Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has awesome self-confidence. Chosen by fellow Republicans to be Sen. John McCain’s running mate, she told an interviewer: “I’m ready.” That confidence reflects her naïveté about her role that puts her one heartbeat away from the presidency. In accepting the Republican nomination as vice-president, she invoked the greatness of President Truman, based on their small-town origins. But anyone who was around during Truman’s era knows there is a world of difference between Palin and Truman. Take, for example, humility. Truman was vice president for only a short time when on April 12, 1945, he...

Joe Biden will deliver a high-profile first attack in a sustained anti-McCain offensive in a speech called "Bush 44" Monday in the key battleground state of Michigan. While the lines of attack have long been drawn, Biden will assert — as the title indicates — that a McCain presidency would amount to a third Bush term and will focus, in a detailed, comprehensive and aggressive way, on John McCain's domestic policies and harsh campaign tactics, a campaign aide told Politico. Biden will deliver the speech in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in Macomb County, the area whose voters inspired Democratic pollster...

The policy and ideological differences between the Unites States’ Democrats and Republicans this year are greater than in all the elections since the Second World War, except for Barry Goldwater’s quixotic challenge to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society in 1964; George McGovern’s kamikaze mission against Richard Nixon in 1972; and Ronald Reagan’s release of Jimmy Carter to spend more time with his family in 1980. The differences over taxes, the economy and medical care are profound -- and very complicated. Obama is proposing one of the greatest tax increases in world history, entirely on the wealthiest 40% of the U.S....

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

"Everybody is starting to whisper that if Obama has any prayer of winning, he has to choose Hillary. And if he chooses Hillary, he's going to have to have somebody taste his food and start his car for him every day."

Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee, tickets for the reception where Clooney will speak are going for $1,000, followed by a dinner at the home of NFC member Charles Adams for $10,000 a plate. Space for the dinner is limited to 75 guests.

Presidential nominee Barack Obama joins the list of several other high-profile Democratic Party members who received highly favorable home loans. Obama, D-Ill., reportedly purchased a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago through a “super, super jumbo” loan he received from Northern Trust Bank in Illinois, the Washington Post reports. The portion of the money financed through the lender ($1.32 million) was offered to the Obamas at an unusually low discount interest rate locked in at 5.625 percent over the life of the 30-year fixed-rate loan, which was below the average of what a typical Chicagoan pursuing a similar low loan rate...

OUTLOOK The state of morale in the Republican Party is such that the expected bump by Sen. Barack Obama in the polls after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination has collapsed all GOP optimism. Talking to Republicans outside Sen. John McCain's organization, the presidential campaign looks like "mission impossible." The mood is: How can we possibly win the presidency for a third straight election considering the state of the party? This is unrealistically pessimistic, considering the true state of the election, which we still consider close. But it contributes to the negative feeling about McCain from elements of the conservative...

It’s been a rough two weeks for Barack Obama, but his poll numbers remain strong and unchanged. Is he a Teflon candidate? Consider what’s happened since he clinched the Democratic nomination and Hillary “suspended” her campaign: Obama flip-flopped on his pledge to spurn private contributions and finance his campaign publicly, as long as his opponent did likewise. McCain said he’s willing and Obama flipped and said he’s not. The Democratic candidate was caught flat footed by the sudden spike in oil prices and even defended their high level, lamenting only that we had not been given a period of time...

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Obama brushed aside criticism of his appropriation of a modified Presidential Seal in his campaign appearances, calling it “a transitional form of the seal. I’m not too happy with the eagle, it’s an aggressive bird. And the arrows are terrible symbolism. But I felt it would be too traumatic to try to change it all at once.” Obama’s seal includes the same bald eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows in its talons, but in place of the stars-and-stripes shield in the center of the eagle’s body, is the campaign’s trademark “O.” Instead of saying...

TOKYO (AFP) - Former US presidential contender Mike Huckabee urged his fellow Republicans on Wednesday not to denigrate Democrat Barack Obama, saying they should celebrate the historic moment of a black candidate. "Republicans will make a fundamental if not fatal mistake if they seek to win the election by demonising Barack Obama," Huckabee told a news conference on a visit to Tokyo. The former Arkansas governor said that, having grown up in the segregated South, he never thought he would see an African-American win the nomination of a major party for the US presidency. "I do not want to have...

