Free Republic

In his speech to the Republican National Convention earlier this year, actor Clint Eastwood told the assembled crowd that there are more conservatives and moderates in Hollywood than they might think. Such people “play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it,” Eastwood said. Unfortunately, actress Stacey Dash is finding out the hard way what happens to those celebrities who are willing to think for themselves: they get attacked by the very people who claim to preach “tolerance” and “peace.” (Note: This blog post is “not safe for work” and certainly not for children.) The self-proclaimed...

A content analysis was conducted to examine whether a gender bias existed in national newspaper coverage of the 2008 presidential election. This presidential race proved to be historical in many aspects. Not only was the first African-American man elected to the office, but two female contenders with a viable chance of being elected also ran for the offices of president and vice president. The focus of this study is on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who was a newcomer to the national political scene and who was the second female in history to run for vice president.

Now that Mitt Romney has chosen his Vice Presidential pick and the obligatory praises and hand-wringing has begun, I'd like to focus on one particular aspect of the Ryan pick: He isn't a member of any of the protected/privileged/special minority classes. Which is to say, he's a white male Christian. The horror! Already, whispering across the Plains of Punditry and echoing through the Canyons of Polling comes an unwelcome sound: the chant that this does nothing for women and minorities. Romney didn't appeal to them before picking Ryan, and the two of them don't after. So let me get right...

When Carolyn Coulson was deciding how to vote in 2008, she found Barack Obama’s rhetoric “exciting,” especially when he talked about a “different kind of politics.” Then a student at Vanderbilt, she said John McCain was dull in comparison. Coulson, now 25 and a Wall Street consultant, finds no trace of that Obama today. “His rhetoric is aimed just at specific groups of people, not as someone who would bring the country together,” she said. Identity politics is something you do when you don't have the worst economy since World War II, according to David Woodard, a Clemson University political...

<p>WFTV has learned charges against George Zimmerman could be getting more serious.</p> <p>State prosecutors said Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, profiled and stalked 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before killing him, so the FBI is now looking into charging him with a hate crime.</p>

My Message to Rick Santorum March 23, 2012 Not too long ago, I had asked a woman from Pennsylvania what she thought about Rick Santorum. Knowing that she was as conservative and as Republican as I am, I was surprised at her response. She said, “He is the worst. Those of us who know him best have nothing but contempt for him. He is not an honest person and certainly would not hesitate to stab a fellow politician in the back.” That was a few weeks ago, but I have learned what a tawdry character Santorum is. He is a...

Santorum: 'I Would Never Vote for Barack Obama Over Any Republican' MAR 23, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER Rick Santorum is pushing back against what he's calling a misinterpreted quotation, in which he's being reported as saying he'd vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential contest. "I would never vote for Barack Obama over any Republican," Santorum says in a statement, "and to suggest otherwise is preposterous." Santorum blames Mitt Romney's camp for "distort[ing]" and "distract[ing]" voters. "This is just another attempt by the Romney Campaign to distort and distract the media and voters from the...

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

Poll: Santorum Ahead In Louisiana By Jonathan Easley - 03/21/12 Rick Santorum leads the GOP presidential field by double digits heading into Saturday’s primary in Louisiana, according to a poll released late Tuesday by Magellan Strategies. Santorum took 37 percent, followed by Mitt Romney at 24 percent, Newt Gingrich at 21 percent and Ron Paul at 3 percent. The poll was conducted on March 19, before Romney’s convincing victory in the Illinois primary, and has a 2 percent margin of error. Gingrich finished a distant fourth in Illinois, and will likely hear growing calls this week for him to end...

Somewhere, buried in Rick Santorum’s fatally flawed campaign messaging, were winning words. Had he committed to them, the former senator could have derailed Mitt Romney’s path to the GOP nomination. Despite Romney’s overpowering resources and organization, Santorum’s potent argument — that the party could not throw the issue of healthcare away by nominating someone who had supported mandates — was his key to victory, but he threw it away. As he transformed from Senator 2 Percent to the last credible alternative to Romney, Santorum often made the point that nominating Romney — or Newt Gingrich — would take the issue...

Sunday, March 18, 2012 It's Time For Gingrich To Drop Out of Race For GOP Nomination EDITORIAL The time has come for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to drop out the Republican presidential race and allow Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to battle it out for the GOP nomination. After an up-and-down campaign, Gingrich based his chances primarily on a Southern strategy. That worked, with wins in South Carolina and Georgia. Then Gingrich set his sights on Alabama and Mississippi, where voters make their decisions on Tuesday. Gingrich had been first or second in those two states in pre-election polls....

