Free Republic

The Hill runs a report crediting Sarah Palin for her many Republic primary victories. Before conservatives take too much pleasure in such news, read how she is credited with helping sweep John McCain to victory. Palin traveled to Arizona and made numerous campaign appearances with McCain, bringing him the Tea Party creds he so desperately needed to undercut the fact that he is a nearly three-decades-long, left-leaning Washington insider. That Palin chose to conveniently back McCain over conservative former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth is a truth that should not soon be forgotten. Her help, McCain’s falsely running to the right,...

PHOENIX, Arizona (AFP) — Senator John McCain appears set to romp home in Arizona's Republican primary, but only after tacking right and spending millions of dollars to counter a threat from a former conservative radio show host. Voters also head to the polls Tuesday for primary elections in Florida, Vermont and Alaska and results are being closely watched as a litmus test of the anti-incumbent mood in the run up to mid-term elections in November. Results such as Arizona may predict whether insurgent candidates, especially Republicans backed by staunchly anti-government Tea Party groups, will continue to make advances over those...

I wish my fellow conservatives would wake up to the charade being peddled by Sarah Palin. Many of the same people who (rightly) derided the Republican presidential candidacy of John McCain are rallying behind Palin, despite the fact that she identified herself with McCain in 2008 and continues to defend his re-election bid against more conservative Tea Party challengers. (snip) Actions speak louder than words. Palin is not opposing the establishment; she’s endorsing people who she thinks will win so she can make herself look good and recruit allies for personal gain. This type of crony big government Republicanism is...

To understand why Democrats ever picked Mondale, you have to understand where the party — and where the country — was in 1982 and 1983, when the nation’s verdict on Reagan and his policies was far less positive. In those days, with unemployment surging over 10 percent and the president’s popularity slipping to sub-Carter levels, Democrats mistakenly assumed that the ‘80 election had been a mirage. The electorate, they figured, had acted in haste and was rapidly returning to its senses. The results of the 1982 midterms, when Republicans (who had begun the cycle with claims that they’d win...

Arizona Sen. John McCain has a message for illegal residents of his state: Go back where you came from. McCain, who has been veering right to try and win his Republican Senate primary against conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, said on Tuesday that he supports immigration reform that would deport those living in the country illegally. "No amnesty. Many of them need to be sent back," McCain said during an interview on KQTH-FM in Tucson, Ariz. when describing how he would deal with illegal U.S. residents. McCain said he supported reform that would create a guest worker program, but was...

It is good to criticize fanaticism, esp. BLIND fanaticism, but be equally weary of the fanatical Palin haters that parade around this site. Regardless of how some mask their true wishes for Palin in "constructive critic" guise, there are plenty of writers and thinkers out there who offer honest critique of Palin while having her and our country's best interests in mind and therefore want her to come out WINNING. Most of the FR trolls who post the latest Palin hit-piece of the day could care less for Palin and take joy everytime she supposedly "falls." To these types, Palin...

Governor Palin, Please revoke your support for John McCain and back J.D. in Arizona. I say this as perhaps one of your biggest supporters in the world. Your support of senator McCain is making any Palin supporters' life just flat out miserable on the web. It is giving some sick, twisted and misguided people a tool to divide conservatives. In this case, give in just this one time. It will really put your "conservative enemies" into a corner. Please stop supporting John McCain. And a message to the anti Palin crowd on FR.. Give her credit for conservatives that she...

True, Reagan ran for office as a conservative. "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem," he insisted. But once in office, he usually governed as a moderate, a pragmatist. And he was easily reelected. Today, Reagan would be branded "just another liberal politician" by the likes of Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. [snip] Reagan would be hard pressed to get nominated today," says biographer Lou Cannon, who has written several books about his governorship and presidency. "Today he would not be in the conservative mainstream. He just simply would not be. "Reagan was practical. He had principles, but...

MESA, Ariz. (AP) —Once bitter rivals for the presidency, Mitt Romney and John McCain campaigned together as friends on Friday, one gearing up for a likely presidential bid and the other fighting to hold onto his seat in the U.S. Senate. The two Republicans fielded questions from a largely supportive audience of several hundred people, touching on issues including immigration and the environment while heaping criticism on President Barack Obama. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, battled with McCain in 2008 for the Republican nomination for president, then aggressively campaigned for McCain in the general election. He has endorsed the Arizona...

