Free Republic

The Republican chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus blasted GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Tuesday for calling to allow some illegal immigrants to remain in the country. Speaking on CNN’s “John King, USA,” Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) likened the former House Speaker’s plan to drilling a hole in the bottom of a sinking boat to let the water out. “Newt, I don’t care who you are,” Bilbray said. “Quit sending the mixed message that we are going to somehow reward or accommodate you if you broke the law while there are those waiting patiently and playing by the rules,...

Herman Cain indicated today that he does not agree with Newt Gingrich’s position on immigration. “The way I would deal with those that are already here, which has been my stated position: empower the states to deal with the illegals that are already here, not some, big, grandiose, national one size fit-all. I believe that the states should be empowered to deal with the illegals that are already here,” Cain said CNN’s State of the Union this morning. In response to whether that meant the states could allow illegal immigrants to “be put on a path toward legalization and toward...

While it is very early in the race to set anything firm...what are Freeper thoughts of a Cain Gingrich ticket?

I don’t know, guys. We’ve reached the point where the “Newt implosion” narrative has crystallized so thoroughly that every new story about him ends up being refracted through that prism. I don’t trust my own judgment at this point. Is this new bit genuinely toxic, as Ace’s co-blogger Gabe seems to think, or is it much ado about nothing? Newt Gingrich, whose campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has gotten off to a rocky start, risked fresh controversy on Thursday by suggesting that some illegal immigrants living in the United States “may have earned the right to become legal.”…Gingrich...