Free Republic

The open-borders media has been AWOL on John McCain’s decision to speak to the radical racialist group, La Raza/The Race in July. He has been allowed to skate on the issue in several recent sit-down interviews. Many of the same pundits who blasted Barack Obama for his ties to the radical racialist Jeremiah Wright have nothing to say about McCain’s longtime association with the shamnesty-pushing, sovereignty-undermining, publicly-subsidized shakedown artists of La Raza/The Race. Not everyone’s looking the other way. Editorial page editor Colin McNickle at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review warned today: “McCain had made significant progress in reaching out to conservatives...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Barack Obama's victory in North Carolina and near-miss in Indiana last week remove much of the doubt about whether he will win the Democratic nomination for president. With Obama the likely Democratic nominee and Sen. John McCain long his party's presumptive nominee, the search for their vice presidential picks can now begin. Below, you'll find the five most logical veeps, assuming McCain and Obama are the candidates, ranked in the order of the likelihood of being chosen. No. 1 on each side is currently the likeliest to be named. REPUBLICANS 5. Mitt Romney: A few months ago,...

You'll want to right click view on a few of these... * John McCain's Road the the White House In his natural habitat... Liberalism's Heritage Preserve. * John's ten Maverick years. Has anyone forgotten them? * The Republican Primaries 2008. * Cabin boy McQueeg to lead... Conservatism's darkest hour. * Oh my God, I did that? Anyone got a barf bag? Pale white, this year's new green. * Just so you know, John is willing to sacrifice himself... for the good of the nation. * In answer to your question John, zero votes.  Nice try though. * Springtime in D.C....

We are part of the many Democrats that will definitely vote for John McCain if Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination to run for president. We would love to have our economy and national image restored to at least what it was during the Clinton years of presidency, but Barack Obama is not the answer. Obama speaks politics and not what he believes. He only says what he must to win. Actions speak louder than words. He does not respect America -- won't wear a flag on his lapel, won't put his hand over his heart during the pledge of...

LINCOLN, Neb. — Former Colorado senator and two-time presidential candidate Gary Hart told Nebraska Democrats that Barack Obama will heal the national party, while John McCain's nomination may cause a rift among Republicans. "There's a real struggle for the soul of the Republican Party under way," Hart said Saturday before the state Democratic Party's annual Morrison-Exon Day Dinner. About 450 people attended the party's largest fundraising event. Hart, 71, sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, and was a U.S. senator from 1975 to 1987. Hart said the Republican Party is going to find its ties to religious...

Three days after last Tuesday's primaries seemingly tilted the Democratic presidential nomination decisively toward Barack Obama, the surprising fact was that almost half the party's senators had not announced a choice between him and Hillary Clinton. Twenty-one of the 49 Democratic senators were publicly silent as the last six primaries approached. Those senators, along with most other Democrats, desperately want the race to be over so the winner can start focusing on John McCain. But Dick Durbin understands their reluctance to step forward ahead of the other 200-odd uncommitted superdelegates who have the power to bring this marathon to an...

Republicans in the U.S. Congress are petrified about a November debacle, a fear stoked on May 3, when they lost their second straight special election in a district held by Republicans. The party's fundamental situation is terrible: Republicans are saddled with an enormously unpopular president, a war, a troubled economy and a Democratic opposition that's being energized by important constituent groups. "The generics are as bad as anytime since I have been here," said Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and one of the most politically astute members of Congress in either party. Davis, a 14-year veteran, is retiring this...

Washington - If you ranked all of the TV markets in "blue-state" America according to how much advertising they saw from the 2004 Bush campaign and its allies, the list would begin like this: Milwaukee. Green Bay. Wausau. Pittsburgh, Pa. Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pa. Madison. La Crosse-Eau Claire. That pretty much says it all about Wisconsin's place on the electoral map. Few blue states are fatter targets for Republicans.That was true for George W. Bush, who lost the state twice by an average of three-tenths of a percentage point. And it will be true again for John McCain, now busy crafting...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him -- and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests. The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week's votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor. Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to...