Bernstein's rule of thumb: She should be covered because, as a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, what she says is newsworthy. The same goes for the other leading candidates. They are newsworthy to the extent that they are leading candidates, and in my view editors and producers should try to assess as best they can who those leading candidates are (using polls, endorsements and comments by informed observers and participants and evidence of campaign activity).... It's hard, of course, for the press to cover a candidate who doesn't tell the truth without inadvertently just amplifying falsehoods or...

In the midst of one of the most precipitous political crashes in the Mountain West, Sarah Palin made a mad dash into Boise on Friday, urging the election of a man who had plagiarized his campaign speech from Barack Obama, had been rebuked by the military for misusing the Marine uniform and had called the American territory of Puerto Rico a separate country. And why not? Vaughn Ward, the Republican congressional candidate from Idaho, has the dubious character trifecta of the Palin brand: bone-headed, defiant and willfully ignorant. When told that Puerto Rico was not a country, he said, “I...

BOISE, Idaho — State Rep. Raul Labrador defeated Vaughn Ward in western Idaho's 1st Congressional District and punched his ticket to face incumbent Democrat Walt Minnick in November. "My friends, the key to our renewal is liberty," Labrador told a cheering crowd at GOP headquarters in Garden City shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday. "The answer to Obamaism is liberty." Ward, a Marine reservist and a first-time candidate, had a 6-to-1 money edge and the backing of the Idaho and national GOP hierarchy. Ward was a commanding presence on TV, while Labrador ran only a smattering of radio spots in the...

Sen. John McCain continues to lead Arizona’s hotly contested Republican Senate primary contest, with challenger J.D. Hayworth trailing him by 12 points. McCain has 52 percent of the vote, compared with Hayworth’s 40 percent, according to the new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters in Arizona. Two percent prefer some other candidate, and 6 percent are undecided. Despite the lead, Rasmussen notes that any incumbent who earns less than 50 percent support is considered potentially vulnerable, and McCain has been hovering around that mark all year.

Behind the scenes the insider Republican establishment is now in an uproar as the odds are high that Rand Paul wins the Republican nomination for senator from Kentucky. This would be a major embarrassment to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and raises a big question about 2012: Why is Sarah Palin getting so much attention, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) so little, from the national media and pundit classes? Certain pundits appear strangely infatuated with Palin, but it seems to me that if Ron Paul runs for president in 2012, he could win a plurality of delegates in a multi-candidate field....

Sarah Palin started off her keynote speech at at this morning's Susan B. Anthony List "Celebration of Life" breakfast in downtown Washington D.C. with a defense of her endorsement of Republican California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. Palin justified picking Fiorina over the other Republicans in the primary race by remarking that "anyone bold enough to proclaim their pro-life stance -- or pro-NRA stance in a deep blue state" like California is "the real deal" when it comes to pro-life credentials.

A quote for the ages from uber-swish Andrew: Here's a revealing glimpse into how a delusional, incompetent, pathological liar has managed never to hold a real press conference and yet remains a credible public figure. He's off on one of his Sarah Palin jags. Again. And it's still only 2010.

Sarah Palin testified Friday against a 22-year-old man accused of hacking into her e-mail account, saying later it's up to the judge to decide whether he should serve prison time if convicted. Palin testified that the hacking compromised one of the main ways she communicated with her family back in Alaska as she campaigned in 2008 as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Outside the courthouse, when asked whether she thought community service was punishment enough rather than prison, she said, "That's up to the judge." Former University of Tennessee student David Kernell faces up to 50 years in federal prison...

The clip of the Great One is only 1:59 and well worth the listen. In response to a caller, he opines that: "Sarah Palin would be a superb President...Palin is one of the most solid conservatives on the national scene...I am a great admirer of Sarah Palin....[and] if you think Obama is doing the wrong things, you should be an admirer of Sarah Palin because she is the anti-Obama."

Freep! POll: would you vote for Palin over Obama in 2012?

I had never met Steve Schmidt and only knew him through the media. When I found myself seated at the former McCain campaign manager's table at a Washington dinner hosted by The Week magazine, it was like a flashback to the 2008 campaign. Schmidt is instantly recognizable with his trademark shaved head, his bulldog physique, and the restless intensity that marks him as a political operative of the first order. He had spent 10 weeks trying to mold Sarah Palin into a plausible national candidate, and when the campaign ended, he assessed her shortcomings, as she did his, in what...