Outlook We cannot find anyone in Democratic ranks who honestly feels there is any chance that Sen. Hillary Clinton will become Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate. There are Democrats who feel for that reason that it would be a good idea if Obama makes a choice for Vice President as quickly as possible to get the unhappy reaction from Clinton’s female voters over as quickly as possible. The eight-point bump in the polls for Obama after clinching the nomination is just about what would be expected and is unlikely to be permanent. A much more serious problem for McCain is...

Bill Clinton's selection of Al Gore changed forever the calculus presidential candidates need to use in choosing their running mates. Previously, presidential candidates usually used their VP pick to help them to carry a pivotal state or region, as JFK did in choosing Lyndon Johnson in 1960. But the single state theory doesn't work anymore. Voters can tell the difference between the first and second place on the ticket and don't let the tail wag the dog in determining their votes. After all, John Kerry couldn't carry North Carolina even after putting John Edwards on his 2004 ticket. Instead, presidential...

Former New York City Mayor Edward Koch, one of the country’s most prominent Democrats, says he may cross over and back Republican Sen. John McCain for president. In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Koch says McCain “has no equal” when it comes to opposing Islamic terrorism. Though Koch says he disagrees with most of McCain’s positions on domestic issues, he could support him because of his strong national security credentials. Koch carries significant weight with many Jewish Democrats in New York and across the country. He also has a history of playing the maverick and crossing party lines. He has backed...

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama told supporters Iran is just a “tiny” country at a campaign stop in Oregon Sunday evening. "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us,” Obama said. Obama’s rivals, including his fellow Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, have criticized Obama for his willing to meet with Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain issued a strong retort to Obama's assessment at a stop in Chicago on Monday. "The...

John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are...

Sen. Barack Obama ripped into a Republican ad today that targets comments made by his wife, Michelle, and called the GOP tactic "low class" and "detestable." The senator and his wife discuss the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told "Good Morning America" that he expects hardball tactics from the Republicans if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee. "But I also think these folks should lay off my wife," he told "GMA" as his wife chuckled beside him. Obama told "GMA" that he believes he will win a majority of the Democratic delegates once the votes are counted...

Barack Obama effusively praised the record of Jay Rockefeller after receiving a glowing introduction from the West Virginia Senator yesterday. Rockefeller called Obama “brilliant” and talked about what a great commander-in-chief Obama would make despite having no military experience nor any time on committees than handle military affairs during Obama’s three years in the Senate. Obama then complimented Rockefeller on his vote against the war — which proves that Obama isn’t as brilliant nor as ready as Rockefeller imagined: Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons capabilities, a report available at...

Maybe they should've called it " Hawaii 10-0," as Sen. Barack Obama now has ten straight wins after besting Sen. Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Hawaii caucuses. Neither Obama nor Clinton campaigned in person for Hawaii's 20 delegate votes, but both recently had surrogates in the 50th state -- Clinton employed daughter Chelsea and Obama had half-sister Maya Soetero-Ng appear on his behalf. Obama, who was born and spent part of his youth on Hawaii, ran radio ads in recent weeks stressing his "native son" credentials. On Tuesday night, in an e-mail to his supporters before the Hawaii victory was announced,...

DURHAM, N.H. -- In his first stumble, White House hopeful Barack Obama on Monday took back words from the day before, when he said the lives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were "wasted." Following his Springfield launch on Saturday, Obama wrapped up a three-day swing in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, ending at a University of New Hampshire rally where he assailed the "trivialization of politics" where "it is all about who makes a gaffe." In this case, that would be Obama, the Illinois Democrat. During his first press conference as a presidential candidate at...

CHICAGO --Responding to a newspaper report, Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday that arrangements he had with a political fundraiser accused of shaking down companies might have raised the appearance of impropriety. Antoin "Tony" Rezko, whom Gov. Rod Blagojevich has described as a friend and a fundraiser, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted to squeeze millions of dollars in kickbacks out of investment firms seeking state business. He also has pleaded not guilty to obtaining a $10.5 million loan from General Electric Capital Corp. through fraud and swindling a group of investors. Photo/Tony Dejak

Sen.-elect Barack Obama (D-Ill.), well-positioned to land a lucrative contract for a second book, hired Washington lawyer/superagent Robert Barnett to represent him after winning the election last week. People I talked to said Obama could get an advance ranging from $500,000 to $1 million depending on the details of the deal -- whether it is for one or two books and if Barnett decides to conduct an auction. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sunday that Obama is being represented by Barnett and signed on as a client after Tuesday's election. Gibbs said no decisions have been made about a book....