Free Republic

At least five times on the campaign trail reporters have had physical confrontations with members of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's staff, Politico reports. The story calls the instances "unusually hostile encounters with the traveling media marked by pushing, shoving and, in one instance, the allegation of a threat of violence to a reporter." There's often no love lost between reporters and campaign staffers, the story says, but "the number and intensity of incidents is unusual, particularly in Iowa, where reporters and the public are accustomed to almost unlimited access as an early state presidential ritual." Campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said: “The...

[Jonathan] Martin [of Politico] writes: "Perry's comment (about ...Ben Bernanke's "treasonous" behavior) is exactly the sort of misstep that will worry the many GOP donors on the sideline right now who chiefly want to beat President Obama. The quote reinforces their central fear about Perry — that he has a cowboy problem — and could prompt them to remain uncommitted." This is accurate. It's also irrelevant. It's irrelevant because the "GOP donors on the sideline right now" don't matter. They think they matter, but they don't. The fact is that Rick Perry can raise $15-20 million out of Texas for...

DES MOINES – Rick Perry, on his first day of extended Iowa campaigning, foreshadowed his coming assault Monday against Mitt Romney and swiped back at the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist’s suggestion that others in the GOP race don’t understand the economy. In back-to-back answers, Perry nodded at the difference between his economic record as Texas governor and Romney’s in Massachusetts and then drew a cultural contrast between his background as an Air Force pilot and family farmer and his opponent’s high finance pedigree. “It’s being able to work with your legislature to get the right tax and regulatory...

Sarah Palin may have been making the case for herself with a Facebook post last night arguing that a president must be "a strong chief executive [who] has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments." But she also sounds an awful lot like Tim Pawlenty, whose indictment against Michele Bachmann is that three-term member of Congress gives a good speech but hasn't actually accomplished anything. Wrote Palin: "Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more...

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The anybody-but-Mitt Romney faction developing within the tea party may pose a problem for the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential ambitions, but some tea party organizers worry it could also backfire against the movement itself. Romney, the current Republican front runner, is viewed skeptically – at best – by many tea partiers. And disagreement over whether to actively oppose him threatens to undo the uneasy truces forged in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and undermine the fledgling movement’s influence in the GOP. The possibility of Romney winning the nomination is even reviving debate about whether activists should embrace, or even...

People know that the MSM despises Sarah Palin. Still, it was shocking to hear the dirty little secret so openly stated . . . Jim Vandehei of Politico, on Morning Joe today: "If you talk to any single reporter at any media organization that we're aware of, I don't think that anyone thinks she can be president or should be president." View video here.

News site Politico.com admitted Friday that it made an "error" in attributing a nasty quote about Rep. Michele Bachmann to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The article said: "Palin's bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: 'I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,' she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point." However, Palin never said that. Her political action committee promptly issued a statement urging the media to "quit making stuff up." "An absurd opinion piece in Politico includes a quote attributed to Governor Palin that is a total fabrication...

Politico knew they likely wouldn’t get a quote from Sarah Palin for the latest hit piece they published so they made one up. One of the authors is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virgina.Politico wrote: Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP.Palin’s bus tour had some...

Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president? The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP. Palin’s bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: “I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,” she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point. But in 1932, former New York Gov. Al...

[snip beginning of article] ... Ed Rollins, dismissed Palin as “not serious” in a radio interview. He suggested in an interview with POLITICO that Bachmann would profit from the contrast. Bachmann will “be so much more substantive,” Rollins said. “People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive.’” “I’m not afraid of Palin,” he said, adding the strategy would have been the same for Mike Huckabee. Bachmann has been laying the groundwork for this argument for months, stepping away from some of the more dramatic rhetoric that brought...

