Free Republic

For the most part, the Republican presidential candidates tried to play the "immigration" card — one that may backfire come November. Only John McCain was willing to take a gentler approach to immigration and thank God he’s the last man standing. CNN and the liberal media were all too willing to let the Republicans continue their suicidal plunge on immigration. Meanwhile, the New York Post recently featured a column by Geraldo Rivera decrying the impact of the immigration debate on the Republican Party: freefall in the polls among Latino voters. President Bush carried 45 percent of the Latino vote in...

WARNING TO CONSERVATIVES!!! When the AP quotes Open Borders moll Tamar Jacoby, Arlen Specter, RINO/Bushie/McCainite Charlie Black as saying McCain is "looking strong" or good on immigration" and no conservatives or anti-Invasion advocates or experts are quoted in the [following] story, you know the fix is in! McCain is on a major media effort to try to make conservatives like him enough to vote for him and he knows he's in deep trouble. So he's going to try to pull the wool over our eyes by saying he's going to get tough on the Border--if elected. What he WON'T discuss...

Florida Sen. Mel Martinez will endorse John McCain on Friday, The Associated Press has learned, a move likely to give the Republican presidential candidate a crucial boost with the state's Cuban-Americans just days before the primary. The decision is a blow to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor in a close fight with McCain for support of voters in the Cuban-American community _ and to keep his candidacy alive. Two Republican officials disclosed the upcoming endorsement on the condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement. As recently as Thursday night, Martinez indicated he would remain neutral in the...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush pledged Sunday to assist Sen. John McCain's campaign for the presidency assuming he wins the Republican Party nomination -- but acknowledged that the Arizona senator has "got some convincing to do" among the party's conservatives. In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" at his retreat at Camp David, Md., Bush was careful to note that two Republicans are still competing for the nomination, and he did not express a preference. But Bush made clear that he was willing to set aside the tensions he has had with McCain in the past, and he praised the front-runner...

Ted Nugent: McCain has two battles he must win Sunday, February 17, 2008 Now that Mitt Romney has thrown in the towel and endorsed him, the Republican nominee for president will almost certainly be Sen. John McCain. Attempting residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is surely tough enough without turning your friends into enemies. There are plenty of enemies on the other side who wear different political stripes altogether. McCain faces a distrustful, dissatisfied, frustrated, and in some cases, downright angry conservative base. Conservatives are not happy with McCain. He has not always carried the conservative torch on immigration, taxes, First...

Bush Signals Support for McCain By Peter Baker President Bush plans to give an implicit endorsement of onetime rival John McCain's conservative bona fides tomorrow as the Arizona senator seeks to consolidate the party behind his candidacy. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in the morning, Bush plans to say that the nominee of the party will be a strong conservative, according to excerpts released by the White House tonight.

Two years ago, Republicans fought over immigration and hemorrhaged Hispanic voters. Now they are poised to nominate the one man who can rebuild the Hispanic voter coalition that pushed President Bush twice to victory, the architects of that coalition say. "I think the only candidate that Republicans have running for president who could retain those votes is in fact Senator McCain," said the Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., president of Esperanza USA, founder of the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and a key player in helping Mr. Bush connect with Hispanic voters during his two runs for office. Democrats have traditionally enjoyed...

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain faces a dilemma on immigration as he works to persuade conservatives he's tough enough on the issue without erasing his historic appeal to Hispanic voters. Once a crusader for offering the nation's roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants a way to get legal status, McCain now says his first priority is fortifying U.S. borders. The metamorphosis reflects McCain's intensifying effort to consolidate his support among conservatives, who deride the Arizona senator's past proposals on immigration as offering amnesty to lawbreakers, and bitterly resent his work with Democrats, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the issue....

