't we move on from all of these scandals? Can't we move on from all of these little Chihuahuas yapping at the heels of the Clintons? Can't we just move on?" With that in mind, in February 2008 in a closed door fundraiser (phone quality here), this is Mrs. Clinton talking about MoveOn.org. HILLARY: We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic...

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com — A tough new video montage shows footage of Clinton from 1992 through 2008 from her first 60 Minutes interview to her lies about sniper fire, NAFTA, and Iraq. At this point, Hillary Clinton has no one left to lie to.

It was one of those typical questions from a reporter gaggle on Capitol Hill: Does Harry Reid think the protracted nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will harm the party? Reid didn't miss a beat. "It makes me bitter," he deadpanned. Reid has such a dry humor that you actually have to pause and look at him to make sure he's not being serious when he's attempting comedy. But his usual grimace in front of reporters quickly turned to a grin as he capitalized on the now infamous "bitter" comment made by Obama at a San Francisco area...

Former President Carter and Al Gore have discussed plans to tell Hillary Rodham Clinton that she must abandon her presidential bid, for the sake of the Democratic Party. "They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence." The newspaper said the message will be delivered — it's just a matter of when. Barack Obama leads Clinton in the race for pledged delegates, and political experts say its nearly impossible for her to catch. But she retains a lead among superdelegates, and...

Former US president Bill Clinton said Friday he has been ordered to hold his tongue by his wife Hillary for reviving an embarrassing story about her trip to Bosnia in 1996 while out campaigning. "Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am," the grinning ex-president said during a campaign stop in Indiana, according to television pictures. A series of gaffes have made Bill Clinton somewhat of a liability in his wife's campaign for the Democratic White House nomination. And he put his foot in it again Thursday by...

A bitter Sir Elton John thinks America's sexism may be sinking his friend Hillary Rodham Clinton. John, a knighted British subject, said that gender discrimination is behind Clinton's problems in the polls as he addressed 5,000 Clinton supporters at Radio City Musical Hall last night in an event that raised $2.5 million for the cash-strapped campaign. "I never cease to be amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country," said John, wearing a spangled black evening coat over a vermilion silk shirt. "I say to hell with them. ... I love you, Hillary, I'll always be there...

Hillary Clinton should hang in there and run a good race. And she has vowed to do so. Clinton has been under unprecedented pressure to bow out of the divisive Democratic primary and to clear the field for her opponent -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Among those who want her to throw in the towel are, of course, Obama’s supporters. But many other Democrats are trying to push her out of the contest on the ground that a contentious race can hurt the party and could help their Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Clinton also has been...

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco. Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will...

Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter has hinted that he might cast his vote for Senator Barack Obama to aid his emergence as the candidate for the Democrats in America’s bid to elect a new President. Carter, who is a Super Delegate from Georgia State, gave this hint at a media interaction after the Carter Center Awards for Guinea Worm Eradication in Abuja yesterday. Carter, who was accompanied by his wife Rosalynn, did not profess a direct support for Obama but rather choose to make a veiled statement. “We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that...

Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry. More party leaders are saying that the increasingly personal crossfire between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns serves only to write the script for Republican ads in the fall and to give John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, a head start in framing his candidacy. While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq...

Are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elton John breaking U.S. laws by allowing the British pop singer, a foreign national, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign by performing a concert on her behalf? That's the question Inside the Beltway put to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday, which does not rule out the possibility. First, some background supplied by the FEC: The goal of the 1966 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was to "minimize foreign intervention" in U.S. elections by establishing a series of limitations on foreign nationals. In 1974, the prohibition was incorporated...

Now that Hillary Clinton has been nailed in an outright fabrication of her role in Bosnia, it is time to remind ourselves of another, even more galling fantasy that Hillary tried to sell the voters. After 9/11, Hillary had a problem. New Yorkers were desperately focused on their own needs for protection and they were saddled with a Senator who was not one of them -- an Arkansasn or was it a Chicagoan? Interviewed on the "Today" show one week after 9/11, she spun an elaborate yarn. The kindest thing we could say was that it was a fantasy. Or...

From Jack Cafferty to even Keith Olbermann, the mainstream media has begrudgingly had to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s recent “scripted” recollection of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia was not just a misstatement, but a bold faced lie. A lie told to bolster her image as an experienced, courage-under-fire, presidential candidate ready to become Commander-in-Chief. The media, as usual, has been slow to jump onboard because they depend on candidates to come on and give interviews. When they think they’re being unduly picked on, they avoid that network. So media outlets are careful to fully check stories before they run them....

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she made a mistake in claiming that she came under hostile fire in Bosnia 12 years ago, as rival Sen. Barack Obama's campaign continued to challenge her credibility. In a recent speech and interviews, the New York senator described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. But video footage of the day showed a peaceful reception in which a young girl greeted the first lady on the tarmac. Clinton told...

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is seeking to play down news that the former first lady gave an incorrect account of landing in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire, and refused to answer additional questions about a flap that could hurt her chances of catching Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the race for the Democratic nomination. “We’ve said all we’re going to say on that,” said Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer on a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters. A video from CBS News had shown that Clinton’s version of having come under sniper fire was not...

U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, whose district includes much of Martin and St. Lucie counties, is hoping he won’t have to attend the Democratic Party national convention in Denver in August. If he does go, that will mean the Democrats still haven’t decided a nominee for the presidential election. And if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the nomination by August, Mahoney says we may see a brokered convention, meaning the nominee could emerge from a negotiated settlement. “If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top...

Hillary Rodham Clinton upped the tempo of her fundraising and her spending last month, only to be eclipsed by rival Barack Obama. At month's end, with debts of nearly $9 million, her money was nearly spent and he was sitting atop $30 million in available cash. Obama's campaign spent at a rate of nearly $1.5 million a day in February, a crucial month that began with the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday and ended with both candidates marching to a showdown March 4 in Texas and Ohio. Clinton, riding her best fundraising period yet, spent about $1 million a day on...

