Free Republic

It's no secret that POLITICO is a biased news organization. The online polictical blog is as progressive as they come. Very agenda driven. In our reporting we have already addressed the fact that Journolist members are solidly entrenched inside POLITICO's upper levels. Something Roger Simon, who calls the website home, tried to downplay. John Nolte over at Big Journalism isn't buying it, and has a simply marvelous retort: You say MSM, I say Politico. You say corrupt, I say Politico. Today, Politico’s Roger Simon was kind enough to almost scold JournoList for its lasting effect on his precious little profession...

A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll offers what is, I think, a somewhat misleading way to look at Sarah Palin. The poll finds that 59% of Americans and 40% of Republicans don't think she'd make an "effective president" -- numbers that come very close to disqualifying her even in the primary, if she chooses to run. This trouble imagining President Palin is constant across the polling since soon after she was chosen as John McCain's running mate, and it reflects both her own lack of experience and the higher bar set for a woman -- Hillary Clinton did years of...

President Obama's response to a simple question from Chuck Todd just now -- how has he changed Washington? -- revived a central campaign tension. The tension was between hope and change, between his promises of a new tone and of new policies. It seemed hard to imagine he'd get both, and from the start there was little question that he'd take policy victories at the expense of harmony, as there seemed little room for compromise on his terms with a reduced, and more conservative, Republican congressional minority.

Before the MNSBC-Politico Debate, I wondered why in God’s name the Republican candidates would bother giving press and air time to a bunch of liberals asking snide questions down their noses to the GOP about issues not one person cares about.After that debate it convinced me the GOP candidates should be more discerning in their debates. And now, as Ben Domenech notes and I too can confirm, I think the candidates should boycott the Washington Post Bloomberg debate on October 11th. The debate is billed by the Washington Post as “exclusively” about the economy. I had relished them having this...

If you ever wondered what the real political issue of the day is when it comes to presidential politics, an article in Politico gives you the answer. Wall Street Big Money wants a presidential candidate who will allow the financial games enabling hedge fund billionaires, investment banks, and other financial engineering specialists to continue their merry ways. This group dominates the top one percent of the top once percent of income earners – the people who have expanded their share of national income, while the rest of the one percent (and the rest of us) get to divvy up the...

I stand by every word of it. And it’s even worse today. Of the thousands of Clinton presidential records released to the public last week, one among them has received of the bulk of attention: a 332-page memo from 1995. The memo, which offers an in-depth analysis of the right-wing media, describes how conservative conspiracy theories about the Clintons passed from the fringes to the mainstream. (...) Let’s go all the way back to the summer of 1995. At the time, my then colleague (and current business partner) Mark Fabiani and I were working at the White House as lawyers...

The permanent political class and their donors think a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton battle in 2016 would be a win-win scenario, and many Republican Wall Street donors would rather have Clinton in the White House than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). According to a Politico report, "the darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton." “If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would...

NEW YORK — The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing. The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb says no. Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton....

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who spoke Saturday at the Maine Republican Convention, was the big winner in the party’s straw poll. Paul took 26 percent of the vote, to 14 percent for the second-place finisher, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). With 690 ballots cast at the convention in Bangor, the order of finish was: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): 176 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): 98 Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 70 Dr. Ben Carson: 62 New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 60 Jeb Bush: 57 Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): 37 Mike Huckabee: 28 Condoleezza Rice: 26

Al Gore, though not divorced from wife Tipper, confirmed he is indeed dating environmental activist Elizabeth Keadle. “I don’t want to get into my personal life, but we’re a couple,” the 66-year-old former presidential candidate told Politico. The former Vice President and his wife shocked supporters in 2010 when they announced their separation after 40 years of marriage. The parents of four have yet to actually divorce. One year after the split, their daughter Kristin told People magazine she couldn’t imagine her parents ever dating other people — but her prediction failed to prove true.

