Free Republic

Back in their day, the tea party folks were riding high, fueling indignation over alleged government-run death panels, a treasonous Federal Reserve and the like. They commandeered sparsely attended Republican primaries, managing to nominate for Senate seats a dabbler in witchcraft in Delaware, holders of strange views on rape in Missouri and Indiana, and in Nevada, a candidate suggesting armed insurrection if her people didn't win elections. All lost -- some in races an old-fashioned Republican would have won. In the interest of party self-preservation, Republican leaders sidelined the more extreme tea partiers, or tried to. Meanwhile, the tea party's...

Conservative activist and political pundit Gary Bauer believes former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would make a "fantastic" United States senator. A recent Republican survey showed the high-profile former GOP vice-presidential nominee with a two-percent edge (32% to 30%) over Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell for the right to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Begich next year. Joe Miller, the tea party-backed nominee in 2010, finished a distant third with 14 percent. The poll was commissioned by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is hoping to convince Palin to enter the race. Thus far she has not expressed any public interest...

The top advisor to last year’s Republican nominee predicted Wednesday that if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, she will lose in a Democratic primary. Clinton is widely thought to be the strongest 2016 presidential contender in either party, with high approval ratings and early poll numbers that show her beating top Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio in their home states. But Stu Stevens, the senior advisor to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by National Review that Clinton wouldn’t survive a Democratic primary. “I would predict that if Hillary Clinton runs, she’ll lose...

My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. There are two main reasons for this. First, voters weigh major issues like economic performance and the conduct of foreign wars heavily in making their decisions, leaving relatively little room for everything else. Second, the news media may overplay the lead story, scandalous or otherwise, on any given day, even though it may turn out to be relatively unimportant in the context of a multiyear political cycle. But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service...

If you are a Conservative, you may have gotten a few e-mails from a Washington, D.C. based group called the Tea Party Leadership Fund. These letters will be signed by a man named Todd Cefaratti. The letter states they are looking to “Draft Sarah Palin” into making a run at Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014, a seat now held by democrat Mark Begich. This of course has caused quite a stir, and unfortunately many have sent their hard earned money to this crew. Recently, the group commissioned a poll of Alaskans, looking to legitimize their efforts. Harper Polling found these...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, folks, on this IRS business, I think the 2010 midterms really shocked the Democrats. I think they might have expected to maybe lose some seats, although, actually, my memory -- no, no, no, no, no, my memory is that they thought with the overwhelming popularity of Obama it might be the first time that a sitting president's party increased seats. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. I think Bush did it. But they were clearly hoping for at least a draw. In the 2010 midterms they got shellacked. It's one of the reasons I...

A new Harper Polling poll shows a plurality of likely Alaskan Republican voters support their former Governor, Sarah Palin, as a U.S. Senate candidate in the 2014 GOP primary over Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and 2010 Senate candidate Joe Miller. The survey of 379 likely Republican voters found that 32 percent support Palin, whereas 30 percent support Treadwell and 14 percent support Miller. The Harper Polling poll, conducted via telephone on May 6 and May 7 on behalf of the Tea Party Leadership Fund, found that 45 percent of likely GOP voters think Palin would “fight hardest for conservative values,”...

One of the Democrats’ most veteran strategists warns that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama is no longer on the scene. “Since Obama was elected President, the Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats,” Doug Sosnik, the political director in Bill Clinton’s White House, writes in a new memo. While Republican branding problems get the lion’s share of attention, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has declined by 15 points since Obama took power. A Pew Research Center survey this January showed that the Democratic Party was...

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” former Clinton adviser James Carville said that Sen. Ted Cruz will be a force to be reckoned with should he decide to run for president in 2016. The Canadian-born Cruz, Carville noted, hails from the more ideological wing of the GOP, while the last two Republicans to unsuccessfully run for president, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were both inherently moderate and compromise-friendly. “I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s...

A new Quinnipiac poll comparing potential Democratic candidates for 2016 comes to a familiar conclusion: Hillary Clinton, if she decides to run, would absolutely dominate the competition. The poll has 65 percent of potential Democratic voters picking Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee in 2016. That's in line with multiple recent polls — including from Gallup, PPP, and PublicMind — showing Clinton as the overwhelming favorite in a Democratic primary. What's interesting about the Quinnipiac poll is that it conducted a separate survey in which Clinton was removed from the race. Which Democrats come out on top if Clinton decides...