How do you know if Barack Obama is unhappy with what you're saying—or not saying? At meetings of his closest advisers, he likes to lean back, put his feet on the table and close his eyes. If he doesn't like how the conversation is going, he will lean forward, put his feet on the floor and "adjust his socks, kind of start tugging at them," says Michael Strautmanis, a counselor to the campaign. Obama wants people to talk, but he doesn't want to intimidate them. "If you haven't said anything, he'll call on you," says Strautmanis. "He's never said it,...

The last couple of months have been springtime in paradise for Republicans: the loveliest of all possible seasons. They have been watching two Democratic presidential candidates in an endless battle to destroy each other -- a process that does not appear to enhance the chance that the eventual nominee will win in November. A recent Gallup poll shows John McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup. All this before Republicans even begin publicizing the worst that can be said about either of two candidates whose alleged defects provide a supremely target-rich environment. But it's easy...

If I had any doubts about whether to vote for John McCain in this year's presidential election, those doubts were laid to rest this past week when McCain sat down for an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. McCain solidified for me the fact that he is not a true conservative and not worthy of my support. McCain proved that on some of the most crucial issues, he will let down a base of constituents that are looking for answers. O'Reilly addressed the question of rising gasoline prices. Anyone with a brain in their head knows that only two...

After exhaustive meetings between the Republicans and Democrats, the debate schedule for the upcoming general election between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama has been set. "In determining these debates, we had to take into account the schedules of each candidate and their positions on several important domestic and international issues. Regrettably, we weren’t able to schedule both candidates on any one given night, so each debate will have the candidate questioned separately, on different nights, in front of a live studio audience comprised purely of randomly selected independent voters. For John McCain, who will be interviewed behind a...

Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in "town hall" events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick... Obama was asked Saturday if the fall campaign might touch on the 1987 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee said McCain used "poor judgment" for allegedly pressing regulators to go easy on the owner of a...

This year’s long and contentious Democratic presidential battle will end with Barack Obama and a healed party, former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart said Saturday night. In fact, he suggested, it actually may be the Republican Party that splinters before the November election. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain “seems to have a free ride” for now, Hart said in a Lincoln interview. “But there’s a real struggle for the soul of the Republican Party under way.” That clash pits a party tied to the religious right, personal social issues, neoconservative foreign policy and libertarian taxpayers against a traditional GOP that...

Item: The McCain campaign's handpicked RNC convention czar, Doug Goodyear, resigns after Newsweek reports that his firm, the DCI Group, was working to make the government of Myanmar look good. “Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign.”

John McCain's choice to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma's repressive regime. After John McCain nailed down the Republican nomination in March, his campaign began wrestling with a sensitive personnel issue: who would manage this summer's GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.? The campaign recently tapped Doug Goodyear for the job, a veteran operative and Arizonan who was chosen for his "management experience and expertise," according to McCain press secretary Jill Hazelbaker. But some allies worry that Goodyear's selection could fuel perceptions that McCain—who has portrayed himself as a crusader against...

So if Bill Clinton was our first black president based on various things, considering all McCain has done so far to bolster the amnesty fight, I think that would make him our first mexican president.

There's been much convinced talk that John McCain needs to add diversity to his ticket by choosing someone who's black, or at least brown (and Brown!) for the v.p. slot. But wouldn't that cost McCain his advantage among racists? In the current issue of TNR, John Judis estimates that Obama's race could cost him as much as "15 to 20 percent of Democrats or Democratic-leaning Independents," and Politico's Roger Simon thinks the race vote is worth upwards of 15 percent among the general electorate. By adding diversity to his ticket, McCain would just jeopardize his hold on these voters, while...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., faces enormous pressure from social conservatives to ignore his repeated commitment to change the GOP's platform on abortion. "If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," said Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, to ABC News. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble." A senior Republican close to McCain...

Here’s an interesting thing that John McCain wrote about judges: “In the shorthand of constitutional discourse, these abuses by the courts fall under the heading of ‘judicial activism.’ But real activism in our country is democratic. Real activists seek to make their case democratically — to win hearts, minds and majorities to their cause. Such people throughout our history have often shown great idealism and done great good. By contrast, activist lawyers and activist judges follow a different method. They want to be spared the inconvenience of campaigns, elections, legislative votes and all of that. They don’t seek to win...

