Free Republic

Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and top Santorum supporter, tells National Review Online that Santorum is “reengineering” his presidential campaign. “You can’t repeat the same behavior and expect different results,” he says. “We’ve got to do things different. We’ve got to reengineer the campaign. We’ve got to add things, take things out, and make changes. Everyone recognizes that, from the candidate on down.” Earlier today, Viguerie, along with a group of movement leaders, met with Santorum at an office in northern Virginia. For over an hour, they discussed ways to revive his bid. “We came up with a number...

I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign. If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

(Sigh...) How else can I start? I support Rick Santorum, donated to him, but I'm losing count of the times I watch him on a live interview and feel the need for a facepalm. God love you, Rick, but you do not think well on your feet (or perhaps someone working for isn't doing his job prepping you). When Chris asked Rick about siding with "big labor", the right answer was that "there are valid reasons for labor unions and I'll support them when it's fair to do so. Unions get a bad rap when union leaders abuse their leverage...

By the time Mitt Romney arrives in Wisconsin Friday – his first campaign stop in the state before its GOP primary on Tuesday – his challenger Rick Santorum will have already become a familiar face. Mr. Santorum has been in Wisconsin since last weekend and has dined, bowled, and played shuffleboard with residents in every pocket of the state. He’s even tossed a football at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. Santorum’s once-generous lead in Wisconsin is eroding. In February, the former US senator polled at 34 percent among the state’s likely Republican voters, while Mr. Romney, the...

FAIRFIELD, Calif. — Republican leaders and voters, frustrated by their party's prolonged presidential contest, are increasingly coalescing behind front-runner Mitt Romney. Yet Rick Santorum on Thursday urged conservatives not to forsake their principles under pressure. He did so by conjuring the memory of Ronald Reagan, still the conservative icon, at an oddly symbolic place: the jelly bean factory that created the former president's favorite treats. "Let them know, conservatives all across this country have not given up the fight, we're not going to concede to the moderate establishment who wants to convince everybody that it's over, it's time to go...

President Barack Obama has rightly been regarded as the liberal equivalent of Ronald Reagan, if not the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. Like Reagan, the current president combines an attractive and compelling personality with superb communication skills to blunt the hard edges of his ideology and appeal to the broad spectrum of non-ideological voters who decide most elections (and who decided the 2008 election). Reagan also proved that it is possible, within limits, to govern successfully as an ideological president. Obama himself acknowledged this during the campaign, commenting that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America ... He put us...