There will almost certainly be an aspect of the National Rifle Association's convention — which opens today in Houston — that feels like a victory celebration. By organizing and agitating its members, the organization was able to kill a Senate compromise on background checks, steamrolling over an ineffectual Organizing For Action. But as discussion of reviving that deal heats up, the NRA may finally face a real roadblock: public opinion. Prior to the April 17th vote — which failed to end a Republican-led filibuster on a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks — there were certainly coordinated organizing efforts. Mayors...

Sarah Palin's supporters are urged to contribute money toward recruiting her to run for the U.S. Senate, the Tea Party Leadership Fund said. "We know that, with Sarah in the Senate, conservatives across America can rest a little easier at night knowing she's at the watch," an email from Todd Cefratti of the Leadership Fund, sent this week to supporters, read in part. She would run against incumbent Mark Begich, D-Alaska, the Los Angeles Times noted....

Can the Tea Party and establishment, moderate-minded conservatives ever reconcile? At The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport cites a new study as evidence it won't happen. [T]he gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don’t locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas. Most jarring: On...

Despite assurances by the likes of Nate Silver that these are solid polls showing "Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks," I have previously noted my skepticism of these claims. To me, it wasn't too surprising that the Senate voted down the gun control bill about 10 days ago. My concern is that people were really just being asked about whether they wanted to keep criminals from getting guns, not about the particular legislation being voted on by the Senate. Well, now there is another poll by the PEW Research Center that...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would have won the presidency if the white and black turnout rates had stayed at their 2004 levels, according to a new analysis of 2012 election. “The battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same,” according to The Associated Press’s summary of research by William Frey, an expert at the Brookings Institution. Overall turnout declined from 62 percent in 2008 to 58 percent in 2012, Frey reported. The drop-off reduced the overall turnout by...

Frank Luntz may smugly believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and other right wing talk radio hosts are "responsible for the stark polarization within the nation's political discourse" and therefore "problematic" for the Republican Party. I submit the problem is that Luntz, and a misguided over-reliance on focus groups, has neutered and thus destroyed any semblance of courage in the GOP's message. Luntz is conflating, as many wonks and number crunchers do, cause and effect with regard to the bigger realities and polarization. The country is polarized because, well, we are polarized. Rush and "the great one" didn't make it...

Did the senators who voted against a proposal last week to expand background checks on gun buyers take an electoral risk? At first glance, it would seem that they did. Background checks are broadly popular with the public. Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks when guns are purchased at gun shows, at gun shops or online. Support for background checks drops when guns are bought through informal channels, or gifts from family members — but the amendment that the Senate voted upon last week, sponsored by the Joe Manchin III, Democrat...

Though currently retired, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still more popular than President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and her successor John Kerry, a new poll has found. According to the Gallup poll, released Tuesday, a whopping 64 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Clinton, putting her nine percentage points ahead of President Obama (55 percent), 19 percentage points ahead of Biden and 20 percentage points ahead of the current Secretary of State John Kerry. Moreover while 13 percent of respondents said they never heard of John Kerry and nine percent of respondents said the...

LaGrange, IL— This weekend’s epic showdown between movement conservatives and more moderate elements of the Illinois Republican Party ended with a split result. Embattled Party Chairman Pat Brady remains at the helm of the State Central Committee but the committee is beginning the process of lining up a successor in the event Chairman Brady resigns or his detractors can garner enough votes to oust him while simultaneously navigating party rules to make it happen. Brady’s term runs through the 2014 primary season when a new, 18-member central committee, selected under the downsized 2011 congressional map, will organize itself and elect...

PLEASE don’t ask me this anymore. It’s such a silly question. Of course Hillary is running. I’ve never met a man who was told he could be president who didn’t want to be president. So naturally, a woman who’s told she can be the first commandress in chief wants to be. “Running for president is like sex,” James Carville told me. “No one ever did it once and forgot about it.” Joe Biden wants the job. He’s human (very). But he’s a realist. He knows the Democratic Party has a messianic urge to finish what it started so spectacularly with...

Recently reporter Thomas Edsall - who has spent most of the last 30 years covering politics for the Washington Post and the New Republic - had some advice for the GOP. He draws upon some recent polling data to argue that "the Republican Party can afford to marginalize . . . Christian right leaders because evangelical social conservatives . . . are not going to vote Democratic." Thus, he reasons that Republicans can, as he puts it, "concede defeat in the culture war" in the hopes of picking up more socially liberal voters. Mr. Edsall might want to check with...