PR executive Doug Goodyear voluntarily steps down after past ties to Burma are revealed.

(This is the sixth Veepstakes article. Already profiled have been Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman and Rep. Paul Ryan.) A former lieutenant governor tapped to run for Vice President two years after losing a U.S. Senate race? the idea seems outlandish. But, sure enough, Michael Steele -- Maryland's lieutenant governor, the state’s second-highest elected official from 2002-06 -- is quite often mentioned on lists of potential running mates for John McCain. And to those who point to Steele's 55%-to-45% loss to Democrat Ben Cardin in Maryland's nationally...

Organized labor is paying more attention to Republican John McCain as Democrat Barack Obama solidifies his status as the front-runner in the Democratic contest against Hillary Rodham Clinton. The AFL-CIO, which has not endorsed anyone in the Democratic primary, announced Wednesday that it is sending more than 6,000 of its people to more than 22 states during the next two weekends to talk to more than 200,000 union voters about McCain. "Senator McCain's economic path would lead to disaster for America's working families," said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization. Meanwhile, the nation's largest union,...

For Mitt Romney, the suspension of his campaign at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference two days after Super Tuesday marked the beginning of a new and promising campaign. As he ended his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, he staked for himself a position as leader for the conservative future. It's a good position to be in for a potential 2012 run for the presidency. And it's a position that makes him an attractive option for John McCain's No. 2 in 2008. In his withdrawal speech, Romney announced that "conservative principles are needed now more than ever" -- hitting...

Around noon today, the powers-that-be at NEWSWEEK posted "A Convention Quandary" on our website. In the story, investigative ace Michael Isikoff reported that the man chosen by John McCain's presidential campaign to run this summer's GOP convention--Arizonan Doug Goodyear--was causing some headaches within the ranks. The problem? Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients--not the most convenient association for a candidate who's already struggling to reconcile his reputation as an anti-special interests crusader with the sizable number of lobbyists on his senior staff. Further...

So many FReepers lately are insistent on saying they won't vote for John McCain for President, and love to give their laundry list of why. OK, so you've said who you WON'T vote for. How about now saying who you WOULD vote for? What do you plan to do with your Presidential vote this November?

Fox News, or as I prefer to call it, Faux News, fired an intern for revealing the bias we all have toward the GOP. As MSNBC's Don Abrams said, she apparently did not get the memo that said that on Faux News, "you are supposed to pretend you are fair and balanced." The production assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the Time 100 Party. Locke: "John McCain, Fox News." McCain: "Fox News, I'm always glad to talk to Fox News." Locke: "I voted for you in the primary." McCain: "Thank you very...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar. Doug Goodyear resigned as convention coordinator and issued a two sentence statement: "Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign." Goodyear, chief executive of lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a...

McCain has recently been making efforts to reach out to all sorts of people not traditionally associated with the GOP. He appeared on the View, the Daily Show, before black civil rights activists in Alabama, etc. When is he going to make a serious effort to reach out to conservatives? How about promising to appoint strict constructionist judges? How about re-assurances on gun ownership rights? What about reducing the out-of-control spending of this administation? Does he take conservative support for granted? Does he even want them? Maybe he sees that Obama and his kooky spiritual advisor have totally freaked most...

I've heard from a number of freepers in recent threads telling me, "A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Obama". In an attempt to FINALLY put that idiocy to rest, I'm devoting this thread solely to that subject. "Let logic prevail!", I always say. Well, there IS no logic to the above statement IF the voter in question (who has decided to vote third party in '08) 1) is not a registered Republican and 2) was never going to vote for McCain in the first place Remember 1992, when Republicans (as many of them still do)...

WASHINGTON -- Three months ago, Sen. John McCain made a calculated decision to begin painting a not-so-pretty picture of Sen. Barack Obama. Although Sen. Hillary Clinton was -- and still is -- battling Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, McCain began preparing his case against the Illinois senator early on. McCain's advisers, like other observers, had concluded that Obama was the likely nominee and wanted to begin shaping Obama's image while the Democrat was still consumed with fighting Clinton. Defining one's opponent is a key task of any campaign, and simply put, McCain has had a long head start. As...