These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted March 8-15 with more than 1,900 Republican registered voters, including a sample of 290 Gingrich supporters. Some conservative Republicans have called for Gingrich to drop out of the race on the assumption that conservative primary voters would then unite behind Santorum as the conservative alternative to the more moderate Romney. But Gallup data indicate that Gingrich voters would not be likely to coalesce behind Santorum, suggesting that factors other than candidate ideology may be attracting voters to Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney. Gallup can simulate Republican preferences without Gingrich in the...

Rick Santorum: If I Win The Illinois Primary, I Win The Nomination By Andrew Rafferty EFFINGHAM, Ill. -- Rick Santorum on Saturday guaranteed that a win in the Illinois primary will result in his nomination as the Republican presidential nominee. "This is a primary, and turnout is everything. You do your job, you do your job, then this is the pledge," Santorum said. "If we're able to come out of Illinois with a huge or surprise win, I guarantee you, I guarantee you that we will win this nomination." Illinois has largely been predicted to favor Mitt Romney for Tuesday's...

All Odds Aside, G.O.P. Girding for Floor Fight By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG CHICAGO — For the first time in a generation, Republicans are preparing for the possibility that their presidential nomination could be decided at their national convention rather than on the campaign trail, a prospect that would upend one of the rituals of modern politics. The race remains Mitt Romney’s to lose, and if he continues to accumulate delegates at a steady clip starting with contests in Puerto Rico on Sunday and Illinois on Tuesday, he can still amass the 1,144 necessary to secure the nomination before...

Gingrich Forges Ahead As A Spoiler By Daniel Malloy and Katie Leslie The Atlanta Journal-Constitution CHICAGO -- Newt Gingrich has unabashedly taken on the role of spoiler in the Republican presidential nomination contest, as a pair of losses in Tuesday’s Deep South primaries cemented his position on the margins of the race. (snip) Appearing on a radio show Wednesday morning in Chicago, Gingrich talked about the results in Alabama and Mississippi -- where he came in second to former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania -- as if he and Santorum were a kind of conservative tag team. “Between the...

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney would stand to benefit just as much as Rick Santorum if Newt Gingrich exited the presidential race, according to a new poll released Friday. The Gallup poll defied conventional wisdom by suggesting Romney would peel off just as many Gingrich supporters as Santorum would. Forty percent of Gingrich supporters in Gallup's daily tracking poll said Romney was their second choice while 39 percent said they would migrate to Santorum. "If two candidates for a presidential nomination compete in the same ideological space, it would make sense that if one dropped out that the other would benefit,"...

Texas governor Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that’s the main reason so many East Coast pundits and Beltway wags are making fun of him. He likes guns! He’s from Texas! He talks funny! He’s a — gird yourself now — Christian! New York magazine and others mock his harmless, Bush-like pronunciation of nuclear (“nuke-ular”). They’re scandalized that he doesn’t go to a golf course to relax, but a shooting range. It’s already a cliché among liberals to describe him as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy they...

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order directing the federal government to design a new strategy for hiring, promoting and keeping workers of diverse backgrounds. The three-page order released Thursday directs the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and two other agencies to develop the strategy within 90 days. Agencies then have 120 days to implement it. An Office of Personnel Management report says that in fiscal year 2010, the federal workforce was 66.2 percent white, 17.7 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent...

(KMOV) – Three men have been indicted for hate crime after threatening to harm an African American on June 4 in Mascoutah, Illinois. Anthony Kunkel, 25, Christopher Berry, 25, and Christopher Jeffrey, 25, have been indicted after the victim says the three men uttered racial slurs and threatened bodily harm to him which disturbed the victim. The three suspects were each charged with hate crime. If convicted, they face one to three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections or up to 30 months probation.

Gov. Perry chose to bypass the legislature and on Feb. 2, 2007, he issued an executive order making Texas the first state in the country requiring all sixth-grade girls to receive the three-shot vaccination series (which cost about $120 per shot). ... The controversy over Perry's decision deepened as it came to light that his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck and that his chief of staff's mother-in-law, Rep. Dianne White Delisi, was the state director of an advocacy group bankrolled by Merck to push legislatures across the country to put forward bills mandating the Gardasil vaccine...