<p>For the second time in as many days, Sen. John McCain was forced to rebuke members of his own party for over-the-top attacks on Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama.</p>

Obama changed my mind about McCain renewamerica.us, DC - On Tuesday night, Feb. 19, 2008, Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag for the first time, when he gave a 45 minute, off the cuff speech after his victory in Wisconsin. For the first time in his campaign, he talked to some extent on substance, rather than in just empty platitudes and feel good rhetoric. For the first time he talked of more than just "hope for change" and "change for hope" and leave the rest to the fantasies of his supporters' imaginations. What he was proposing was...

GOP goon squad can’t rattle McCain DL-Online Published Saturday, February 09, 2008 It’s been a kind of perverse pleasure to watch Sen. John McCain overcome the vitriol of talk radio’s conservative goon squad. Despite vicious daily broadsides from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham (and their sycophants on regional and local talk radio), McCain emerged Tuesday as the front-runner among Republican candidates for president. On Thursday, the senator’s only credible competition, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, suspended his campaign, effectively handing the nomination to McCain. So much for the influence of the talkers with the base of...

Senator John McCain's lifetime rating of 82.3% from the American Conservative Union is often cited as proof that he is conservative. Here is a closer look at that 82.3 rating. First, a rating of 82.3% is not really that high. It puts Senator McCain in 39th place among senators serving in 2006, the latest year for which the ACU has its ratings posted online. For that most recent year in particular, McCain scored only 65, putting him in 47th place for that year. ... Generally, McCain has voted less conservatively in more recent years. ... So where did McCain differ...

WASHINGTON DC: While all the fuss on the Republican side is focused on the crazies in the world of talk radio, there are other Republicans sharpening their knives. People like Dick Armey - the former leader of the party in the House of Representatives - who tells me the anti-McCain forces are small and have nowhere to go. Armey - an affable Texan - really does see the McCain ascendency as a chance to see off the people he thinks have damaged the party: the Bill Frists, the Tom DeLays, in fact all the forces of social conservatism who hijacked...

Are there any Freepers who support John McCain? If you support Mr. McCain, can you make the case for your man? Can you make the case without bringing up the War? Can you make the case without bringing up Judges? Can you make the case without using any ACU ratings? (Those don't impress anybody.) Can you make the case without insults or telling people to "calm down"? Can you make the case without the type of lying and dishonesty we've come to expect from John McCain and his special friend Mike Huckabee? Can you make the case without trashing Barack...

John McCain made “dismissive remarks” about the conservative loyalty of Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito per Bob Novak and John Fund per Jed Babbin on HumanEvents.com. Will McCain then in reality appoint conservative Supreme Court justices? In two years, over half of the present justices will be over 70. It could be that McCain will have four or five nominations in his pocket. To what political slant will those nominations commit? Can conservative Republicans trust McCain to appoint those like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito? Will McCain appoint only justices with strict constructionist positions? Will he war...

John McCain, the all-but presumptive Republican nominee, told conservative activists this afternoon that he cannot win the presidency without "dedicated conservatives." "I know I have a responsibility to unite the party," he said. He acknowledegd that he has had differences with many conservatives but said he hopes they will see that he has the record of a true conservative. "I am proud to be a conservative," McCain said. ... McCain spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington just hours after Mitt Romney used the same venue to announce he is suspending his presidential bid...

LOS ANGELES—John McCain overwhelmed Mitt Romney in California's big-prize presidential primary, capping the Arizona senator's Super Tuesday rout with a commanding win in the nation's most populous state. With 30 percent of precincts reporting, McCain had 44 percent of the vote to Romney's 27 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trailed with 12 percent. Just months ago McCain was all but forgotten in the race, after his campaign ran out of money and momentum last summer. But he regained his footing with wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, lifting him to a series of wins Tuesday from New...

Here we go... The Democrat nominee needs 2,025 to win. The Republican nominee needs 1,191 to win.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee enjoys the first victory on Super Tuesday for the Republicans as he takes all 18 delegates in the state of West Virginia, winning 52% of the vote, although rumors abound regarding the McCain campaign's possible instruction to their delegates to switch to his side. Mitt Romney finished second with 47% of the vote, followed by McCain at 1%. Rumors are circulating that the McCain campaign instructed their delegates to defect over to Mike Huckabee's side as to avoid a Romney victory. Nationally, McCain is significantly ahead of Huckabee and can afford giving the state's 18...