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Wisconsin shows John McCain holding identical leads over both potential democratic candidates. McCain tops both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by a 47% to 43% margin. In late March, McCain and Obama were in a toss-up Clinton trailed the GOP hopeful by eleven points. McCain enjoys double-digit leads over both candidates among men, but trails both candidates among women in the Badger State. The GOP candidate also leads both candidates by double-digits among voters not affiliated with either major political party. Nationally, while the fundamentals of Election 2008 favor the Democrats, McCain remains...

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Missouri shows that John McCain retains a significant lead over his likely opponent, Barack Obama. McCain attracts 47% of the Show-Me State vote while Obama earns 41%. A month ago, McCain led Obama 53% to 38%. In February, before McCain wrapped up the nomination and before the Democratic competition became so heated, McCain’s advantage over Obama was just two percentage points. has opened a significant lead over both potential Democratic opponents in the state of Missouri. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds John McCain leading Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points, 50%...

Michelle Obama has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about the amount of student loans she and Barack had to take out to get through Harvard and Princeton. Worse yet, she had to pay them back! As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your...

WASHINGTON -- Although Democrats are tangled in a fractious primary contest, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama probably would win the White House against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain if the election were held now -snip- In a hypothetical matchup, the poll gave Illinois Sen. Obama 46% to McCain's 40%, with 9% undecided. Clinton led McCain 47% to 38%, with 11% undecided. The nationwide poll, conducted May 1 through Thursday and released Friday, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. -snip- The poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,208 adults nationwide --...

Just announced on WABC radio on the Larry Kudlow show by Jimmy Pettatukis--US News and a blogger, (SP) that McCain is all but a lock for VP. INfo comes from his fund raising sources. Kudlow is using the info as "breaking news" on his show which just eneded at 1:00 Pm Eastern.

All indications are the Democrats will pick up seats in both the House and Senate, with the Senate likely being a couple of RHINOs away from the magic 60. McCain is no Reagan but he's the only thing standing in the way of the most liberal Senator in Senate becoming President with a clear majority in Congress and at a critical time with decisions to be made on the war on terror, the war in Iraq, heath care, taxes, illegal immigration and likely the Supreme Court. Sometimes you do have to pick the lesser of two evils. This is one...

No, not the lesson the national press is pushing, that Mr. Jenkins's loss is a sign of GOP disaster this fall, or that it demonstrates how difficult it will be for Republicans to link local competitors to the liberal Mr. Obama. Republicans face tough odds, yes. But that's because they've yet to prove they've learned a lesson, as they demonstrated again with Mr. Jenkins. By the lazy standards of the GOP, Mr. Jenkins should've been a cinch to win a Baton Rouge district in Republican hands for 34 years, and that President Bush won with 59% in 2004. Their candidate...

Two Hollywood actors who dined with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in early 2001 at actress Candice Bergen's home confirmed reports that he told the assembled group he did not vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, but McCain denied the claim at a news conference. In separate phone interviews, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff -- both of whom starred in television's "The West Wing" -- said late Thursday night that the senator made the remarks after he spoke at length about his reservations about Bush becoming president. Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington first wrote about the incident Monday, asserting...

OUR THREE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SHARE THIS PECULIAR infirmity: None of them has any backbone. If they did, then instead of blaming Big Oil for soaring energy prices, they would stand up to some real culprits responsible for the run-up. These are politically powerful coastal states like Florida, New Jersey and California, which time after time have placed their parochial interests ahead of the nation's critical need for energy independence by prohibiting the offshore production of natural gas and oil. Of course, oil companies have no electoral votes. And wealthy Californians, some of whom own property overlooking the oil-rich Santa Barbara...

A few weeks ago, the New York Times tried to manufacture a McCain land deal scandal and today it’s the Washington Post’s turn. The front-page headline of Post staff writer Matthew Mosk’s story is titled “McCain Pushed Land Swap that Benefits Backer.� It says McCain negotiated a land swap to allow Arizona rancher Fred Ruskin to exchange his checkerboard of property located in the Prescott National Forest for an equal piece of continuous federal land that was later sold for development. Mainly because the developer, Steven A. Betts, who purchased the land from Ruskin is a donor to McCain’s presidential...

