Free Republic

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...

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 ....

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...

Barack Obama's victory in Wisconsin on Tuesday was just the latest sign that Hillary Clinton's desperate, anti-democratic moves to salvage her bid for the Democratic nomination are destroying her last chances to win a fair fight. Loudly and publicly, the Clintons proclaim that superdelegates should feel free to ignore the wishes of the folks back home and jam Hillary's nomination through at the convention. They openly predict that they'll demand the seating of the Michigan and Florida delegations, totally contravening the party's rules. Do they think the voters aren't listening to these authoritarian pronouncements, reminiscent of the days before the...

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination. This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides. What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right? Wrong. Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first...

Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign's communications director, today accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of committing “plagiarism” in a speech in Milwaukee on Saturday night. Wolfson made the explosive charge in an interview with Politico after suggesting as much in a conference call with reporters. On the call, Wolfson said: “Sen. Obama is running on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises and, as we have seen in the last couple of days, he’s breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn’t his own.” "When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different...

MCALLEN, Texas -- With Spanish music blaring, Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigned across South Texas yesterday with a more populist message, as her new campaign manager sought to reshape a campaign that has lost eight straight primaries in a week. Maggie Williams, a confidante of Mrs. Clinton from when she was first lady, has moved to assert her control following the departure last weekend of former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle. Ms. Williams is running a daily conference on what ads to put up and expanding the inner circle with advisers from the old Clinton White House. See more about key...

Even longtime Clinton ally James Carville is acknowledging that Hillary is in trouble, saying that if she loses the March 4 primary in either Texas or Ohio, her campaign is doomed. Speaking at the International Builders Show in Florida on Wednesday, Carville — a top adviser to Bill Clinton in the 1990s — declared: “She’s behind. Make no mistake. If she loses either Texas or Ohio, this thing is done.” After his recent resounding wins in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Barack Obama holds a narrow lead over Clinton in total delegates, 1,272 to 1,231, although Hillary leads in superdelegates,...

What is it with these New Yorkers running for president? First, Rudy Giuliani pins his entire presidential bid on a late-voting, big-state strategy and flames out in Florida before the first flicker of fire. Now, Hillary Rodham Clinton might as well be stealing pages from Giuliani's laughingstock playbook - and she looks headed for the same demise.

Plouffe: She can't catch us As we wrote last night, Obama has begun to make his own inevitablity case, and David Plouffe made it explicit on a conference call this morning, telling reporters that it's now "next to impossible" for Clinton to surpass what he says is a 136-person lead among pledged delegates. "The only way she could do it is by winning most of the rest of the contests by 25 to 30 points," he said. "Even the most creative math really does not get her, ever, back to even in terms of pledged delegates." "This is not about...

I believe that Barack Obama will defeat Hillary and win the Democratic nomination. I think that this weekend's victories in states as diverse as Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maine illustrates his national appeal and demonstrates Hillary's inability to win in states without large immigrant and Latino populations. Hillary's results on Super Tuesday, which amounted to a draw with Obama, will be her high water mark and will represent the closest she will ever come to the party nomination. Right now, CBS has Obama ahead in elected delegates with 1134, while Hillary has only 1131.By the time Virginia, Maryland, DC,...

I’m not a Hillary-hater. She’s been an outstanding senator. She hung tough on Iraq through the dark days of 2005. In this campaign, she has soldiered on bravely even though she has most of the elected Democrats, news media and the educated class rooting against her. But there are certain moments when her dark side emerges and threatens to undo the good she is trying to achieve. Her campaign tactics before the South Carolina primary were one such moment. Another, deeper in her past, involved Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee. Cooper is one of the most thoughtful, cordial...

What does Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama really mean? In addition to seriously boosting Obama’s chances for the Democratic nomination by anointing him as the generational heir to John F. Kennedy, there’s something else that’s just as important for the body politic: Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the voters of South Carolina may have personally tolled the death knell for the Clintons’ reprehensible politics of personal destruction. It’s about time. For more than 30 years, no one has been able to stop Bill and Hillary Clinton from routinely acting on their shared base instinct: to annihilate anyone who gets...

In September 1998, Greg Craig, a lion of the Washington legal community, left a top job at the State Department to go to the White House to help Bill Clinton fight impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. One of his first stops was to an old Democratic friend, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who warned him what he was stepping into: “You’re about three days away from a delegation of senior Democrats coming up there to ask the president to resign.” That anecdote, recounted in Peter Baker’s history of the impeachment saga, came echoing back to mind in recent...

The state of their union? Icy. Rival Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama came within a foot of one another just before President Bush's State of the Union speech Monday night and managed not to acknowledge each other. It was quite a feat, given the packed House floor, the customary bear-hugging and jostling among other members. Then a doorkeeper sat the rivals in the same row, only an aisle and four senators between them. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was not caught in the middle. The Democrat from the iconic political family had taken sides earlier in the day when...

Barack Obama used his victory in South Carolina to change the dialogue with the Clintons in the presidential race. He has taken Hillary’s and Bill’s attempt to use the race issue and replied with a clever move. He has basically called their bluff. And Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama has ratified the Illinois Senator’s strategy and candidacy. So far, to summarize: Move One was when Obama arrived as a new candidate. Move two was Hillary’s comeback that she is more experienced. Move three was when Obama pivoted off her experience message and said he was the voice of change. Move...