This is it, folks. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. Tomorrow, voters in 24 states (and American Samoa!) will go to the polls and cast ballots for the Presidential candidates of their choice. For political junkies like me, it's kinda like Christmas morning, Thanksgiving afternoon, and New Year's Eve night all rolled into one. (Except with a lot less family and friends, and a lot more Brit Hume and Matt Drudge.) So. What follows are my exceptionally expert, preternaturally prescient and precognitive political predictions. Republicans first, Communists Democrats second. Here goes:

With most of the primary elections still to come, the media has anointed John McCain the inevitable Republican candidate. That's understandable -- McCain has been in the pocket of the mainstream media for years. Especially since 2000, he's been the Republican they could always count on -- along with Senators Chuck Hagel (NE) and Dick Lugar (IN) -- to say something negative about President Bush's policies. But McCain has done more than simply bash President Bush. He's spent years stabbing conservatives in the back, working against Conservative principles in exchange for fawning press from the New York Times -- which...

Romney said he would be better for the economy because he actually had a job in the private sector. The OrlandoSentinel.com reported the story with a headline that read "Ronmey: I've had a real job. He hasn't. I'll give McCain the benefit of the doubt when he responded by saying that Romney had said that a job in the military is not a "real job". I figure McCain didn't actually hear the statement, and only read the headline in the Sentinel. Given that he graduated 5th from the bottom of his class, one can understand that he had as much...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Republican John McCain is trying to ease long-standing distrust among the party's powerful conservatives, not only for the presidential primary against Mitt Romney but for the likely general election race against a Democrat. "I believe that the majority of Republican Party conservatives are convinced that I'm best equipped to lead this country, unify our party and take on the challenge of radical Islamic extremism," McCain told reporters Saturday. As Super Tuesday looms — and the possibility that McCain could all but wrap up the nomination — the chattering conservative class is in an uproar. Talk show host...

Only a fool, or maybe a couple of talk radio hucksters, would consider wasting a vote come Tuesday on our native carpetbagger, Mitt Romney. And to tell you the truth, I think the allegiance of the radio blow-hards is as much a scam as Mitt’s allegiance to Massachusetts. You didn’t need to be George Will to figure out what the deal was when Mitt and the lovely Ann blew back into town from Salt Lake City with their matching black leather Olympic jackets five years ago. Mitt Romney was in a rush to pick up what Humphrey Bogart stashed inside...

McCain's love of amnesty will be a key issue. He supported amnesty in 2003 by name, proposed it in 2006 and 2007 without calling it amnesty, and says that anyone who says that he ever supported amnesty is a liar. He has insulted Americans who advocate border security and has cursed at the thought of building a border fence. The presence of Juan Hernandez in the background of the McCain campaign tells us that John McCain is as weak on border security now as he ever was. Dr. Juan Hernandez, a dual citizen of the US and Mexico, and past...

John McCain won Florida's Republican primary with the help of the state's wildly popular governor, his own war-hero biography and some crafty campaigning. Hillary Clinton won the Democrats' vote on the strength of her experience, her race and a campaign that oddly wasn't a campaign at all. The strange race for the presidency -- some late Republican mudslinging, no slinging of anything by Democrats -- has exited the biggest swing state for now, giving the nation a glimpse of the issues and ideas on the minds of voters of all stripes heading into Super Tuesday. In Florida, both candidates can...

MIAMI (AP) - Florida Sen. Mel Martinez will endorse John McCain on Friday, The Associated Press has learned, a move likely to give the Republican presidential candidate a crucial boost with the state's Cuban- Americans just days before the primary. The decision is a blow to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor in a close fight with McCain for support of voters in the Cuban-American community—and to keep his candidacy alive. Two Republican officials disclosed the upcoming endorsement on the condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement. As recently as Thursday night, Martinez indicated he would remain neutral...