Free Republic

Florida’s most experienced political professionals are closely divided on whether Rick Perry or Mitt Romney will win Florida’s Republican presidential primary, but overwhelmingly they see Romney as the stronger candidate to beat Barack Obama in Florida. More than 100 of Florida’s sharpest political minds participated in the latest St. Petersburg Times Florida Insider Poll - including campaign consultants, lobbyists, activists - and the results were striking: Two thirds of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans pegged Romney as the stronger general election candidate, though Republicans were considerably more confident than Democrats that Perry would win Florida’s crucial presidential primary early...

"NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The plunge in U.S. newspaper circulation is accelerating, according to the latest figures released on Monday, as more people cancel their subscriptions and publishers cut distribution and sales of discounted copies."

The feeble pulse of moderation in the Republican Party is in danger of flat-lining in the Nov. 3 Congressional election in upstate New York. Luminaries like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have taken opposing sides over whether the party dare tolerate the official Republican candidate in the 23rd district — Dede Scozzafava, a six-term assemblywoman whose record includes refreshing tinges of centrism. Ms. Scozzafava was nominated by local party leaders as eminently electable despite — or because of — her defense of women’s abortion rights and her tolerant views on same-sex marriage. She is already shunned by many more ideologically...

Anita Dunn, a senior White House aide, has boasted of how Barack Obama's presidential campaign managed to "absolutely control" the press during the 2008 election. The top campaign strategist who has shot to attention recently as President Obama's main attack dog against Fox News, the conservative-leaning cable network, was speaking at a conference in the Dominican Republic in January. "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," she said. "One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Mr Obama's campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The first primary contest of the 2012 election cycle is more than two years away, but some Republicans are already voting … sort of. The National Republican Senatorial Committee — which assists GOP Senate candidates — e-mailed a "Proxy Ballot" to some supporters on Monday asking them which Republican leader is their top choice for the Republican presidential nomination. The survey also asks Republicans to rank the importance of issues like health care, abortion rights and taxes.

A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA Taking a new hard line that news articles should not turn up on search engines and Web sites without permission, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies The A.P. about how the article is used. Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced...

Republicans were just starting to breathe a little easier. The news that Senator John Ensign had had an affair with a former aide who was married to another former aide was fading. Polls showed some voter impatience with President Obama’s policies, if not with the president himself. And the Politico, the insidery Web site that is widely read in the capital’s political precincts, even featured an article exploring the possibility of a Republican Party comeback. Then Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a fiscal conservative seen by many Republicans as an attractive standard-bearer for the next presidential campaign, went missing....

Link only, per FR posting policy

Conservative activists are outspoken in their opposition. But Republican senators who will actually vote on her nomination offer muted responses. Some think the party has a chance to reach Latino vote. BY PETER WALLSTEN and RICHARD SIMON Reporting from Washington -- Rush Limbaugh called her a "reverse racist." The conservative Judicial Confirmation Network said she was an activist with a "personal political agenda" and should be blocked from the Supreme Court. . . . . .The Republican senators who will actually vote on her were not following the activists' script. Instead, GOP senators offered muted, sometimes admiring, responses, and seemed...

The New York Times Co. said last night that it is notifying federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe, raising the possibility that New England's most storied newspaper could cease to exist within weeks. After down-to-the-wire negotiations did not produce millions of dollars in union concessions, the Times Co. said that it will file today a required 60-day notice of the planned shutdown under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. The move could amount to a negotiating ploy to extract further concessions from the Globe's unions, since the notice does not require the Times Co....

According to a report in the New York Post the venerable New York Times is much worse off financially than anyone predicted.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Meghan McCain warned a group of gay Republicans Saturday that there was "a war brewing in the Republican Party" – a war between the past and the future. "Most of the old school Republicans are scared s***less of that future," she told a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay and lesbian party members. The 24-year-old daughter of former GOP presidential candidate John McCain pushed back against critics upset over her comments to CNN that she wanted President Obama to succeed, and played down her recent headline-grabbing feuds with conservative commentators Ann Coulter and...

How do you hit the broad side of a barn in a news report when you can't see the core issues? How did we know the report would be misleading and terribly lacking? As you know, I write for non-gun owners. I furnish analysis and facts more on the issue of liberty and citizen authority than guns themselves. Guns, liberty, and our sovereign authority over officials in this country are inextricable, and I have shown why over the years. The armed citizen is not an opinion concept, it is and always has been a safeguard of our way of life....

Meghan McCain: We Need More Gay Republicans! By David Knowles Apr 13th 2009 10:00AM Here's a question: Can Meghan McCain, the blog-a-lot daughter of Senator John McCain, help bring the Republican Party into the twenty-first century? Well, with her column at The Daily Beast, and during her many television interviews, she sure is giving it a go. Today's screed, for instance, attempts to light a fire under the Republican posterior on the matter of including gay rights in the party platform: If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to...

THOSE OLD Republican hot buttons are growing cold. For proof, check out a recent interview with Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate and ex-governor of Massachusetts. According to TheHill.com, a congressional newspaper that publishes when Congress is in session, "Romney believes that one way to attract more minorities to the GOP is to pass immigration reform before the next election, saying the issue becomes demagogued by both parties on the campaign trail." The article also quotes Romney as saying, "We have a natural affinity with Hispanic-American voters, Asian-American voters." This could be extreme political repositioning, even for Romney. . ....

After viewing an article on examiner.com that asks the question about the current existance of the “liberal media bias”…. I thought I would share a few thoughts on this. Not long ago (10 or 15 years ago) the big buzz on talk radio was how unfair and completely bias the media was - to the left. In fact it’s only in recent years that this proclamation has died down. But I would say the notion of only 1 side being represented on a given subject - has changed dramatically… and is worth noting. The way news is being covered these...

The Palin family continues to grab headlines, and once again it has nothing to do with politics. This time it surrounds Sarah Palin's sister-in-law, Diana Palin, who was arrested on Thursday for allegedly burglarizing a house. Not once, but twice in a matter of days. And she reportedly brought her 4-year-old daughter along for the heists, according to the Anchorage Daily News. (snip)

~ EXCERPT ~ CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — The company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times and 58 other newspapers and online sites said Tuesday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Now that Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina has polished his credentials with the Republican right by recklessly rejecting $700 million in federal education stimulus money, we keep hoping he will change his mind and put the needs of his recession-ravaged state ahead of his political ambitions. It will be up to more responsible political leaders to act if Mr. Sanford sticks by his disastrous choice, which would drive an already depressed state economy deeper into a hole and place even more South Carolinians at risk of losing their homes.

Michael Steele is the gift that keeps on giving. His latest entrée unto the absurd comes in the form of an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon. Steele now wants us to believe that his wayward ramblings are part of an elaborate ruse – some sort of Jedi mind trick. Really?