Has the moment passed for tighter gun restrictions? President Obama himself raised that question Thursday at a White House event aimed at revitalizing the prospects for legislation, 100 days after a Connecticut elementary school massacre that shocked the nation. Flanked by families affected by gun violence, the president made an emotional plea for action and insisted it’s not too late. “The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened at Newtown happens, and we’ve moved on to other things?” he said. “That’s not who we are.” Next Wednesday, Obama will travel to Colorado to...

Karl Rove and Reince Priebus clearly do. And then there's Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin... Is it time to remake the old movie Death Wish — this time starring conservative Republicans who seem to think polls are wrong and that America really loves them and hates Barack Obama? This is not a joke. Whether conservatives even want to win is a serious question in light of the reaction to the Republican National Committee's brutally honest "autopsy" on why the party lost the 2012 presidential election. The RNC concluded that the party should change such things as the number of primaries,...

GOP strategist and fundraiser Karl Rove on Sunday said Democrats needed to “stop scaring people” about gun control if they wanted to pass bipartisan measures to stem gun violence. Rove pointed to the debate over instituting background checks and said that Democrats were overreaching and pushing away gun owners eager for a bipartisan solution. “This was prompted by the Sandy Hook murders. Those guns were legally purchased with a background check. This would not have solved something like that,” said Rove in a panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” “Let's be very careful about quickly trampling on the rights of...

No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent. Hillary Clinton, back from her global travels visiting places and peoples hardly heard of on this continent, is stealing the spotlight without even touching the stage. President Obama visits the Middle East, makes history as he speaks war to Syria and Iran and peace to Israelis and Palestinians, and the talk back home circles The Big Question: Will Hillary run? The former first lady, the former senator and now the former secretary of state is everywhere — and nowhere to be seen. Sent away...

Proponents of gun-control legislation, emboldened by the president’s call for stricter laws and overwhelming support in public polling, have been optimistic that proposals for background checks or a crackdown on weapons trafficking could pass Congress. Gun-control advocates have cited plenty of data to make their case, including surveys that show more than 80 percent of Americans support background checks. Even a ban on assault weapons, which has been a more polarizing issue, still wins majority support in many surveys. But these polls may gloss over some complexities in public opinion on gun control, and explain why Democrats are having so...

In my last column, I argued that for all the undeniable woes of the Republican Party, the unfurling of Obamacare represents a huge vulnerability for Democrats. The Democratic health reform bill is economically nonsensical and politically unpopular. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent believe the law will damage the U.S. health care system. Even among Democrats, support for the law is ebbing. In February, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that only 57 percent of Democrats (compared with 72 percent in November of 2012) support the law. The battle over health care reform is not over. Yes, the...

An unsparing piece keying off the same Rick Perry soundbite at CPAC that inspired this post. Perry said that it’s unfair to blame conservatism for the GOP’s losses in 2008 and 2012 because, after all, our nominees weren’t conservative. Emery’s response: Then why did Republican primary voters vote for them instead of for a solid conservative like, say, Rick Perry? Her answer? Between Reagan’s generation and the current crop of Rubio, Scott Walker, etc, there simply haven’t been many good conservative candidates. Instead, against establishment types who were national figures, the conservative movement flung preachers and pundits (Pat Robertson, Alan...

The Republican National Committee’s extended autopsy on the G.O.P.’s 2012 defeat, which officially abjures policy recommendations but then goes on to nudge the party toward supporting comprehensive immigration reform and gay marriage, is the highest-profile distillation of what I described last week as the “donorist” view of how the Republican Party needs to change. As Ramesh Ponnuru suggests, this the party elite’s vision of domestic policy reform, reflecting the views of people who are already “more likely to favor same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform on principle,” and who don’t “tend to have any major problems with the Republican economic...

According to the media and popular culture, the only thing that matters in the whole world these days is redefining marriage as quickly as possible. As should be expected, GOP elites are falling into line. We had U.S. Senator Rob Portman explain that his principles in defense of traditional marriage were overturned by having a child who disagreed. Yesterday, George Will said opposition to same-sex marriage is "quite literally" dying off. And our beloved libertarian Charles Murray spoke at CPAC and endorsed redefining marriage, flirted with legalized abortion, and favorably quoted Karl Hess's line about abortion being homicide, sure, but...