Geraldine Ferraro, a pioneer and trailblazer in American history, has done more to ruin a sterling reputation in the past few days than anybody but Eliot Spitzer. By claiming, I think falsely, that Obama would not be where he is if he were white or a woman, I think she totally overlooks the impact of his charisma, eloquence, demeanor, message, use of the Internet, focus on caucus states, and his refusal to take special interest money as factors in his sudden rise. She betrays a stunning inability to look more than skin deep for reasons for his success. But this...

Stan Lee hosted a fundraising event back in 2000, the "The Hollywood Gala Salute To William Jefferson Clinton And Hillary Rodham Clinton" arranged by Peter Paul, the man behind Stan Lee Media, the internet venture that eventually collapsed into bankruptcy and Paul was jailed after pleading guilty to stock manipulation. Hillary Clinton's campaign team recently resubmitted their report to the FEC, stating that Stan Lee contributed $225,000 in 2000 to her Senate campaign. However in a deposition back in 2005, (handily just uploaded to YouTube here and here), Lee states that he did not make such a financial contribution...

The Clintons are trying to steal the nomination from Barack Obama — and he can't let them. The Clintons' campaign attacks put Obama in a bind. If he doesn't answer in kind, he's toast. But if he does, they'll have forced him off his winning message of hope and change from the bitter politics of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras. If they pull him off his game and onto theirs, they can wrest away the Democratic convention victory that he's earned. The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates. Obama must...

After weeks of intense pressure, and more than a year after announcing her presidential candidacy, Sen. Hillary Clinton has offered little explanation for why she has delayed releasing the tax returns made public by most other Democratic presidential candidates in recent years. "What is the holdup?" said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks the role of money in politics. "She hasn't exactly made it clear as to what process is making it so cumbersome to just release them." Past Democratic presidential candidates have set a precedent for releasing their tax returns before or...

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on Sunday questioned Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.) pitching of herself as the most experienced candidate in the Democratic presidential race, suggesting her years as first lady do not add much to her foreign policy credentials. Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Daschle, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), pointed out that Obama has served in elective office longer than Clinton and suggested her time as first lady does not have much relevance to the office she seeks. “I worked with her; I know what a good first lady she was,” Daschle...

I just had this scary, but not illogical, thought. (Actually I had it in 1996, but dismissed it as pure fantasy.) If Hillary! wins the Presidential Election in November, and then manages to get Re-Elected in 2012 to another 4 year term, Chelsea, who is now 28, will be 36, and could run for the presidency for up to another 8 years of the KKKlintoons in the White House. Don't say, "It'll never happen!" Whith the KKKlintoons, "It could happen!"......NEVER underestimate the KKKLINTOONS...........

Republican crossover voters apparently helped win the Democratic primary in Texas for Hillary Clinton — with one in every 10 Democratic votes came from Republicans. And they could have been heeding the call of top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had been urging Republican listeners to vote for Hillary to prevent the Democrats from unifying around Obama and to keep the two candidates battling each other. “Hillary Clinton is back in the race, thanks in some small part to Republican voters mindlessly following the commands of radio entertainers and crossing party lines to vote for the candidate they view as...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hinted at the possibility of a democratic "dream ticket" with Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking on the Early Show on CBS, Clinton said "that may be where this is headed, but we have to decide who is on the top of the ticket." Clinton said the race between her and Obama remains "incredibly close," with just "smidgens of difference" between them. Clinton's remarks after her campaign won two big states yesterday: Ohio and Texas. She also won Rhode Island. The wins enabled her campaign to break Obama's 12-state winning streak and pick up...

Here at NB, we're not normally in the business of feeling sorry for MSMers like Harry Smith. But I can't help but express some sympathy for the Early Show anchor at the prospect of the feminist, Clintonite wrath that is likely to descend on his head after a comment he made this morning Among the metaphors most likely to drive feminists up the wall is that of the angry woman yielding that symbol of domestic serfdom, the frying pan. But in discussing the prospect of Hillary's anger at Bill for his responsibility for her possibly impending defeat, Smith invoked ....

WACO, Tex. — Playing on anxieties about national security, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has produced a “red phone moment” advertisement that suggests she would be better able to respond to a crisis than Senator Barack Obama. “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” says a narrator as threatening music surges over dark black-and-white images. There’s a world crisis and the White House phone is ringing. “Your vote will decide who answers that call,” the narrator says. “Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military — someone tested and ready to lead in a...

They are in the last throes, if you will. As Vice President Cheney knows, such predictions can be perilous. Still, there was no mistaking a certain flailing, a lashing-out, as two Clinton advisers sat down for a bacon-and-eggs session yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel. The Christian Science Monitor had assembled the ¿minences grises of the Washington press corps -- among them David Broder of The Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and columnist Mark Shields -- for what turned out to be a fascinating tour of an alternate universe. First came Harold Ickes, who gave a presentation...

Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton during their 12-year affair on the auction block, Vegas Confidential learned Monday.

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is displayed through his ability to run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it? For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running. As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his...

<p>With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a "dressed" Barack Obama.</p> <p>The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his five-country tour of Africa.</p>

Congressmen and women who believe that they can ignore the expressed will of their districts’ constituents and vote with impunity for whomever they want for president at the Democratic Convention had better think again. A vote for Clinton by a congressman whose district backed Obama is likely to become the single most dangerous vote the member has ever cast. If Obama loses the nomination, all will be forgotten, if not forgiven. But if he wins and gets elected, as I think he will, don’t expect much mercy from his enraged supporters. Voting one way while one’s district votes the other...