John McCain gave a speech recently on the need to appoint judges that interpret laws rather than legislate from the bench. He also took issue with "Senate obstructionism" practiced by liberals who are blocking judicial nominees. The Speech seems designed to to help McCain firm up his conservative base. But here's the problem. McCain has made it harder to confirm judicial conservatives to the bench. While McCain's speech properly chastised liberals for blocking nominees, what did he do when he had the chance to help stop them cold? Well, here he is, in his own words: "...when there were threats...

In the clearest indication yet of how he intends to confront Sen. Barack Obama on foreign policy issues in the general election, Sen. John McCain on Friday again portrayed the Democratic contender as being the favorite of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, and implied that he would also be friendly with Iran, a Hamas ally. Speaking at a news conference in New Jersey, McCain said he believed that comments made by a Hamas leader approving Obama's candidacy were "a legitimate point of discussion," and he went on to accuse Obama of agreeing to negotiate with the president of Iran, who...

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (the presumptive Republican presidential nominee), is facing questions about his ties to Arizona real estate developers and home builders. DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Emily Bittner pointed Friday to recent stories by 'The New York Times' and the 'Washington Post' on McCain backing land deals involving SunCor Development Co., Del Webb Corp., and developers Donald Diamond and Fred Ruskin. The deals involved parcels and projects in the Phoenix area, Northern Arizona and Nevada. Republicans dismissed the stories and Democrats' criticism, saying the deals had bipartisan support and were done to benefit...

WASHINGTON -- With the racially tinged Democratic race drawing to an awkward close, Barack Obama and John McCain face the challenge of winning over "Hillary Democrats" _ the white, working-class voters who favored the former first lady over Obama's historic candidacy. Obama and McCain clearly have set their sights on each other, a recognition of the long odds Clinton faces in trying to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. The McCain campaign figures some of her supporters might be up for grabs and won't necessarily vote Democratic in the general election in November. "I've been saying for a year that you...

It goes without saying that the GOP is taking a dreadful thrashing right now. Conservatives are unmotivated, Democrats are obliterating Republicans in the fundraising arena, and the GOP's poll numbers have dropped off a cliff. George Bush, the face of the Republican Party, has an approval rating of 30% and according to Rasmussen Reports, one of the best polling agencies in the business, 41.4% of Americans consider themselves to be Democrats while only 31.4% say they are Republicans. Worse yet, voters trust the Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, government ethics, the war in Iraq, health care, Social Security,...

n a hypothetical matchup between Clinton and McCain, the New York senator led the Arizonan by 47% to 38%, with 11% saying they were undecided. And in a contest between Obama and McCain, the poll gave the Illinois senator a 46% to 40% lead over the Republican, with 9% undecided. The nationwide poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The results represent a slight shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, in which McCain led Clinton by 6 points, and Obama by 2 points, within the poll's margin of error. The direction has...

To hear Romney aides describe it, the core members of Team Mitt were as thrilled to hop aboard the McCain ship as their leader was. When they gathered at headquarters in Boston on the Thursday after Romney dropped out, there were "zero dissenters," relates one former Romney adviser. "We all agreed we had to do a formal endorsement." So campaign manager Beth Myers called McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and told him Romney was McCain's for the taking. "'Anytime, anywhere, Mitt'll do it--or not!'" the adviser recalls Myers as saying. McCain happened to be in Rhode Island that day, so...

"Alert Washingtonians were treated to an odd juxtaposition not long ago. John McCain was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the big annual gathering of the right-wing tribes, while trying to establish that he was a conservative. On the same day, across town at the American Enterprise Institute—another conservative stronghold—Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, was warmly received when he touted a new book called Real Change. Never one to go underboard, Ging­rich called for “explosively replac[ing] the failed bureaucracies of the past.” "The irony of the contrast seemed lost on conservatives. No one in the movement doubts Gingrich...