OXON HILL, Md. — Sarah Palin’s appearances no longer inspire speculation about her presidential aspirations, but her reception at a gathering of conservatives Saturday underscored her enduring popularity with the right. In a speech, she offered zingers for the Republican base but also a strenuous defense of her tea-party friends who are challenging the Republican establishment. In a pep talk at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Palin, a former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, attacked President Obama and Beltway Republican groups that are promoting traditional candidates over insurgents in Republican primaries. “More background checks?” she asked, railing...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday that there is no Bush fatigue in America. Chris Wallace: Do you think there would be any Bush baggage? Do you think that would be a problem? Jeb Bush: No. I don’t think there is any Bush baggage at all. I love my brother. I’m proud of his accomplishments. I love my dad. I am proud to be a Bush. And, if I run for president, it’s not because there is something in my DNA that compels me to do it...

IN POLITICS, snubs are more important than invites. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and social conservative, has been refused a speaking spot at the Conservative Political Action Conference to be held this week just outside Washington. CPAC, as it is known, is the Ames Straw Poll without the fun. The Ames Straw Poll held in Iowa has free drinks, free eats, free face painting and free country music followed by a bunch of speeches and a meaningless presidential straw poll. CPAC has a bunch of speeches and a meaningless presidential straw poll. Previous CPAC straw poll winners have...

There is already a bumper sticker out there that says “Barack 2012, Michelle 2016,” spotted in the nation’s capital in the last month. In that mindset, consider new numbers just released: a Harris Poll gauging first lady Michelle Obama’s popular appeal among Americans, including a rating of her “job” performance and yes, a comparison with her hubby. The numbers: 71 percent of Americans say Michelle Obama was a positive factor in President Obama’s re-election; 54 percent of Republicans and 89 percent of Democrats agree. 70 percent of Americans overall say Mrs. Obama has a positive influence on the president’s decisions;...

I’d love to tell you that this strategy is nutty but after the last election I assume it’s already been vetted and deemed foolproof by an elite team of liberal Nobel-prize-winning behavioral scientists and supercomputer-enabled statistical models. Meanwhile, somewhere in Virginia, the GOP’s strategy squad is pushing colored thumbtacks into a paper map of the U.S. If you’ve been wondering where O’s out-of-left-field push for a minimum-wage hike in the SOTU came from, this is where. It polls well, and right now his only chance to get anything important done in his second term is by pushing dumb yet popular...

About five years ago, pollsters identified a crucial bloc of swing voters they called the “Walmart Moms.” These are women with children at home 18 or younger, and they shop at a Walmart at least once a month. They are also women who know what it is like to stretch a budget and juggle the demands of a family. For them, stress is a normal state these days. Walmart Moms don’t spend a lot of time thinking about politics, but when they do, it is on a very pragmatic level: Which candidate or party is going to make life better...

Is it last call for the tea party? Consider these recent developments: Late Thursday: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a possible presidential candidate in 2016, ridicules fellow Republicans as the "stupid party" and urges Washington Republicans to get over their obsession with cutting budgets. Friday afternoon: The office of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, another would-be Republican presidential candidate, declares that he will not go along with a plan, hatched by conservative legislators, to rewrite the state's election laws in a way that would stack Virginia's electoral votes against Democrats. Late Friday: Fox News says it has parted ways with Sarah Palin,...

ALBANY – Gov. Cuomo’s job approval rating dropped faster than a speeding bullet this month as Republicans and gun owners started turning against him after he rammed through the nation’s first post-Newtown gun control law, a new poll has found. Democrat Cuomo’s approval marks slid from 74-13 percent last month to 59-28 in the Quinnipiac poll out today — a day after the New York-affiliate of the National Rifle Association filed a notice of claim to sue to stop enforcement of the law, arguing it unconstitutionally deprives New Yorkers of their rights. While voters in non-gun homes still gave Cuomo...

There are few certainties in American politics. But you can write it down: If Hillary Clinton wants to be the next nominee of the Democratic Party to be president, the job is hers. Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Mark Warner, Martin O'Malley and the others in the long list of commander-in-chief wannabes will go about their day jobs for the next couple years, but at the back of their minds will be only one question: Will she or won't she? Because, as the most popular politician in America -- who also happens to be married to America's most popular ex-president and...

There are few certainties in American politics. But you can write it down: If Hillary Clinton wants to be the next nominee of the Democratic Party to be president, the job is hers. Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Mark Warner, Martin O'Malley and the others in the long list of commander-in-chief wannabes will go about their day jobs for the next couple years, but at the back of their minds will be only one question: Will she or won't she? Because, as the most popular politician in America -- who also happens to be married to America's most popular ex-president and...