Lankford added that there is not widespread support for, and he is opposed to, an amnesty program, but that does not mean there should be absolutely no path for some who are currently unauthorized immigrants. "Take the 11 million who are here illegally, does that mean that all 11 million cannot be citizens? No," he said. "I think there have been some people here who have been engaged, follow laws, all except for the entry laws, which is a misdemeanor, ... . What do you do in those situations? ... What do you do with an infant? There's a lot...

George Stephanopoulos, the co-anchor of "Good Morning America" and principal host of "This Week," has renewed his contract with ABC News, a network spokesperson confirmed on Thursday. The contract, which network sources described as long term, will see Stephanopoulos remaining at the helm of both programs, even as he dials back his hosting duties on the Sunday program. The news was first reported by TVNewser. "We expect him to remain with us for many, many years," Heather Riley, an ABC News spokesperson, told POLITICO. "This represents what he wanted – he is commited to GMA and This Week and understands...

Last August, as conservatives barnstormed the country seeking to build support for a cockamamie plan to shut down the U.S. federal government unless Congress voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican senator, said something surprisingly prescient about the president’s signature health-care law. “President Obama wants to get as many Americans addicted to the subsidies because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound,” he said. The worry, according to Cruz, was that once the ACA went into effect, we’d all be “addicted to the sugar.” Then, it...

ABC News reporter Terry Moran caused quite a commotion tonight on Twitter following after writing: "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a "jackass" for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential." Although it wasn't long before Moran removed it, with over a million followers, the tweet quickly bounced around Twitter through various users. Now, an ABC spokesperson explains to POLITICO what happened:

Glenn Beck worked the crowd like a preacher at a rally this month in Louisville, Ky., declaring that God had responded to conservatives’ prayers by sending a slate of tea party candidates to wrest control of the Republican Party from Mitch McConnell. But there was a more earthly benefit to the arrangement that brought Beck to the rally. It was organized by the tea party nonprofit group FreedomWorks, which had endorsed the candidates — and which has paid more than $6 million in recent years to have Beck promote the group, its initiatives and events. ..............

Rice’s recent speaking gigs on college campuses and her ascension to the board of the file-sharing company Dropbox have sparked protests calling for her to be disinvited, cashiered and generally isolated and shamed --snip-- When the University of Minnesota invited her to give a lecture Thursday as part of a series marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the herd of independent minds that is the school’s faculty roused itself. Roughly 200 of them demanded that the invitation be revoked, mostly for her association with George W. Bush’s interrogation and detention policies, but also because she is unfit...

Jared Polis really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. If you saw the Colorado congressman speaking on the House floor last month wearing a clip-on bowtie with a polo shirt under his blazer, you know what I’m talking about. He’s been this way since he first emerged on the scene. About 10 years ago, when he was just 28, Polis was one of four wealthy Colorado Democrats who pooled their considerable personal resources to create a state-of-the-art political machine that was ruthlessly effective in turning this once-red heartland state a stunning shade of blue. But Polis wouldn’t run with that...

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour defended Jeb Bush’s recent comments that some illegal immigration is an “act of love,” saying it’s very similar to what former President Ronald Reagan thought. “What people want you to do: Tell the truth,” Barbour said Tuesday at the LBJ Presidential Library’s Civil Rights Summit. “And if Jeb feels that way about it — it sort of reminds me of my boss, Ronald Reagan.” Barbour, who was an aide in Reagan’s administration described what the president used to call the “gates test” during a panel Tuesday with Democratic San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. “Ronald Reagan...

The clip comes from Politico but the translation comes from Mark Krikorian: Karl Rove to Jeb Bush: Wait til _after_ the election to say what you really think http://t.co/Dk3JXnjhmj— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) April 8, 2014 The weirdest thing to me about Jeb’s “act of love” comment is that, as recently as last year, he was positioning himself as some sort of hardliner on the citizenship issue. Remember? No citizenship for illegals, he said; permanent residency is fine but to grant them full citizen privileges would offend the rule of law. Fast-forward a year and now lawbreaking is an act of...

VIDEO AT LINK On Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom" on Tuesday, former adviser to President George W. Bush Karl Rove reacted to remarks from former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) that called certain types of illegal immigration an "act of love"...