By KASIE HUNT: SEABROOK, N.H. — Sarah Palin’s bus is plastered with a mock-up of the U.S. Constitution. But her entourage — both the three-vehicle motorcade that includes the bus and the smaller, two-SUV version she uses for smaller events — hasn’t been very respectful of traffic laws. They speed. They run red lights and stop signs. They make last-second lane changes to get off the highway, sometimes without signaling.....So do the reporters following them.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - As it played out on TV this week, Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” road trip of U.S. historical sites was a masterpiece of political mischief-making – a wild dash up the East Coast that delighted her fans and cornered the market on 2012 coverage for days on end. That’s not how the bus tour looked to Republicans on the ground, many of whom are more convinced than ever that the former Alaska governor is simply not serious about running for president. While Palin has reveled in giving an extended one-fingered salute to the national press, refusing to give...

Day 2 of Sarah Palin’s bus tour, and the former vice presidential nominee has prompted little more than confusion at exactly what she is up to. Palin started Memorial Day at the National Archives in Washington, but the only reporters who made it to her brief media availability there were those who happened to see tourists posting on Twitter that they had spotted her. SNIP Indeed, Twitter is about the only way to follow the former Alaska governor – unless you’re either Fox News host Greta Van Susteren or her husband, John Coale. The Fox News host is traveling around...

Among the New Hampshire electorate as a whole, Palin is viewed favorably by just 28 percent, according to a recent survey by the Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling. In PPP surveys in 31 states over the last six months, just three states had smaller proportions of Palin fans, and all were in the northeast: New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Though the firm is partisan, its results generally track with polls by other organizations. PPP’s results were used in this analysis in the interest of consistency across different states.) Continue Reading Text Size -+reset Listen Palin’s highest ratings, in...

Palin moves spark 2012 speculation By: Andy Barr May 25, 2011 07:41 PM EDT Sarah Palin is fond of saying she’ll feel compelled to run for president “if nobody else were to step up.”It just might come to that.The recent departures of Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee from the 2012 GOP field, combined with a flurry of recent moves by Palin—staff changes, the purchase of a home in Arizona, the Iowa premiere of a new feature-length film extolling the former Alaska governor—is rekindling speculation that she sees an opportunity in 2012 and may be thinking more seriously than ever about...

With Mike Huckabee's exit from the race, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are now on top of the Republican field, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Twenty percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they'd support the former Massachusetts governor, while 18 percent say they'd support the former Alaska governor. Newt Gingrich comes in third place with 11 percent. In the April 15-20 poll, Huckabee had 16 percent (tied with Donald Trump). Romney had 13, Palin had 10. While Romney and Palin now share the top spot, Gallup's positive intensity tracking shows Republicans feeling less enthusiastic about their two...

Poll: Donald Trump would be fired in 2012 general election By: Kendra Marr April 26, 2011 07:27 AM EDT Half of all Americans and almost a third of Republicans think Donald Trump wouldn't make a good president, according to a new poll. Despite his rapid ascent in presidential primary polls, a USA Today/Gallup survey out Tuesday shows that voters have significant reservations about actually putting the real estate mogul into the Oval Office. Half of all Americans said Trump would be a "poor" or "terrible" commander-in-chief. For Republicans, that number is 31 percent. Sixty-four percent of all Americas said they...

It's a fool's errand to use traditional indicators as definitive evidence that Sarah Palin is or is not running for president. If nothing else, she's made clear since her national debut two-and-a-half years ago that she plays by her own set of rules. But her pugnacious speech over the weekend in Wisconsin, promotion thereof and re-launch of her PAC's website today, suggests that she very much wants to stay in the political conversation. As has been well-documented, Palin reads most everything written about her. So she surely didn't miss recent stories about her declining poll numbers and relative quiet. For...

Tim Pawlenty implied Tuesday that there are some less-than-serious presidential hopefuls eyeing the race, with a quip that seemed to lump Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump together with wrestling icon Hulk Hogan. "You're going to have, you know, Mitt Romney who will start out as the front-runner with the most name-ID and money..." Pawlenty told CNN’s Piers Morgan in handicapping the race. "And on the other end of the continuum, you'll have perhaps Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, or I don't know, maybe Hulk Hogan will get in the race too. Who knows? But I think in...