The news that Sarah Palin will no longer be a paid contributor to Fox News puts an exclamation point on the end of an era, or at least a chapter, in U.S. political history. She could land somewhere else, and she still has her Facebook friends, but it’s hard to imagine she’ll find a more visible or influential platform than Fox. The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee has been fading from the scene for some time, as she inadvertently highlighted when she complained on Facebook during the Republican convention in August that the network had canceled her...

Just a week before the New Year, Obama enjoyed his highest approval ratings of 2012. According to Gallup, 58% of Americans approved of the job Obama was doing. Survey results released today by Gallup, though, show Obama's approval rating has plummeted to just 49%. It is a dramatic drop, especially coming over a holiday period when people traditionally pay little attention to politics. Four years ago, at his first inauguration, a full 69% of Americans approved of Obama. The drop in Obama's approval from 4 years ago is understandable, given the sluggish economy and the hope American's had as his...

This just in: The majority of Republicans still don’t believe that President Barack Obama is from ’round these parts. a new nationwide survey of registered voters that examines Americans’ belief in political conspiracy theories, Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind project found that 64 percent of Republicans think it’s “probably true” that President Obama is hiding important information about his background and early life. Yes, even though the President has a memoir he released long before he became a national political figure and released his birth certificate and had his kinfolk attest to his story — ditto for the teachers, neighbors, and...

On Nov. 11, a mere five days after the presidential election, the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam pushed off from Fort Lauderdale for a Caribbean jaunt. Aboard were nearly 600 emotionally tattered Republicans, most of whom had been expecting a Republican victory of Rovian proportions — surely they had all read Karl’s prediction in The Wall Street Journal — and now were about to cruise 750 miles to nowhere, just like the party they so adored. The Nieuw Amsterdam was 86,000 tons of painful metaphor. The cruise was sponsored by National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley and for...

Jim DeMint is retiring from the United States Senate and will take over the Heritage foundation. Heritage is certainly getting one of the conservative superstars of this current era. But what will this mean for the Senate and the future?

It is understandable that those of us who voted against Barack Obama, the Community Disorganizer, should be upset over his triumph. Like Joe Biden reading an Umberto Eco novel, we cannot help but feel rather listless and disoriented these days. Feelings of vulnerability can very easily transmogrify into anger, so one must never lose one’s sense of humor; apropos, I draw your attention to the New York Times of November 10, in which Maureen Dowd reflects on Mitt Romney’s loss: “Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he...

On Wednesday, Greta put up a poll asking her readers who they thought, at this moment, was the leader of the Republican Party. Readers responded by choosing Sarah Palin by an overwhelming margin over the rest of the field. Reading the comments it’s pretty plain that many feel Sarah could have fared far better against President Obama than Governor Mitt Romney did. Judging how well Sarah’s hand picked candidates for office did, vs how those in the standard GOP mold under-performed, it’s not much of a stretch to think Sarah herself would have done well and likely led the party...

Well, this is incredibly disturbing. And while I don't think you can place the blame for Romney's defeat on this massive screw up in their GOTV efforts, considering the margin of defeat in OH, FL, VA, and CO, it certainly didn't help. John at Ace of Spades was one of 30,000 volunteers who were to take part in a brand new, high tech program that digitized "strike lists." Basically, the volunteer would be at a polling station and strike off the names of voters as they voted. Then, about half way through the day, they were supposed to send those...

It’s on! The moment we’ve all been waiting for – when America goes to vote and chose the man it wants to hate for the next four years. Whatever your party affiliation and whoever your candidate, remember: it’s never too late to start stockpiling food. What do we know so far? None of this is perfect, and a lot of this is probably worth disregarding, but here's some tantalising early finds from exit polls – which aren’t supposed to tell us how folks have voted until polls close. Associated Press reports that, unsurprisingly, 6 out 10 think the economy is...

The time has come to make a prediction about the 2012 election, and I’m not going to shirk the task. I’ve spent the past few weeks walking you through the thought process I’ve had about the decisions made by both campaigns, the missteps and missed opportunities on both sides, and the central question seems to me to be this: in the long term, demographic trend lines indicate that President Obama’s base is larger, more diverse, and allows for more paths to victory. But elections aren’t in the long term, they’re snapshots, as the White House is fond of saying every...